WHYY/Logan Center for Urban Investigative Reporting: “Terri Harper is sad but praying for “resolution and relief” after the Pennsylvania General Assembly failed to agree on new sentencing guidelines for her and the more than 1,000 other people incarcerated for second degree murder in the state.

With the state legislature missing its court-directed deadline to adopt new guidelines on Friday, Harper and the others will have to wait until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court – which ruled mandatory life-without-parole sentences for second degree murder unconstitutional in March – decides whether its ruling can be applied retroactively, which would allow her to petition for a new sentence.

“As my family has expressed, this is a roller coaster,” said Harper, who has served more than three decades at State Correctional Institution Muncy. ‘It is that and more, but we have to remember that the victims and victims’ families are on this same ride, but quite possibly, with a very different take.’…

Quinn Cozzens, a staff attorney at the Abolitionist Law Center, said the legislature missed an opportunity to provide relief to people who ‘never should have been sentenced to die in the first place.'”

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