Facing possible death sentence, killer accepts life in prison deal

In the end, a 22-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder in a July 2014 Feltonville porch shooting opted to take a deal of life in prison instead of risking the death penalty.

Siddiq Shelton agreed to the deal after first rejecting it Wednesday.

On Thursday, after more discussions with his lawyers, Shelton told Common Pleas Judge Glenn Bronson he wanted to end his penalty-phase hearing, in which a jury would have decided his fate: life in prison or death.

The jury of seven women and five men convicted Shelton Wednesday of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Elisha Bull, 20, who was one of seven people hanging out on a porch on North Front Street near Roosevelt Boulevard at about 12:19 a.m. July 28, 2014.

Four other people were injured when Shelton and another gunman - who remains unknown - walked up and unleashed a barrage of bullets onto the porch, then fled. One woman, who lived at the house, dove for cover with her 8-month-old baby; they escaped injury.

Bull's mother, Christine Bull, 51, said Thursday of the man who killed her son: "I was glad he didn't get the death penalty. It wasn't one of the things I wanted. Two wrongs don't make a right."

Shelton's attorneys, Gary Server and David Rudenstein, urged him to take the deal because they wanted to spare him possible execution and a possible life on death row.

If sentenced to death, he would have spent "23 hours in a cage," in a prison cell by himself, Rudenstein said afterward.

With a sentence of life in prison, Shelton would be housed in the general prison population and would have more access to library and phone privileges, Rudenstein said.

Server had asked Marc Bookman, director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, which counsels defense lawyers in death-penalty cases, to come to the courthouse Thursday to speak to Shelton. In the private discussions, Bookman, a death-penalty expert and former Philadelphia public defender, relayed to Shelton what life is like on death row, Server said.

Under the deal, prosecutors withdrew the death penalty in exchange for Shelton agreeing to waive certain appellate rights. He agreed to forgo his rights to appeal his convictions to the state Superior or Supreme Courts and waived his rights to file federal claims.

He can, however, file a petition before the judge under the Post Conviction Relief Act if he claims he had ineffective counsel or if there is newly discovered evidence in his case.

The judge told Shelton the trial evidence was strong against him and his actions that night - taking a handgun and indiscriminately spraying it onto a porch with young men, women, a baby and a baby stroller on it - showed a "complete lack of regard for human life."

"It is shocking, outrageous behavior," Bronson said.

After Bronson sentenced Shelton to life in prison for Bull's murder, he also sentenced him to a concurrent 72 to 144 years in prison on conspiracy and weapon offenses, and on six counts of attempted murder - for the other six people on the porch.

Shelton declined comment before he was sentenced.

Even if the jury were to have sentenced him to death, it would not have been certain that he would have been executed.

In February 2015, Gov. Wolf announced he would delay all executions until a legislative task force completes its report on the future of the Pennsylvania death penalty.

Even before Wolf's action, executions were rare.

Assistant District Attorney Deborah Watson-Stokes, who handled the trial, contended Bull was not the gunmen's intended target. She alleged Shelton was trying to kill another young man, Michel Benjamin, whom Shelton knew from their Olney neighborhood and with whom he had a prior beef.

Bull, of Oxford Circle, died after being shot multiple times, including in his head and chest. Benjamin was shot and wounded as were three females, ages 16, 17 and 28.

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