The opportunity to pass legislation that provides relief for more than 1,100 Pennsylvanians currently serving unconstitutional sentences effectively ended with the passage of the 2026-2027 state budget by the Pennsylvania General Assembly on Sunday, July 12, 2026. The PA Supreme Court, in Commonwealth v. Derek Lee, ruled mandatory life without parole sentences for second-degree murder, also known as felony murder, unconstitutional and had given the Assembly until July 24 to provide a legislative remedy. While there are still a handful of days before that deadline, no one expects legislators to return to Harrisburg to deal with this pressing issue alone. To say we are extremely disappointed is an understatement.

Following the Lee decision, instead of working to find a viable path involving all stakeholders, including communities impacted by mass incarceration, the Senate Republicans and the Office of the Attorney General played political games that derailed serious attempts at reform. They introduced Senate Bill 1400, a flawed bill that would have introduced a whole new category of mandatory sentences that would increase Pennsylvania’s incarceration rate while doing little to nothing to act as a deterrent. It would disproportionately harm Black communities in the Commonwealth, where over 78% of the people serving an unconstitutional felony murder sentence are Black. SB 1400’s retroactive mandatory sentencing guidelines also failed to consider the fact that people who are paroled and/or released from life sentences in Pennsylvania, at this point more than 300, have the lowest recidivism rate in the Commonwealth.

We are also not going to allow Senate Republicans, the Attorney General, or anyone else to retraumatize our communities by weaponizing victims and invoking their pain under the guise of justifying a harmful bill. The reality is, communities most impacted by mass incarceration are also the communities that are most impacted by intra-community violence. We stand with and between these communities; there are no walls between victims and offenders in our neighborhoods.

This alliance of constitutional obstructionists has been more interested in scoring political points, grandstanding against Philadelphia’s democratically elected District Attorney, and upholding an outdated allegiance to disproportionate and racist mandatory sentencing schemes than fulfilling their obligations to justice.

Despite the obstacles to justice and freedom for our constituencies, we are not backing down. We will be continuing to engage all parties and actors interested in passing reasonable and commonsense legislation to provide parole eligibility for people serving unconstitutional life without parole sentences for felony murder convictions in Pennsylvania. We thank Rep. Krajewski, Chairman Harris, Chairman Briggs, Majority Leader Bradford, and others in the PA House of Representatives for holding the line and refusing to pass SB 1400, an awful, politically motivated bill that would have put us in a worse position than mass resentencings.

We now prepare to head back to the courts, where we expect the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will eventually provide relief for these individuals. We reasonably believe this will result in mass resentencings across the Commonwealth, similar to what we experienced with the juvenile lifers from 2017 onwards, after the US Supreme Court found their mandatory life without parole sentence unconstitutional. As a result of these resentencings, many people who have turned around their lives are going to rejoin their communities and be reunited with their families. The fight now moves to the courts and to secure the funding necessary for public defenders and other actors to carry out these resentencings in a just manner.

10 years ago, organizations such as the Abolitionist Law Center, Youth Sentencing and Reentry Project, Amistad Law Project, Atlantic Center for Capital Representation, and many others were in their infancy. The Public Defender Association of Pennsylvania existed, but had no paid staff, and the Defender Association of Philadelphia did not have dedicated legislative staff. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office was run by a man who refined his career in one of the most draconian DA’s offices in the country, who would soon be removed from office after being criminally indicted – and later convicted – for corruption offenses. Over the last decade, we have built vibrant organizations that are growing their capacities and power and organizing together in the PA Justice Alliance.

Thanks to our growing movement and allies in the PA House of Representatives, we were able to stop SB 1400 and remain committed to fighting back against a harmful bill that does not create a just remedy for the more than 1,100 people currently serving an unconstitutional sentence.

Now we prepare to move this issue back into the courts and ensure justice for our communities. In the coming years, we will keep building and growing our movement so we can win a rational sentencing policy that prioritizes giving people a second look and – instead of endless incarceration – affords people who have done the hard work to transform themselves a path home.

We not only believe that we can win, but we are well on our way. In the words of our ancestors in struggle: we ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around.