Family members, advocates demand action after second-degree murder ruling
April 29, 2026
Philly Metro: “Lorraine ‘Mrs. Dee Dee’ Haw thinks it’s time her son and others like him — those sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for second-degree murder — be allowed to come home.
Phillip Ocampo has spent 32 years in prison; he went in as an 18-year-old and recently turned 50.
‘People got a tendency of saying, “Well, they did the crime. Let them do the time,”’ Haw told a crowd Wednesday afternoon outside City Hall. ‘I’m with you on that. But how much time is enough time?’
Haw spoke at a rally demanding Harrisburg lawmakers act to reform the second-degree murder statute, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled March 26 that the state’s longstanding mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole violates the commonwealth constitution’s prohibition on ‘cruel punishments.’…
‘We are not going to be silent while lawmakers play political games, ping-pong our loved ones back and forth between two parties and two chambers,’ said Robert Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center, which helped to litigate the Supreme Court case.”