49 years in, high court to decide if man's sentence was 'cruel and unusual'

Lansing — The Michigan Supreme Court will reconsider a 49-year-old murder sentence in a case that asks whether certain decades-old convictions where there was no evidence of malice are deserving of a life sentence.

Justices will hear arguments in the case, People v. Edwin Lamar Langston , next month, in the latest effort to scale back certain uses of lifetime sentences in Michigan, which have so far been challenged in the cases of juveniles sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.