Pennsylvania Capital-Star/Investigative Reporting Lab at Yale

: “One of the first things to notice about Phillip Ocampo is his laugh.

Big, ringing, deep—it’s the kind of laugh that fills a room, dripping with genuine warmth. “It’s that laugh from within your soul,” his mother, Lorraine Haw — or Mrs. Dee Dee to all who know her — said. “He’s never lost himself, that human side of him, the part that brings joy to everyone around.”

In his circumstances, most others would have lost that human side. Ocampo has been incarcerated in Pennsylvania’s prison system since 1994, when he was 18 years old. Now 50, he is one of 1,131 people serving life sentences for felony murder in the state. For much of his life, he said, he thought there was no hope.

But that may be about to change….

No matter what pathway becomes the way forward, resentencing ‘will not be immediate,’ said Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, and the process certainly won’t result in all people incarcerated for felony murder being released instantly. Still, the review of their cases could be the largest resentencing effort in the history of the commonwealth.”

read the full article