have used Kocis Bartusek\u2019s case<\/a> to support their vision for a system that does not offer a \u201cget out of jail free card\u201d to people who pleaded guilty or were convicted. Kocis Bartusek supports the bill, she said.<\/p>\nBut the state Senate\u2019s solution is a nonstarter for many members of the House.<\/p>\n
House Democrats and civil rights advocates have highlighted people who never meant to take a life: the getaway driver, the accidental arsonist, the desperate person who meant only to rob someone, but instead caused an injury and later a death \u2014 people like Reid and Wyatt Evans.<\/p>\n
The brothers were teenagers when they carjacked Leichter\u2019s father Leonard, who informed them he had a heart condition. They drove him to a payphone so he could call 911.<\/p>\n
Leonard died shortly after of a heart attack, and the Evans brothers were convicted of second-degree murder. In the immediate aftermath, her family was \u201cthrilled\u201d to see the brothers locked up for life.<\/p>\n
But when Leichter began to look into their case decades later, \u201cWhat I realized,\u201d she said, \u201cis we were in so much grief and so much pain over his \u2026 loss that we weren’t even thinking about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She supported the brothers at commutation, which they received in 2021.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just didn’t think that they should be defined by that, by that one terrible act,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Under Baker\u2019s legislation, most people who already have convictions would still have to serve 35 years of their life sentence before parole eligibility, a period too long for lawmakers who argue the bill is overly proscriptive.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom what the Supreme Court put out there, I think that their position on it is much more in line with where the advocates are,\u201d said state Rep. Emily Kinkead (D., Allegheny), a member of the House Judiciary Committee.<\/p>\n
Committee Chairman Tim Briggs (D., Montgomery) introduced a bill before the Lee decision that would establish parole eligibility after 20 years for adults and 15 years for minors. The bill was scheduled for a vote in April, but Briggs tabled it to give lawmakers more time to negotiate.<\/p>\n
If lawmakers miss the deadline, they can still pass a solution at any time.<\/p>\n
But once the deadline passes, the state Supreme Court decision will take effect, and petitions from lifers serving unconstitutional sentences will hit courts across the state.<\/p>\n
The courts are prepared, said Shaakirrah Sanders, a dean and law professor at Penn State University whose scholarship covers sentencing and criminal procedure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am very confident that Pennsylvania courts can handle this issue,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n
They managed hundreds of resentencing cases in the aftermath of the United States Supreme Court ruling that mandatory life sentences were unconstitutional for defendants convicted as children. Courts can look at the lesser charges in the case, Sanders said, as well as other laws and sentencing guidelines as a reference.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think smart attorneys will be able to devise arguments at individual sentencing that judges find persuasive or not persuasive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The juvenile cases were easier, said Keisha Hudson, chief public defender for Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was still a lot of work, but easier to gather because you were dealing with people who were children at the time, and we have adolescent brain science on our side,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The second-degree lifers will require more intensive review. The defendant\u2019s culpability in many of the underlying cases will be more complicated than the getaway driver scenario, requiring more careful research into cases that are, in some instances, decades old.<\/p>\n
Public defense offices, already struggling to manage large caseloads with meager resources, are bracing for years of litigation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re going to have to find records that may no longer exist, witnesses who may no longer be here,\u201d Hudson said.<\/p>\n
Her office handled 300 juvenile resentencings; there could be more than 500 second-degree petitions for resentencing in Philadelphia alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cFive-hundred cases is going to take over a decade,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Hudson strongly supports a process that runs through the parole board rather than the courts. \u201cIt would be fairer, it would be more just, it would be more efficient,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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District attorneys are similarly eager for a legislative solution.<\/p>\n
Chris de Barrena-Sarobe, Chester County\u2019s district attorney, said his office has identified about two dozen cases it will need to work through should the state Supreme Court\u2019s ruling become retroactive. That work will tax both his office and the victims who thought they could move on from the trial process and begin to \u201crecover from the trauma,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But de Barrena-Sarobe took issue with the idea that there isn\u2019t compromise to be had among prosecutors and defenders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is not 100% agreement,\u201d he said, but that\u2019s typical. Different groups have a job to advocate for their position, he said, \u201cto make sure that the judge has all the information to make the best decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve both done that,\u201d he said. \u201cThe judge here is the legislature, and they just don\u2019t seem to want to make a decision. They need to step up and do their job. They understand each of our positions. Now, they have to find a path forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whatever solution the legislature comes up with, both Kocis Bartusek and Leichter, the women whose relatives were murdered, want the details and the intent in each case to matter.<\/p>\n
Kocis Bartusek said: \u201cI agree that if some people didn’t deserve a life sentence, that case specifically should be looked at, but culpability and intent also, because in my case, there was the intent to have my brother out of the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n
And Leichter said there are too many people who will die in prison “for something that they had no intent for, something never intended to happen.”<\/p>\n
\u201cI know people need to be punished, but I also think these are human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When one of the men responsible for killing her brother agreed to plead to second-degree murder, the law\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-249166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249166","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=249166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}