In today’s podcast episode of Stateside, for nearly four decades, Kent County resident Joe Cedillo has been in prison, serving a life sentence for a crime he committed when he was 18 years old.
Released on Tuesday December 10, Cedillo’s case marks a significant milestone as the first in Kent County to regain his freedom following a state supreme court ruling that declared unconstitutional automatic life sentences without parole for people 18 years old and younger.
On the day Cedillo was released, his family and friends celebrated his homecoming as he walked out from the Muskegon Correctional Facility for one last time.
“Basically, every year of my life,” Milinda Ysasi, Cedillo’s niece, said. “I probably went to prison to visit him every month, if not maybe 10 months out of the year.”
Ysasi has been waiting for her uncle's release since 1986 when Cedillo was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for aiding and abetting in a first degree murder.
For over 38 years Ysasi has spent countless hours traveling from prison to prison in her attempt to keep her family connected.
“So he's been to, he was in Muskegon, he was in Ionia. He was in there was a prison in Detroit. He was in Kinross, which is over the bridge. He was in Adrian,” stated Ysasi. “I don't know if he was ever in Coldwater, but, I mean, I don't know all the prisons, but he's been at a lot of the prisons over 40 years.”
In 2012, both the U.S and the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences for young people 17 years old and younger constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment. And in 2022, the state extended the constitutional protection from 17-and-younger to include 18 year-olds.
After two years of legal battles, a state court of appeals agreed that it would retroactively apply the state supreme court ruling. That means more than two hundred incarcerated people - like Cedillo - get a second chance at freedom.
For Cedillo the day of his release still felt unreal.
“I feel like I'm walking on a cloud,” he said. “One of the first things that I did was give thanks and praise to the Heavenly Father for bringing this day into fruition.”
The most important part of his release, he said, was the chance to be reunited with his family, especially his mother who he had not seen in ten years.
Looking back on the day he was sentenced, Cedillo said he thought that he would never experience freedom again.
"There was a part of me that bought into what they were telling me, that I would die in prison, and so I became part of that prison culture," he added. "Which is dark, which is nefarious, which is very agitating to others if they weren't to my benefit or they were against me."
In the later part of his prison sentence, Cedillo said he began to experience a personal transformation and he started to get more involved in programming to try and help other incarcerated people like himself.
“So I was teaching parole workshops that taught others how to stay out of trouble," Cedillo said. "I was talking to the people who a lot of people count out already because of their past histories, or maybe gang affiliations or they've had some serious violence in their past."
During the time Cedillo has been incarcerated he has been transferred to nearly a dozen prisons across the state, but it wasn't until he was back at the Muskegon Correctional Facility that he was given the opportunity to enroll in a college program.
The initiative known as the Hope-Western Prison Education program provides incarcerated men at Muskegon Correctional Facility the opportunity to earn a bachelor's degree from Hope College.
Cedillo is planning to continue his coursework at Hope but this time outside of prison.
Hear the full conversation on the Stateside podcast.
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GUESTS ON TODAY’S SHOW:
- Michelle Jokisch Polo, Stateside producer
- Joe Cedillo, Kent County resident recently released from prison
