Pennsylvania Supreme Court Ends Mandatory Life Sentences for Second-Degree Convictions

This week, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the state can’t automatically give people life in prison with no chance of parole for second-degree murder (also called felony murder).

This is a big deal. It means many people who were given those sentences can now go back to court and ask for a new sentence.

More than 1,000 cases could be reconsidered, about twice as many as when the United States Supreme Court previously ruled that this kind of sentence was unconstitutional for people who were under 18 at the time of the crime.

Second-degree murder can apply even if you didn’t actually kill anyone.

If you’re involved in a serious crime and someone dies during it, the law can treat everyone involved as responsible for that death.

A simple example, if you’re the getaway driver in a robbery and your partner kills someone inside, you can still be charged with murder, even if you never went in or saw what happened.

“Individuals are being punished for a crime for which no level of [criminal intent] has been established, which is truly contrary to anything I can count as fair in a sentencing scheme,” writes Justice Christine Donohue. 

Convicting someone of a killing they didn’t actually commit goes against the most basic idea of justice. So does sentencing them to spend the rest of their life in prison because of it.

Now that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has issued this ruling, about 1,000 people will have a chance to return to court and be resentenced.

This creates a real opportunity to reduce the prison population. These are people caught up in a legal rule that holds them responsible for a death they didn’t personally carry out.

“This ruling creates an opening, but justice demands more than resentencing. This moment is an opportunity not just to revisit sentences, but to bring people home and begin to repair what the system has broken,” states Sashi James, TNC Dir. of Reimagining Communities 

The only way to begin correcting that harm is to give them a meaningful chance at release, so accountability can be fair, and healing can actually begin.

For more information about this case, we encourage you to visit the Abolitionist Law Center .

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