READING, Pa. – The District Attorney says time is running out for state lawmakers to make a major decision that deals with both life and death.<\/p>\n
“This is an important piece of legislation that needs to be enacted,” says District Attorney John Adams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The state supreme court’s 120 stay on a sentencing determination for second-degree murder cases ends Friday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senate Bill 1400, which would replace the mandatory life-without-parole sentence for second-degree murder with a 35-year mandatory minimum, preserves a life sentence in the most aggravated cases and sets a parole eligibility framework for those already sentenced.<\/p>\n
That bill currently sits in the House, but what happens if it doesn’t pass by Friday?<\/p>\n
“We’re then left with no sentencing scheme for second-degree murder,” Adams said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The DA says second-degree murder is a murder committed while committing a felony, such as rape, robbery, or burglary. He says if lawmakers don’t act, it could impact 2 dozen cases in Berks County.<\/p>\n
“When and if the legislature would not act as to where that would put these twenty-four defendants is really unknown,” Adams said.<\/p>\n
“The courts need some guidance, and the guidance needs to be provided by the legislature,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The DA shared that the proposed legislation looks to measure culpability on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n
“The House, by not acting on the Senate bill that was passed, has put us in quite frankly a very difficult position, and we don’t want that difficult position to continue,\u201d says Adams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – The District Attorney says time is running out for state lawmakers to make a major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,2892,68119,414,128,130,129,26528,98949,68123,4516],"class_list":["post-249779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-criminal-justice","tag-life-without-parole","tag-parole-eligibility","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-second-degree-murder","tag-senate-bill-1400","tag-sentencing-reform","tag-state-legislature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249779","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=249779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}