Kemaree Davis was 16 when Thomas Stewart was killed, but state law required adult sentencing after the teenager’s murder conviction.
MUSKEGON, Mich. — Kemaree Davis was still 16 when a Michigan judge sentenced him to 20 to 60 years for killing 73-year-old Thomas Stewart, but his age did not put him outside the state’s adult sentencing rules. Second-degree murder is among the serious offenses for which Michigan law requires a convicted juvenile to be sentenced in the same manner as an adult, making Davis’ case both a homicide prosecution and a stark example of how the state handles some of its youngest defendants accused of the most serious crimes.
The legal rule helps explain how a defendant who had not yet reached adulthood could leave Muskegon County Circuit Court facing a minimum prison term longer than his entire life to that point. Michigan’s second-degree murder statute authorizes a sentence of life imprisonment or any term of years. A separate provision governing juvenile sentencing specifically lists second-degree murder among the offenses requiring adult treatment after conviction. Circuit Judge Matthew R. Kacel imposed 20 to 60 years on the murder count at Davis’ Sept. 22 sentencing, following a no-contest plea entered in August.
That framework was the end point of a case that had entered adult court almost from the beginning. Police announced in December 2025 that Davis, then 16, was being charged as an adult with open murder in Stewart’s death. The decision came about a week after officers found Stewart fatally shot inside his Jiroch Street home. Later reporting on Davis’ plea and sentence identified the conviction as second-degree murder. The difference between the original open-murder charge and the ultimate conviction reflects the case’s movement through the court system, while the sentencing law explains why the resulting punishment was imposed through the adult process.
The facts behind the prosecution began before any of those legal distinctions mattered. At about 9:30 a.m. Dec. 1, 2025, Muskegon officers responded to a report of a shooting at Stewart’s residence in the 1400 block of Jiroch Street. They found him inside with a gunshot wound to his upper body. The 73-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene. Police found his wallet next to his body and said his pockets had been turned out. Investigators quickly suspected a robbery and later said they believed Stewart knew the person who came into his house.
That relationship became important because Stewart was known for being approachable. Muskegon Public Safety Director Tim Kozal said Stewart knew many people in his neighborhood, was friendly with them and often helped others. Police believed Davis also knew him. Investigators concluded that only Stewart and the shooter were inside during the fatal encounter and said Davis may have been permitted into the residence because of that familiarity. The case therefore did not fit the pattern of an unidentified stranger forcing his way into a home. Authorities instead described a robbery carried out by a teenager who had a prior neighborhood connection to the man who was killed.
After Davis was arrested, investigators said his own account supported the robbery theory. During a police interview, he allegedly acknowledged going to the residence intending to rob Stewart. He said Stewart found him inside and gave him $20. Davis claimed the firearm then went off, according to testimony later described in news reports. He admitted taking another $20 from Stewart’s wallet after the shooting, investigators said. Police had already documented the condition of the wallet and Stewart’s pockets, giving prosecutors physical circumstances they could compare with Davis’ account.
Another piece of evidence emerged from Davis’ communications. About an hour after the shooting, investigators said, he sent a message to a 17-year-old friend stating that Stewart was dead and describing watching him take his final breaths. A detective testified about the message at a March preliminary examination. Surveillance evidence also placed Davis and the 17-year-old together outside Muskegon High School on the morning of the killing before they moved toward Stewart’s neighborhood, according to reports of the testimony. The 17-year-old was separately charged with a weapons offense and later faced a perjury allegation after giving testimony investigators said conflicted with their evidence.
Those details would have been part of the prosecution’s case had Davis gone to trial. Instead, he entered a no-contest plea in August. The plea allowed the court to enter a conviction without a trial and moved the proceeding directly toward punishment. That procedural shift also changed the central question. Investigators no longer needed to persuade a jury that the evidence proved the charge. The court instead had to determine the sentence for a teenager whose conviction fell within a category that Michigan law treats as serious enough to require adult sentencing.
Second-degree murder carries unusually broad sentencing authority under Michigan law. The statute permits life in prison or any term of years at the court’s discretion. Davis did not receive life. Kacel imposed a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of 60. The judge also sentenced him on two weapons offenses: two years for felony firearm use and two to five years for carrying a concealed weapon. Reports of the sentencing said those terms were ordered to run concurrently. Davis received 288 days of credit for time already served toward the weapons sentences, but that credit was not applied to the murder term.
The law’s treatment of Davis as an adult did not make his youth disappear from the courtroom. Stewart’s son Dalrecus Stewart spoke about seeing the teenager and realizing that the person responsible for his father’s death looked like a boy rather than the image of evil he had imagined. The observation captured an unavoidable tension in the case. Davis’ age was visible and repeatedly noted, but it coexisted with a homicide conviction involving a victim more than five decades older. Michigan’s statute resolves the legal side of that tension by requiring adult sentencing for juveniles convicted of second-degree murder.
Stewart’s family brought a different measure of time into the proceeding. He had lived 73 years and was already fighting cancer when he was killed. His son Terrance Stewart said his father weighed about 100 pounds before his death. Relatives described him as “Uncle Tommy” and emphasized his influence as a father and neighbor. Terrance said Stewart pushed his children to reach their goals. Those statements directed the court away from the legal category of “victim” and toward the person whose death had triggered every stage of the case, from the first police response through the adult sentencing of the teenager who killed him.
Davis was given an opportunity to speak as well. He apologized to Stewart’s relatives, acknowledged that the world had lost a kind and caring man and said he would carry remorse over the killing. His statement at sentencing came against the evidentiary backdrop of the message investigators said he sent shortly after Stewart’s death. The court had before it both the consequences described by Stewart’s family and Davis’ expressions of remorse, but the plea and Michigan’s sentencing statutes set the boundaries within which the judge would act.
The case had also drawn attention to youth violence before sentencing ever became an issue. When police announced Davis’ arrest, Kozal said it was tragic to see young people repeatedly involved in serious violence and argued that the problem required attention from families and the wider community. Those remarks were not part of the evidence establishing Davis’ guilt, but they showed how authorities viewed the case in a broader local context. A 16-year-old accused of killing a 73-year-old neighbor during a robbery represented, for police, both an individual homicide investigation and another instance of a younger person entering the criminal justice system for an offense carrying life-altering consequences.
Michigan’s laws make clear that adult sentencing is not merely a label attached by a judge after the fact for this type of conviction. State law expressly identifies second-degree murder as an offense for which a juvenile must be sentenced in the same manner as an adult. That provision separates Davis’ case from lower-level juvenile offenses in which courts may have different options for supervision or placement. Once the murder case ended in the qualifying conviction reported by local news organizations, the sentencing process was governed by the adult framework.
The result is a sentence that will shape nearly every stage of Davis’ transition from adolescence into adulthood. At the same time, the legal mechanics do not change the underlying loss that Stewart’s relatives described. The case began with a 73-year-old man found dead in his own home, moved through an investigation involving robbery evidence, surveillance, interviews and electronic messages, and ended with a 16-year-old receiving decades in prison. With the trial-court proceedings concluded, Davis is subject to Kacel’s 20-to-60-year murder sentence and the related weapons terms unless a later court proceeding changes the judgment.
Author note: Last updated November 8, 2026.