More than three decades after a middle-school teacher was gunned down in a Detroit school parking lot, the woman serving life in the case is asking the state for one thing she has never had since: a second chance.
Bernice Starks, now 79, appeared this week before state parole officials and told them she has been rehabilitated and should be freed. Her plea brought the long-closed file back into public view, in a case prosecutors say started as a love triangle and ended in a fatal ambush outside a city school.
The victim, 53-year-old teacher Betty Jean Roberson, was shot on June 9, 1992, in the parking lot of Webber Middle School, now the Sampson-Webber Leadership Academy. Prosecutors say Anthony Harris pulled the trigger, while Mary Jean Williams arranged the hit and put down a $350 deposit toward a $1,000 fee. Those details were laid out at the commutation hearing, as reported by The Detroit News.
On Thursday, the Michigan Parole Board held a public clemency hearing via Microsoft Teams to consider commuting Starks' sentence, according to a release from the Michigan Department of Corrections. The release notes that Starks is serving two life terms for first-degree murder and conspiracy, and that the panel will review testimony from the hearing along with the case file before deciding whether to recommend any mercy to the governor.
Supporters lined up on Starks' side. Fifteen people testified in her favor at the virtual hearing, a 2016 letter from a former student was read into the record, and Darryl Woods pledged to assist Starks if she is released. Starks told the board she is not claiming innocence, but argued she has been both punished and rehabilitated, adding that at the time of the plot she believed Harris was only going to scare Roberson, according to The Detroit News.
How the Clemency Process Works
Under Michigan law, the Parole Board's word is not final. The full board will review the hearing transcript and then decide whether to send a recommendation to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who alone has the authority to commute a sentence or issue a pardon. The department's announcement spells out the rules for public hearings and how the panel weighs the record, but any ultimate decision rests with the governor, per the state release.
No date has been set for a final call on Starks' fate. For now, the case that has shadowed the West Side school community for more than thirty years moves from the public hearing room into the behind-the-scenes review by the full board, and then on to the governor's office for a final decision.
