🔵 By Timothy Brunner. Photo by lauragrafie.
The state of Pennsylvania in the United States of America currently has approximately 1,100 human beings sentenced to die in prison without the possibility of parole for 2nd Degree Felony Murder. Out of those 1,100, over 500 of them were found guilty of committing a felony but, did not actually commit a murder, as determined by their individual trial juries.
Yes. 500 people found guilty of murder when they did not commit a murder and each will die in prison. Keep reading if you want to know why.
Pennsylvania’s felony murder law states that if you are found guilty of committing any felony that results in a murder, you are guilty of felony murder. If you commit a robbery with an accomplice and all you do is drive the car, that act is enough for a guilty verdict if the actual robber kills the clerk. You need not even leave the car to be found guilty of murder. Pennsylvania also leads the pack in unreasonable cruelty through the harshest penalties by placing a mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole on all 2nd Degree murder convictions. There is no discretion for a judge to give a get-away-driver less than life. Add to that the fact that Pennsylvania allows for no parole consideration for anyone serving a life sentence. Ever. Life means you will die in prison. Full-stop.
Currently in the US, the death penalty is rarely enforced. In Pennsylvania, most of the death row inmates have their sentences commuted to life without parole. That leaves a very real situation where life without parole is the penultimate punishment imposed. It also creates a reality where the most heinous multiple murderer in this state will serve the same sentence as someone who never committed a murder, nor even intended to commit one.
Please do not think that I am espousing felonious behavior in any way. I am only trying to shine a light on a horrible imbalance in what is supposed to be a system of justice. Is it just to punish a murderer the same as someone who is not? I am serving life without parole for participating in a kidnapping in which a woman was going to be beaten up. Even though I later tried to stop the beating, my co-defendant killed her. He was found guilty of First Degree (premeditated) murder. He was sentenced to life without parole. I was found guilty of a felony kidnapping charge. Since the kidnapping resulted in a woman’s death, I was sentenced to life without parole for 2nd Degree Felony Murder. The same sentence as the murderer.
I deserved to be placed in prison for what I did. I allowed my anger toward a human being to override any compassion and mercy I felt. By the time I was able to overcome my own selfishness I allowed a situation to progress to a point that was irretrievable, irrevocable. I could have very easily prevented Amy from dying, but I did not. My lack of humanity in that moment haunts me every day. Deserving to go to prison, though, should not equate to dying in prison. It is imbalanced to place my actions on an equal scale as the man who deliberately caused Amy’s death. Yet, Pennsylvania allows for no other outcome.
Bearing in mind that the death penalty is essentially off of the table in this state, I have the absolute worst sentence available. Why does my society term it in the manner that they do? Life in prison is the worst punishment. Life. Life must be despised for it to be considered punishment. I mean, I am actually sentenced to die in prison, which is the punishment as I see it. The punishment is in the loss of life through confinement, so I would call it death in prison, not life in prison.
It takes an especially cynical society to see life as a punishment. It takes an especially cruel state to sentence 500 people to die in prison for what their co-defendants did. And it takes a particularly indifferent electoral body to not care enough to change it. I have to add that there is currently a case before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court as well as a bill before the Pennsylvania House of Representatives which aims to change the sentencing structure for 2nd Degree murder. It is very likely that within the year I will no longer have the life-penalty. What that means I cannot say. Yet I can hope.