Spotlight PA: “In the face of legislative inaction, four people serving mandatory life for second-degree murder want the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to step in and open a pathway for sentences like theirs to be reconsidered.

Their Thursday morning filings ask the court to intervene quickly through a rare legal process known as a King’s Bench petition. This type of filing allows the state Supreme Court to take up a legal matter directly, bypassing lower courts and the typical appeals process, if it deems the issue urgent.

Since 2021, the court has received 288 such petitions, but agreed to hear only a few. These include a 2022 petition regarding undated mail ballots and a 2023 petition seeking a review of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s handling of post-conviction cases….

Thursday’s petitions do not ask the court to address what should happen to people who will be sentenced now and in the future. They focus instead on what should happen to the more than 1,100 people who are currently in state prisons serving mandatory life sentences for the same crime.

The petitioners — John Marshall Payne III, Lori Ann Lassiter, Marsha Scaggs, and Cecil Holmes — are four such people.

All four are represented by the Abolitionist Law Center and Phillips Black, nonprofit firms that focus on incarcerated clients. Payne and Lassiter are also represented by the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, a pro bono firm that seeks to overturn wrongful convictions. Payne is additionally represented by law firm Troutman Pepper Locke.”

read the full article