Omar Johnson has been in prison for his entire adult life. At 19, he shot and killed someone during a robbery. He then began his life sentence when he was 22 at Menard Correctional Center. In October, he’ll turn 50 inside of that same prison.
“I’m definitely not the person I was when I was 19 years old,” Omar Johnson said. “Life without parole is a sentence I was given; it’s an awful sentence, I believe, for anybody, because humans are capable of change.”
Now he’s trying to prove that to a judge. In 2016, he filed his second post-conviction petition, challenging his sentence, attaching articles with headlines like “The Teen Brain Still Under Construction” and “Neuroscience Is Changing the Debate Over What Role Age Should Play in the Courts.” Omar Johnson is waiting to move forward with his arguments regarding the effect his young age had on the development of his brain during the crime 30 years ago…