Pennsylvania law allows no possibility of parole for people convicted of first- or second-degree murder. Every judge is forced to impose a sentence of life without parole: death by incarceration (DBI).

This means no allowance for the circumstances of the individual’s actions in sentencing. Whether or not a person actually took a life, or intended to take a life, does not matter. The individual may not have even been present or known it was happening.  Experience of abuse, poverty, or substance problems does not matter. That most were under 25 at the time is ignored. The potential to change, grow, and transform into a person firmly committed to repairing harm does not matter.

The law assumes people do not change and anyone deemed a danger to society at the time of their sentencing will be so the rest of their lives. Yet our communities are home to people proving the opposite every day: when many juvenile lifers were re-sentenced and released in PA, they came home and led healing work and fights for justice, committed to improving their own lives and the lives of others.

Here are some of the stories of Pennsylvanians sentenced to death by incarceration who are hoping to somehow get a second chance: