DN Editorial: New lease on life sentence

SOMEONE ONCE described prisons as cemeteries for the living.

That's especially true for the 5,430 inmates serving life sentences for first- and second- degree murder in Pennsylvania.

Because of the state's harsh system of mandatory sentencing, for years a murder conviction meant a life prison sentence without parole. If you went into a prison at age 17, you could only leave in a casket.

In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down such sentences in the states that imposed LOWP - life without parole - saying they violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

That ruling only applied to future cases. It did not apply to those already convicted, not even those whose convictions date from when the were juveniles.

Advocates appealed in state courts, arguing that the 2012 ruling should be retroactive when it came to younger offenders. In 2013, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied the appeal.

This week, the U.S. Supreme trumped the ruling in Pennsylvania and said that those who were convicted of murder should be granted new sentencing hearings in Pennsylvania and any other state that had such laws in effect.

The ruling affects 1,500 inmates nationwide, of which 497 are serving time in Pennsylvania prisons. You read that right. About one-third of all the nation's inmates serving life sentences for murder as juveniles are in Pennsylvania prisons.

That's a good barometer of how harsh our laws were. Of the nearly 500 inmates serving LWOP for crimes committed when they were under 18, more than half (274) come from Philadelphia.

Under the law as it used to be, life sentences with parole were mandatory both for those found guilty of first-degree murder, described as intentional and pre-meditated, and second-degree murder, those found guilty of a murder that took place as part of a crime, such as robbery.

When it came to second-degree murder, the law did not differentiate between the actual perpetrator - the one who wielded the weapon - and accomplices. If a victim was set upon by four robbers and was fatally shot by one of them, all four got life sentences. Life sentences were also handed out to accomplices who drove a getaway card or served as a look out. There's been a feeling in legal circles - though not among many prosecutors - that there was something askew with punishing all those involved equally.

Let's be clear. Our belief is: you do the crime, you do the time. We can't shed any tears for perps who commit violent crimes.

But, we can also see the logic behind Monday's 6-3 Supreme Court ruling. It's a recognition that younger teenagers, with their brains still in development, don't possess the emotional or intellectual faculties as adults.

We recognized that long ago by creating juvenile courts, with different sentencing approaches than adult criminal courts.

It also recognizes that a teenager who recklessly and stupidly commits a crime doesn't have a fixed and firm personality yet. We shouldn't stamp them as hardened criminals, incapable of changing. Adolescence, by its very nature, is a time of change - the time when the immature move towards maturity.

The high court ruling certainly doesn't guarantee sentences will be change, it simply calls for new sentencing hearings on the matter - at which the families of victims will be able to testify.

It gives a judge a chance to see if the 66-year-old who appears before him for a crime committed when he was 16 has served enough time in this particular cemetery.