Hoodline – Pittsburgh: “A judge sentenced 27-year-old Heirkiess Moore-Smith to 35 years to life in state prison for driving two masked gunmen to a Larimer home where they shot and killed Nathaniel Walker, a self-taught barber and father of six, in April 2024. Moore-Smith, of West Mifflin, declined to speak before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward Borkowski handed down the sentence, which also tacked on five to 10 years for conspiracy to run consecutively to the murder count.

A jury convicted Moore-Smith in June 2026 of second-degree murder, conspiracy, robbery and endangering the welfare of children, following about three-and-a-half hours of deliberation, according to TribLIVE….

Until March, Pennsylvania’s second-degree murder statute carried a mandatory sentence of life without parole, with no consideration of an individual defendant’s role. That changed when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Lee that imposing life without parole without an individual determination of culpability is unconstitutional, a decision that stemmed from a 2014 Pittsburgh home invasion in which a co-defendant fired the fatal shot, according to Justia Law. At the time, 1,063 state prisoners were serving sentences for second-degree murder.

The court stayed its decision for 120 days to give lawmakers time to act, but the state legislature failed to pass a new felony-murder sentencing scheme by the July deadline. The Pennsylvania Senate passed a bill calling for a mandatory minimum of 35 years for second-degree murder, while the state House suggested no minimum prison term at all — leaving the two chambers deadlocked, and neither the Senate bill nor the House proposal became law, according to Spotlight PA. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling took effect after the July 24 deadline, leaving felony-murder resentencing to individual county judges, per the Abolitionist Law Center. TribLIVE reported that Pennsylvania lawmakers missed the deadline for replacing the mandatory life-without-parole sentencing scheme after the Supreme Court’s March ruling.