Pennsylvania Capital-Star: “The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has agreed to address the question of whether their March decision finding mandatory life sentences for second-degree murder unconstitutional should apply in the cases of those already sentenced.

On Tuesday, the court granted an appeal petition filed on behalf of Jerome Coffey by the Abolitionist Law Center in April. Coffey was convicted in 1994, and has spent more than 30 years incarcerated. The Abolitionist Law Center claims no physical evidence linked him to the crime, that a key prosecution witness recanted a statement, and that his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance….

While Coffey’s appeal petition requested the court review his sentence and the circumstances of his conviction, the court only agreed to take up the question of whether old second-degree murder sentences before the mandatory life sentence was struck down can stand.

In September, attorneys asked the high court to exercise its rarely used ‘King’s Bench power’ which allows the justices to bypass lower courts and take up questions of immediate public importance.

According to Quinn Cozzens, an attorney with the Abolitionist Law Center, the decision to take up Coffey’s appeal appears to signal the court is taking another avenue to decide the same question, though it may end up taking slightly longer.

‘Ordinarily, the briefing and argument would be done in the next six months or so,’ Cozzens said, though he emphasized timelines in court cases can vary widely. ‘Then it’s however long the court wants to take after that” to issue a decision.”

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Photo from the Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania