The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week rejected a challenge to state law that says if someone dies during the commission of a felony, everyone involved in the felony, even people who did not kill, attempt, or intend to kill, must be sentenced to life without parole.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court said this week that a challenge to the constitutionality of sentencing people to a mandatory life-without-parole prison term for second-degree murder must be handled through individual appellate proceedings, not Commonwealth Court. Six people serving life without parole for what is known as felony murder — the
Legal advocates are appealing the life without parole sentencing against a man convicted of secondary-murder for his participation in a robbery that led to another man's death. The accused's lawyers say the sentence represents a "cruel and unusual" punishment in violation of the federal constitution.
When Derek Lee illegally entered a home in Elliott in 2014, he had no intention of killing anyone. He and his co-defendant, Paul Durham, had gone to the house to rob its occupants. But while Lee was upstairs, Durham shot and killed a man in the basement. Both men were
In a sharply worded complaint to UN special rapporteurs submitted on Thursday, advocacy groups call for an end to "death by incarceration" sentencing in the US.