The Road to Abolition

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In late March, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court issued a momentous ruling overturning mandatory life sentences for people convicted of felony murder, also known as second-degree murder. Activists and advocates hailed the ruling as a victory that was years in the making and has the potential to impact the lives of more than a thousand people in the state, a majority of whom are Black.

Those sentenced to life without parole (LWOP) are, by definition, never allowed to go before a parole board and can only ever win freedom if the governor of their state grants them clemency. The ACLU calls LWOP sentences “permanent removal from society with no chance of reentry, no hope of freedom,” and therefore, “short of execution, the harshest imaginable punishment.” It’s no wonder activists involved in ending LWOP refer to it as “death by incarceration.”

Five states — Pennsylvania, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, and North Carolina — require mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for felony murder convictions. According to the Center for Constitutional Rights, Pennsylvania has the nation’s highest per capita rate of people serving death by incarceration sentences. Such a conviction — in spite of its name — doesn’t mean the person accused is directly responsible for a death. One can also be convicted of a felony murder if one’s actions indirectly and unintentionally resulted in someone’s death.

That was the case for a Black man named Derek Lee, who in 2014 was involved in a robbery where his accomplice’s actions resulted in a death. Because of Pennsylvania’s mandatory sentencing law, Lee was condemned to spend the rest of his life in prison. The Abolitionist Law Center filed an appeal on his behalf, resulting in the historic Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that mandatory LWOP for second-degree murder was in violation of the state constitution’s prohibition on cruel punishment.

“All of us who do this work know people who have been in for 20, 30, 40, 50 years even,” said Kris Henderson, co-founder and co-executive director of Amistad Law Project and founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration (CADBI). “Many people who could come home today, would be an asset to their communities … but there’s just really no mechanism for them to come home right now.”

These Women Face Death by Incarceration, But They’re Organizing for Their Lives

Following the court ruling, Pennsylvania’s lawmakers have 120 days to create a mechanism ensuring the state’s compliance so that people like Lee have recourse. Henderson hopes that “the legislature will pass a bill that will allow all people who are serving death by incarceration for felony murder to have a chance to come home, that they will all be parole eligible after a certain number........

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