Well, of course.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat of course, opposes capital punishment, as do I, but the Governor of the Keystone State does not have arbitrary power to issue pardons or sentence commutations on his own. The most Mr Shapiro could do, as his predecessor Tom Wolf did before him, was to decline to sign any death warrants. But now, the Governor is happy that the state Supreme Court held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for second-degree murder violate the state constitution.
We have previously noted this case.
Under Title 18§2502(b), murder of the second degree is a criminal homicide which is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or accomplice in the perpetration of a felony. That’s pretty simple: the murderer is already committing a crime, so even if he wasn’t necessarily planning on killing someone, he was already on the scene, already planning on committing a crime, and prepared to kill if he thought it necessary.
Whether you’re the guy who fires the fatal shot or not, you’re still a really bad guy, and there’s no good reason for you to ever be put back out on the streets with decent people again.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story on the case can be found here. The opinion of the court can be found here. From the newspaper:
One of the lead lawyers in the case, Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, said the decision “will have profound ramifications” for the state’s criminal justice system, and that it “represents the culmination of decades of movement-building by incarcerated people and their families and communities.”
Ben Grote, huh? How unserious is Mr Grote? He couldn’t even be bothered to clean up his beta male beard before going before the state Supreme Court. But, alas! he won his case.
Mr Grote works for the Abolitionist Law Center, which we have previously mentioned. What is not mentioned is that the Abolitionist Law Center is opposed to incarceration for anything, opposes all prison sentences, and would, if they could, free every murderer, every rapist, every drug dealer, and every assailant locked up in Pennsylvania’s prisons.
We challenge every point on the criminal punishment conveyor belt including policing, courts, jails and prisons, and various forms of legal supervision, as well as other aspects of the carceral machine.
Boldface in the original.
I might have ignored this story, especially since I was eating the very delicious lamb chops my wife made for supper, were it not for a very lovely lady on Twitter. Miss Long has in her Twitter bio a background illustration saying:
Roses are red,
No lives are blue,
Defund the Police,
Abolish ICE too.
Miss Long posted a series on Twitter, beginning here, praising the Abolitionist Law Center for its work. We already know that the Abolitionist Law Center wants to abolish prisons completely, to give dangerous predators some cockamamie “restorative justice” bovine feces.
Some people are beyond redemption, some people are simply evil and can never be trusted in society. Miss Long and the Abolitionist Law Center would see the gates of prisons thrown open and deranged killers like Wesley Cook let back out on the streets. They don’t even like, as noted above, “legal supervision,” which means probation and probation officers. Miss Long wants to see criminal illegal immigrants, some guilty of murder and rape, left free to terrorize innocent people.
I assume that Miss Long and the others believe that people are just innately good, and if the people we now see as bad guys are just left alone and shown sweetness and light, they’ll all be great people and credits to their communities.
Well, that’s just plain bovine feces. Some people simply need to be removed from society, for society to remain safe and secure for the people who are actually good citizens. I can’t even understand how some people can think differently.
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