Pennsylvania Capital-Star: “A coalition of attorneys urged the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday to apply its ruling striking down mandatory life sentences for second-degree murder retroactively. The group shared four examples of aging prisoners it says require immediate attention.

They did so by filing what’s known as a King’s Bench petition, allowing the court to take the rare step of skipping a longer trial process.

‘We thought it was important to show that people have been serving for such a long time that there is a danger that if the court does not act soon, some people will not live to see the benefit of this ruling,’ said Quinn Cozzens, with the Abolition Law Center. ‘We do think it is an urgent situation that the court will hopefully act on quickly.’

Roughly 1,200 people are serving life sentences in Pennsylvania prisons for second-degree murder, also known as felony murder. The charge is applied when a victim dies during the commission of another felony, whether or not the perpetrator intended or planned to kill.

The majority of those serving sentences are Black men over the age of 50 who have spent decades behind bars.”

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Photo: Pennsylvania Capital-Star file photo