Challenging Felony Murder Sentencing in Pennsylvania

A 2020 lawsuit, filed on behalf of six people serving life without parole sentences for felony murder, was heard by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court April 2022. Lawyers from advocacy organizations Abolitionist Law Center, Constitutional Rights and the Amistad Law Project initially filed the suit in July of 2020 in Scott v. PA Board of Probation and Parole. The suit was initially dismissed by the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania in May 2021 on jurisdictional grounds, leading to an appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled that it did note probable jurisdiction of the case in August 2021.

The suit argues that "mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for those who did not kill or intend to kill do not serve any legitimate governmental interest and are illegally cruel under the Pennsylvania constitution" and seeks to have to have Pennsylvania’s mandatory felony murder sentencing scheme struck down. This would result in an opportunity for six persons in the case - Marie Scott, Normita Jackson, Marsha Scaggs, Reid Evans, Wyatt Evans, and Tyreem Rivers - who have collectively served over 200 years in prison, to be reviewed for parole and released to their families and communities. 

All six individuals were convicted in their late teens or early 20s, and though none directly caused or intended the death of the victim, they have spent between 24 and 48 years in prison as a result of being sentenced to life without parole resulting from a felony murder conviction. Those six individuals are among more than 1,100 persons serving the same life without parole sentence for felony murder in Pennsylvania.

It bears repeating; that's more than 1,100 persons consigned to death by incarceration in Pennsylvania, though none of them directly caused or intended death of the victim.

Marie Scott is in her late 60s and serving a life without parole sentence at State Correctional Institution at Muncy in Pennsylvania. She has been incarcerated since 1973, spending two-thirds of her life in prison. When she was 19, high on pills, and serving as the lookout in the robbery of a gas station, Scott’s co-defendant killed the station attendant. Because the co-defendant was just 16 years old at the time of the crime, he won parole after the U.S. Supreme Court decided Miller v. Alabama in 2012.

She remains; "You see those old and sick not receiving the proper medical treatment throughout decades of imprisonment. And then they die, leaving you in fear of the same suffering. Having outside support can sometimes mean the difference between life and death."

You can read the stories of four of the six plaintiffs - Scott, Marsha Scaggs, Normita Jackson and Tyreem Rivers - in profiles at the Center for Constitutional Rights.