Prison lifers asked Pennsylvania’s top court to change how unconstitutional sentences are undone
September 10, 2026
The Philadelphia Inquirer: “Nearly six months after Pennsylvania’s highest court struck down automatic life sentences for second-degree murder, four prisoners have asked the justices to extend that ruling to everyone still serving one — and to change how the state handles unconstitutional punishments going forward.
The court’s landmark ruling in March ended a practice most other states had abandoned or never adopted, and it required judges to weigh a defendant’s role in the crime in every second-degree murder case moving forward. But it left unanswered a consequential question: Does it also apply to the roughly 1,100 people already serving these sentences?
The four requests, filed Thursday in petitions to the court, are a coordinated effort to force an answer.
But the prisoners want more. They are also asking the justices to adopt a statewide rule that any sentence the court strikes down as cruel punishment would automatically become void for everyone already serving it….
‘The legislature has made it manifest that they are not going to be prioritizing fixing this constitutional injustice,’ said Bret Grote, a lawyer with the Abolitionist Law Center who represented Lee before the state Supreme Court and now represents the four petitioners, along with lawyers from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project and the law firm Phillips Black. ‘So it is now on the courts to do that.'”