A Michigan prosecutor has decided not to charge an inmate in the killing of another inmate because he's already serving a life sentence.
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© Michigan Department of CorrectionsAndre Marcel Adams was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 for murder.

Andre Marcel Adams, 39, is suspected of strangling Carlos Love at the Alger Correction Facility on May 31 but won't face charges at this time, Alger County Prosecutor Karen Bahrman announced in a written statement, according to local media reports.

Adams had been serving a life sentence at the maximum security prison in Munising, Mich., for a 2006 murder in Wayne County. He was transferred to Marquette Branch Prison after he was identified as a suspect in Love's slaying.

Bahrman said any sentence Adams might face upon conviction in Love's death wouldn't exceed his current life term.

"While it goes against every personal and professional instinct to do nothing about a chargeable murder, the fact remains that we cannot obtain additional consequences for the prospective defendant," Bahrman said, The Mining Journal reported Tuesday.

Adams was convicted of first-degree murder in 2007 for beating a man to death with a foot-long flashlight in April 2006. His conviction was affirmed by an appellate court in 2009 and no further appeals have been filed, the prosecutor noted. No charges will be filed against him in Love's death "unless and until there is a change in those circumstances," she said, noting there is no statute of limitations on murder.

"Steps have been taken to insure that the Alger County Prosecutor's Office will be notified should prisoner Adams pursue any post-conviction remedies and that evidence needed to prosecute this case will be preserved indefinitely," her statement said.

Love, 39, of Detroit, was found dead at the Alger Correction Facility on May 31 after another inmate reported that he had suffered an apparent seizure and was unconscious. An autopsy determined that Love died of manual strangulation. He had been incarcerated since 1992 for armed robbery and possessing a weapon.

Jeff Dion, deputy executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, said prosecutorial decisions such as Bahrman's "may be unusual but certainly not unheard of."

"Certainly there are decisions, financial decisions, that need to be made about whether it is worthwhile for a prosecutor to expend public resources in a particular case," said Dion, whose sister was slain by a serial killer in 1982.

"The concern is that the rights of a victim may become subservient to prosecutorial discretion and fiscal reality. There's still a question about whether or not the victim's family is entitled to some type of justice."