Pennsylvania\u2019s high court on Thursday overturned the use of automatic life sentences without parole for people convicted of second-degree murder, saying it violates the state\u2019s constitutional ban on cruel punishment when imposed without a closer look at the defendant\u2019s specific role and culpability.\n<\/p>\n
The court majority ordered resentencing in the case of\u00a0Derek Lee<\/a>, convicted of a\u00a02014 killing<\/a>\u00a0in Pittsburgh, but the decision also has implications for others among the roughly 1,000 other inmates currently serving similar second-degree murder sentences.\n<\/p>\n The court\u2019s order was put on hold for four months to give the General Assembly time to \u201cconsider appropriate remedial measures.\u201d In a footnote, the justices said they were ruling on Lee\u2019s sentence and not addressing \u201cquestions of retroactivity.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Prison reform groups hailed it as a landmark decision, while the Allegheny County district attorney\u2019s office said it will follow the court\u2019s order.\n <\/p>\n Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death, and life without parole has been the only possible sentence.\n<\/p>\n \u201cThe mandatory penalty scheme of life without parole for all offenders convicted of second degree murder fails to assess individual culpability regarding the intent to kill, and mandates the same punishment regardless of that culpability,\u201d wrote Chief Justice Debra Todd in the lead opinion. She characterized it as not distinguishing \u201cbetween the lookout, and the killer who pulls the trigger.\u201d\n<\/p>\n The state high court\u2019s decision comes after years of advocacy to undo mandatory life without parole sentences both in Pennsylvania and nationally. Nazgol Ghandnoosh of the Washington-based Sentencing Project said she counts 11 states and the federal system as having such laws for that kind of crime, sometimes called felony murder. Several states \u2014 California, Colorado and Minnesota \u2014 have moved away from that sentencing framework in recent years, she said.\n<\/p>\n Justice Kevin Dougherty noted in a separate opinion that unlike those convicted of first-degree murder, defendants serving life without parole for second-degree murder have \u201cnever been found by a judge or jury to have harbored the specific intent to kill\u201d and may not have had \u201cany involvement whatsoever with the actual killing. He or she does not even have to expect or foresee that a life may be taken.\u201d\n<\/p>\n Lee\u2019s lawyers had wanted the court to rule that life without parole sentences are unconstitutional for all second-degree murder convictions in Pennsylvania, said Quinn Cozzens, a staff attorney for the Abolitionist Law Center, which helped represent Lee. Instead, the court ruled that trial judges must examine the individual circumstances of a defendant\u2019s case to decide which sentence is most appropriate, including the potential of life without parole.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania\u2019s high court on Thursday overturned the use of automatic life sentences without parole for people convicted of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149409,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[783,28,30,29,8109],"class_list":["post-149408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-murder","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pennsylvania-supreme-court"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}