Who’s serving felony murder sentences in Pennsylvania prisons?
August 06, 2026
Pennsylvania Capital-Star: “A landmark state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year has thrust more than 1,100 incarcerated Pennsylvanians into the political spotlight: men and women convicted of playing various roles in the death of another, whether they were the getaway driver for a robbery gone wrong or the person who fired the gun.
Much of the public discussion has devolved into partisan mudslinging and “soft-on-crime” accusations, but many of the people in state correctional institutions for second-degree murder with life sentences might have their first real hope for freedom.
The March decision found that mandatory life sentences for the charge, also known as felony murder, were unconstitutional, giving lawmakers 120 days to act. But the divided legislature hasn’t yet come to a consensus, and isn’t due to return to Harrisburg until the fall.
The Capital-Star analyzed state Department of Corrections data on the prison population currently incarcerated for second-degree murder to get a better sense of who may be affected by the recent court ruling or any decision the legislature may still make.
Quinn Cozzens, who conducted his own analysis of DOC data, said one of the statistics that jumped out to him was the ‘aging nature of the population.’ Quinn works with the Abolitionist Law Center, a nonprofit law firm that represented Derek Lee, the man at the center of the Supreme Court decision on mandatory sentences.
‘So many of these people are over the age of 30, 35, 40, 45,’ he said. ‘That’s really approaching or well over the age where criminologists and most studies agree people don’t pose much of a public safety risk anymore.'”