Hoodline – Philadelphia: “Pennsylvania’s highest court has thrown a legal lifeline to more than a thousand people serving mandatory life-without-parole for second-degree (felony) murder, ruling Thursday that judges cannot simply rubber-stamp that punishment without looking at each defendant’s actual role in the crime. The justices ordered a new sentencing hearing for Derek Lee, convicted in a 2014 Pittsburgh killing, and put the decision on ice for 120 days so state lawmakers can decide what to do next.

Writing for the lead opinion, Chief Justice Debra Todd said the state’s statute “fails to assess individual culpability” and, at times, treats the lookout like the person who pulls the trigger, according to AP. The majority concluded that trial judges must be able to weigh a defendant’s role and intent before imposing life without parole, instead of being forced to apply it automatically.

The opinion nodded to years of advocacy that branded Pennsylvania’s approach to death by incarceration and highlighted evidence that the punishment falls disproportionately on younger defendants and Black people across the commonwealth.

The ruling grows out of the appeal of Derek Lee, convicted after a 2014 killing in Allegheny County. The high court sent his case back for resentencing. Lee’s legal team had urged the justices to go further and declare that many felony-murder defendants are categorically ineligible for life without parole, according to Abolitionist Law Center, which represents him….

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