Lower Bucks Times: “Pennsylvania lawmakers left Harrisburg for summer break without settling one of the biggest criminal justice questions in decades: what happens to the more than 1,100 people serving mandatory life without parole for second-degree murder, now that the state Supreme Court has ruled those automatic sentences unconstitutional. The court’s deadline arrives July 24. If the legislature does nothing by then, sentencing discretion passes to individual county judges with no statewide framework at all….

If the deadline passes without a law, the Supreme Court’s decision takes effect on its own terms, and judges gain discretion in these cases without legislative guidance. The Abolitionist Law Center says it is prepared to petition for retroactive application, which would open the door to resentencing hearings for people already serving the sentence, case by case, in the counties where they were convicted. That is not an abstraction for this corner of the state: felony-murder cases from Bucks County courts would go through the same process as everywhere else, one judge and one petition at a time.”

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