ALC has pursued various legal strategies and cases to  attempt to end DBI for the more than 1100 people serving that sentence for felony murder (second-degree) convictions in Pennsylvania. (Felony murder means the defendants did not take a life or did not intend to take a life).

We’ve had previous cases including Scott v. Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole that have softened the target. Currently we’re litigating Commonwealth v. Derek Lee, a direct criminal appeal raising a state constitutional challenge to DBI for felony murder convictions. 

Though centered on Pennsylvania, this strategy has national importance. Criminal defense and civil rights litigators will increasingly turn to state constitutional litigation to advance our interests and push back against state violence given the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court. 

ALC is organizing to build community power among impacted Pennsylvanians to be a potent force in lobbying for legislation to allow parole eligibility for all people currently serving DBI sentences. We are working in coalition with various groups in our movement ecosystem to bring this strategy to fruition.

ALC is building and shaping the narrative around DBI on many fronts, including generating ongoing press coverage about the practice and our efforts to end it; participating in panels, teach-ins, and other presentations and public education efforts; and amplifying these narratives across our social media and other content.

Additionally, ALC has researched the issue and produced two major reports about DBI:  “From Victim to Victor,” a seminal report on women serving DBI in Pennsylvania, which we released with partners in 2023; and A Way Out, a detailed analysis of the entire population of people serving DBI across the state, released in 2018.

ALC is part of a coalition that has been working to situate DBI as a human rights violation. Along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Amistad Law Project, and other organizations around the U.S., we have partnered with the Berkeley International Human Rights Clinic to develop an advocacy campaign to this end.

In September 2022, our coalition submitted a 31-page complaint to the United Nations asserting that the United States is committing torture and violating the prohibition against racial discrimination by condemning people to DBI. Our coalition asked the UN to appoint a special rapporteur to investigate, and ultimately recommend that the UN label DBI a human rights violation and call for the abolition of all death by incarceration sentences.

In October 2023, a delegation led by ALC’s executive director Robert Saleem Holbrook and other people directly impacted by extreme sentencing in the U.S., traveled to the United Nations in Geneva to call on that body to pressure the United States to end death by incarceration. (Saleem served 27 years of a DBI sentence for an offense he was involved in on his 16th birthday, before his eventual release in 2018.) 

Too often in spaces of political power, people most impacted by the issue are left out. The multi-state coalition led by Saleem and other formerly incarcerated people and advocates testified in front of the United Nations International Human Rights Committee, demanding that the U.S. abolish extreme sentencing. Their powerful testimony resulted in the UN’s Human Rights Committee calling on the U.S. to impose a moratorium on DBI sentences.