James Lukes says he slips in his earbuds and the slow ache of blues fills his ears. Johnnie Taylor’s “Last Two Dollars” crackles through the radio, carrying him back to the dusty fields of his childhood farm in Mississippi.
Now 73, Lukes says he has to lean on a cane as he shuffles through the prison yard of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, where he’s spent more than five decades serving a life sentence. At 17, he was charged with the stabbing death of Grace Justice in a convenience store in Waynesboro. At 19, fearful of the death penalty, he pleaded guilty – a decision he has second-guessed for decades’. He maintains he is innocent.
For the first two years, Lukes was young, angry and refused to believe he’d spend the rest of his life in prison. He quickly realized he needed to do something with his time. He took up playing basketball in the yard, but when his aging bones finally began to protest, he switched to watching television and taking walks. Lukes has taken re-entry courses, has a job and strengthened his faith by attending church regularly.
Even so, the Mississippi Parole Board has turned him down 28 times since he became eligible for release in 1982. Lukes tried admitting guilt to the Parole Board in hopes of gaining parole, but to no avail.
Lukes is among 1 in 6 prisoners, or roughly 200,000 people in the United States, serving life sentences. Nearly 70,000 people serving life were under 25 at the time of their offense and over 40,000 people are serving prison sentences of 50 years or more.
According to a Nov. 3 fact sheet from the Mississippi Department of Corrections, roughly 1,700 prisoners in Mississippi are serving life sentences.
In the years since Lukes was sentenced, the legal system has taken a deeper look at how it treats young offenders.
Twenty-eight states have banned mandatory life sentences for those whose crimes were committed as juveniles, following U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have called the practice unconstitutional. High court rulings in Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010), Miller v. Alabama (2012), Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), and Jones v. Mississippi (2021) have cited brain science showing people under 25 are less capable of understanding long-term consequences and are more susceptible to peer pressure.
In April 2021, the conservative-majority court reversed that trend, concluding in a 6-3 decision that courts could sentence juveniles to life without hope of parole, even without a finding that a juvenile was permanently incorrigible, a benchmark the court had set in Miller v. Alabama.
Juveniles don’t have the same rights and responsibilities as adults, advocates say, so they should not suffer the same consequences.
Yet nearly 500 U.S. prisoners serve life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles. An additional 8,600 people as of 2020 are serving a sentence of life with parole or virtual life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles.
Lukes reflects back on his teenage years, admitting he used to party too much. Prison has made him grow up, he said. While he is thankful to be alive, Lukes said he wishes he could have started a family of his own.
“When you’re in prison, you cannot do what you want to do. You have to do what they want you to do,” Lukes said.
Lukes said he especially misses the Southern home cooking of potato salad and fried okra. Growing tired of the prison’s gray meat, he has opted for eating fish and chicken.
It took Lukes two years to adjust to prison life. In the beginning of his time in prison, he would call home to his mother frequently, said his cousin Bobby Joe Gandy.
“He cried and cried. His mom said he had to confess or they’d execute him,” Gandy said.
Gandy and his brother decided to go to the store where the crime occurred to question the victim’s husband, who owned the store. Five decades later, Gandy can still recite Ralph Justice’s response to him: “He said, ‘Somebody has to pay for it. I’m not.’” Justice died 28 years ago.
According to Lukes, when he arrived at the store, he saw blood on the ground. Afraid, he turned around and went home. Lukes said he later learned Grace Justice had run out of the store after being stabbed. She died on the highway.
Having already pleaded guilty, Lukes said claiming innocence to a Parole Board could jeopardize his chances at leaving prison.
“I was just sad, but I had to come up out of that because I was going to be here a long time,” Lukes said. “I’ll have to do the time no matter what I do, so I might as well focus on something that will help me do my time more easily.”
For a while, seeing his family got Lukes through prison. He was furloughed for 10 days around Christmastime in 1979 and never violated the terms. He would go home and visit with family, and come back on time. His only write up in prison was for sending a Christmas card to a female guard.
A change in administration took away Lukes’ furlough in the 1980s. Now, he relies on phone calls and the rare opportunities his family has to make the long drive up to the prison from Wayne County.
