In 1995, then-Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, a Democrat, rejected the notion that prisoners serving life sentences could be eligible for parole, declaring, "a life sentence means life."

The statement ushered in an era that advocates say effectively denied many prisoners, including those serving sentences for crimes committed below the age of 18, a chance at parole. But that system is set to experience some fundamental changes, after a team of attorneys from Wiley Rein LLP, the ACLU of Maryland and Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP secured a settlement requiring the state to reform how it considers parole for juvenile offenders serving life sentences.

The Maryland Board of Public Works on March 10 agreed to terms requiring the governor, state parole commission and division of correction to start giving mitigating weight to the age when a crime was committed in parole decisions. Agencies will also be required to provide greater transparency to parole candidates about their decisions and the reasoning behind them.

The settlement additionally requires all parole hearings to be recorded and mandates they consider parole during them. A categorical barrier blocking lifers from moving below a medium-security prison was also eliminated.

"It's taking down some of those barriers to a functioning parole system," ACLU of Maryland senior staff attorney Sonia Kumar told Law360. "It's a series of changes that will hopefully lay a better foundation for future parole candidates going forward."

The settlement comes five years after the ACLU of Maryland filed a lawsuit on behalf of three juvenile lifers and the Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative alleging that the state was operating an unconstitutional parole system denying them a meaningful chance to receive parole.

At the time of the suit, the state had not granted parole to juvenile lifers in more than two decades. And the complaint argued that Maryland's system violated a series of Supreme Court rulings establishing that it's unconstitutional to sentence juvenile offenders to life without parole except in rare cases where the crime "reflects irreparable corruption."

Plaintiffs' attorneys claimed that the litigation process showed Maryland's parole system was operating in a "black box," where candidates were given little information about how their applications were being considered. Wiley partner Mary Borja, who helped lead a team of seven attorneys from the firm, told Law360 that there also was a clear disconnect between the written parole process and how it operates in reality.

"There appears to be an understanding among individuals involved in the parole process at many levels who have heard and understood that 'life means life,'" said Borja, who began litigating the case in 2017. "The books say the Legislature has promulgated a parole process. But if you look at the numbers and talk to individuals involved in the system, you learn there was an unwritten understanding as to how the system would operate in reality."

"The reality was that no parole was ever being offered" for juvenile lifers, she added. "It was a system of clemency that was only being offered through commutation."

The settlement's goal is to eliminate arbitrary barriers for juvenile lifers seeking parole and to provide more transparency on what criteria state officials are using to evaluate candidates.

A Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services spokesman told Law360 that it follows a number of changes Maryland has made to its parole system, including a policy where the commission in 2019 began recommending parole, rather than commutation, for prisoners serving life.

"For years, the department has been committed to reforming the parole process for juvenile lifers so that it is consistent with Supreme Court jurisprudence and the guiding principles of a just society," the spokesman said.

But this settlement has the chance to dramatically reshape the state's parole system for juvenile offenders serving life sentences, said Pillsbury senior counsel Barry Fleishman. 

"It's very difficult to get systemic change through a lawsuit, and hopefully the results of the settlement will result in a systemic change," Fleishman, who got involved in the suit after working with the ACLU on previous cases involving juvenile rights, told Law360. 

The original suit led to roughly five years of back-and-forth litigation, and it came amid a backdrop in which more attention began to be placed on the inner workings of the state parole system.

Just a week before the settlement was reached, the Maryland House of Delegates approved a bill that would remove the governor from parole decisions. Maryland is one of just three states, including Oklahoma and California, where a governor holds final authority over granting parole, and some lawmakers have argued that such a system politicizes the decisions.

The bill must be passed by the Maryland state Senate before being sent to Republican Gov. Larry Hogan's desk. Glendening, who served two terms as Maryland governor, in early March voiced support for the legislation and has also expressed regret for his "life means life" pronouncement.

"One function of the litigation was to really force attention to this constitutional failure and to educate decision makers and policy makers about a practice that many weren't aware of," Kumar said. "This case is one part of a broader moment and reconsideration in our society on how we respond when people engage in the most serious harms."

In 2020, two of the named plaintiffs in the original lawsuit — Calvin McNeill and Nathaniel Foster — were granted release. Foster had his sentence commuted and McNeill was released following a judge's resentencing order, the ACLU of Maryland said. The third plaintiff, Kenneth Tucker, remains incarcerated.

"The settlement is great for a lot of guys, not just people sentenced as juveniles alone," Foster said in a statement. "We're the face of the lawsuit, but this is going to trickle down and help everybody."

A total of 181 prisoners serving life were paroled between 1969 and 1994, according to the 2016 lawsuit, before falling to zero over the following 20 years. Hogan, who assumed office in 2015, has granted parole in some cases, including in 2019 reportedly approving the parole of multiple prisoners serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles.

Today, 261 inmates are currently serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole for crimes committed as juveniles, according to the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. 

A DPCS spokesman said the commission in 2016 permitted prisoners serving life to obtain a copy or summary of the risk assessment that is prepared in connection with parole consideration. The department in 2020 also stopped relying on a risk assessment tool that it said did not take "dynamic factors" into account and hired an in-house risk assessment expert.

The Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative, Calvin McNeill, Nathaniel Foster and Kenneth Tucker were represented by Sonia Kumar and Deborah Jeon of the ACLU of Maryland, Mary E. Borja, Richard A. Simpson, Charles C. Lemley, Gary S. Ward, George E. Petel, Ashley L. Criss and Lindy C. Bathurst of Wiley Rein LLP and Barry Fleishman of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.

The defendant, Gov. Larry Hogan, was represented by the Maryland Office of Attorney General.

The case is Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative et al. v. Hogan et al., case number 1:16-cv-01021, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

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--Editing by Katherine Rautenberg.