El-Sayed, running in the Democratic primary for Michigan’s open Senate seat, has attempted to distance himself from his past anti-police positions
Abdul El-Sayed, a candidate in the 2026 Michigan Democratic primary for the state’s open Senate seat, campaigned in 2018 to commute all sentences for juveniles sentenced to life in prison in the state—a policy that would grant early release for a school shooter, a child rapist and murderer, and other heinous killers.
El-Sayed promised the reforms during his unsuccessful bid for Michigan governor, saying he would “commute all sentences for juveniles sentenced to life in prison and raise the age of adult prosecution” from 17 to 18, as well as “explore commutation options” for any juvenile sentenced to more than 25 years and reduce the state’s “maximum sentence to 25 years” for minors, according to an archived copy of his campaign website.
The proposal could have forced the early release of some of the Great Lakes State’s most horrific and notorious killers, like school shooter Ethan Crumbley. Then a sophomore at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Mich., Crumbley killed four students and injured seven others in an extensively planned mass shooting in 2021. He shot many of the victims execution-style, firing at them multiple times after they were on the ground. In the days leading up to the attack, Crumbley filmed himself torturing baby birds, mused in his journal that he wanted to “hear the screams of the children as I shoot them,” and searched online for “What is worst prison sentence you can get in Michigan.”
Oakland County Circuit Court judge Kwamé Rowe sentenced Crumbley to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Rowe said Crumbley showed an “obsession with violence” that made rehabilitation unlikely, and said the killer’s motivation was to be known “as the biggest school shooter in Michigan history.” Rowe would not have been able to sentence Crumbley to more than 25 years in prison if El-Sayed had been able to institute his reforms.
Another murderer, Jason Benjamin Symonds, raped 5-year-old Nicole VanNoty, beat her to death with a metal rod, and buried her in a garbage bag in 1994. He was sentenced to life in prison the following year and was denied parole two years ago. He would have been released no later than 2019 had El-Sayed’s plan been reality.
Less than two months before his 18th birthday in 1999, Marc Osborne raped and murdered his classmate Jessica Ledford, earning a life sentence. He will first be eligible for parole in 2039, but under El-Sayed’s proposed sentencing guidelines, he would already have been back on the streets last year.
El-Sayed’s 2018 pledge to commute sentences and institute a 25-year maximum for juveniles is the latest example of his controversial positions on criminal justice. CNN reported last month that El-Sayed deleted numerous social media posts calling to defund the police, and the Washington Free Beacon reported that he deleted other posts calling Border Patrol “white supremacists” and blaming the United States for illegal immigration.
The Free Beacon also reported that El-Sayed sat on the boards of two radical anti-police activist groups, one that slammed cops as “fascist pigs,” and another that organized a 2020 protest in Detroit that turned deadly.
El-Sayed has largely remained silent on the issues of criminal justice and prison reform, attempting to distance himself from his past positions. His 2018 policy proposals, though, shed light on just how extreme his views are.
The state of Michigan used to require that juveniles convicted of homicide face mandatory life in prison without parole. That changed when the Supreme Court ruled judges must consider such sentences on a case-by-case basis in a 2012 decision upheld in 2021. Earlier this year, the Michigan supreme court raised the minimum age for mandatory life sentences without parole to 21. Michigan has since allowed murderers sentenced under the former mandatory policy as juveniles to seek resentencing hearings, leading to the release of several convicted criminals. The policy El-Sayed championed in 2018 would have meant killers like Bobby Gene Griffin, resentenced in 2017, walked free years earlier.
Griffin, convicted in 1967 for breaking into the home of 84-year-old Minnie Peaples, sexually assaulting the elderly woman, beating her, stabbing her, and leaving her to bleed to death. Griffin was 17 at the time of his conviction and had his sentence reduced from life to 40 to 60 years with credit for 50. Had El-Sayed’s preferred policies been in place in 1967, Griffin would have been released in 1992 at the very latest.
Another murderer, Timothy Riddle, was convicted of bludgeoning 80-year-old Renate Heine to death after breaking into her home in 1988. Riddle, who was 15 at the time, was sentenced to life in prison. He had his life sentence reduced after the Supreme Court ruling, being released in 2017. In 2021, Riddle was arrested again after leading cops—who were seeking to question him about his role in a burglary—on a high-speed car chase and barricading himself inside a gas station for seven hours with a shotgun.
If El-Sayed’s sentencing rules had been in effect, though, Riddle would have been released no later than 2013.
El-Sayed did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment.
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