Lukes said he misses his family and hopes to go home to be with them. His family has advocated heavily for his release. His only obstacle is the Parole Board.
A report from FWD.us says Mississippi’s parole laws “are a major driver of the state’s dangerously high prison population.” And with parole rates decreasing, prisoners like Lukes are trapped in a cycle of denials.
“The Parole Board used to give parole. The last 10 to 15 years, they started cutting back,” Lukes said. “I don’t know why.”
The board has continuously denied Lukes, citing the violent nature of the crime and victim opposition. The Parole Board has not responded to a request for comment.
Steve Pickett, speaking to lawmakers during a joint hearing of the House Corrections and Judiciary B Committees on Feb. 13, 2020, served nine years on the Mississippi Parole Board, including as chairman. Credit: Eric J. Shelton/Mississippi Today, Report For AmericaFormer Parole Board Chairman Steve Pickett said 65% of prisoners in Mississippi are eligible for parole today, compared to about 35% a decade ago. The change comes from a push to undo tough-on-crime laws enacted in the mid-1990s, when prisoners convicted of violent offenses were ineligible for parole.
Despite the increase in eligibility, Pickett, who served on the board nine years, said the rate of parole is lower now than in 2014. A public records request with the Mississippi Department of Corrections shows the parole grant rate for November 2025 as roughly 54%.
“Unfortunately, it’s just easier for people to throw money at corrections than it is to hold the system accountable,” Pickett said. “The general public is far removed from the world of corrections.”
But it’s not just Mississippi affected by these practices.
In Michigan, Henry Hill was 16 when his life came crashing down. He was at a park with his friends confronting other kids when the situation quickly escalated.
Hill admitted to having a gun on him, but was running away from the scene when his friend shot and killed one of the other boys. Despite a sheriff testifying to this in court, Hill was convicted of first-degree murder for aiding and abetting and sentenced to life.
A mental evaluation found Hill to have the education level of a third-grader and the mentality of a 9-year-old. Nevertheless, Hill was tried as an adult.
“To be sentenced to the rest of my life in prison for a crime that I actually didn’t commit, I would have been able to understand it if I never got out, if I actually did something, but I didn’t,” Hill said. “And then on the flip side, if I did commit the crime, at what point is enough enough?
So far, 22 states still sentence juveniles to life without parole. Despite efforts from local lawmakers to abolish juvenile life without parole, states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Mississippi remain stuck.
Wisconsin state Rep. Todd Novak said he’s hopeful the legislature will pass a bill aimed at abolishing juvenile life without parole. A bill he sponsored in 2023 didn’t have time to pass before the session ended. Had it gone through, he said, it would have eliminated juvenile life without parole and installed a sentence review mechanism for minors.
Novak, a Republican, said Wisconsin needs to follow the ruling of Miller v. Alabama, which called the sentencing of juveniles to life in prison “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Despite these rulings, Novak said he has seen hesitation from lawmakers who are afraid of how the bill will affect public safety.
“I think the big key is to make sure people understand that if this passes, that all these 17-year-olds that were sentenced, that are now in their 40s to 50s, aren’t just automatically going to get out,” Novak said.
Novak hopes the bill will address Wisconsin’s current harsh sentencing of juveniles.
One example comes from a tragic event in 2022. A 10-year-old boy in Milwaukee was charged as an adult for the fatal shooting of his mother after she refused to buy him a VR headset. Wisconsin state laws require children 10 and older to be tried as adults for violent crimes such as homicide.
In Mississippi, children 13 and older can be charged as adults for serious offenses like murder or armed robbery.
“Mississippi doesn’t see life for how it is,” Lukes said. “If someone did their time, let them go.”
Republican state Rep. Becky Currie, who chairs the House Corrections Committee, declined to comment on whether there are plans to amend Mississippi state law to address juvenile life without parole.
In Michigan, Hill was able to gain parole in 2017, and has since been working at a factory and spending time with family.
“So many evil people out here in society,” Hill said. “They don’t believe in second chances. They don’t believe in anything until somebody in their household or their family or friends get in a similar situation, then now (they think) we gotta get him out and see things with a different perspective.”
Lukes is trying to find a pro bono lawyer to help reopen his case. His next hearing is in four years. He’ll be 77 years old.
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