A New Path: Chicago-Kent Student Gets Full-Ride Scholarship After Successfully Appealing Life Sentence
The second time his attorney missed filing for his appeal, Marshan Allen asked his family for one thing.
“Just get me a typewriter,” Allen said.
He was sent to prison on a mandatory life sentence at the age of 15 for his role in a double murder, and like most lifers, Allen had acquired an interest in the law. He took a paralegal correspondence course, passed with flying colors, and started working in the prison library. And managing his own appeals.
Which he eventually won. After Illinois changed its laws to get rid of mandatory life sentences for juveniles who never killed anyone–Allen never held a weapon, and ran when a shotgun blast dramatically altered his life, three decades ago–Allen successfully argued himself out of prison.
After 24 years, 8 months, and 2 days of incarceration, and six years on the outside, Allen’s legal journey continues this year, as he attends Chicago-Kent College of Law on a full-ride scholarship. The Honorable Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Scholarship is awarded to a single student every three years; this year, it’s Allen.
“Every time I’m around Marshan I feel like a mom. He has taken this horrible thing and really parlayed it into a force of good,” says Illinois Appellate Court Justice Eileen O’Neill Burke, a 1990 Chicago-Kent grad who is current president of the Illinois Judges Association.
Burke recruited Allen to travel to Chicago-area high schools, much like those in the South Side neighborhood he grew up in. There he stood, soft-spoken and measured, before hundreds of teenagers, refusing to spit out “stay straight, kids” platitudes.
“Every single time he started speaking, you could hear a pin drop. For high school students, that’s not a small accomplishment,” Burke says. Burke watched one kid approach Allen after his speech, and told Allen he’d made the kid think.
“He’s maybe the most thoughtful incoming first-year law student I’ve ever met,” says Andrew Marovitz, who sat on the Marovitz selection committee and whose uncle, Judge Abraham Lincoln Marovitz ’25, founded the namesake scholarship. “It’s easy to be successful and good to others when life’s fortunes go your way. He’s such an optimistic person, having been forged in such a challenging situation.”
“We asked, ‘Why do you want to do this?’” Burke says of the work that began with Allen’s high school speeches. “He said, ‘If I can help one person avoid what I did, it’ll make up for the two people that died.’”
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