Family Members Rally at the Capitol in Support of HB 443

Yesterday, advocates and family members of people sentenced to Death By Incarceration (DBI) for felony murder gathered at the State Capitol in Harrisburg to demand lawmakers pass House Bill 443 before the clock runs out.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has already ruled that mandatory DBI for felony murder violates the state constitution's ban on "cruel punishments."  The Court gave lawmakers 120 days to fix it. That clock is now down to 45 days, and the fix, House Bill 443, has been sitting in front of the General Assembly the entire time. The bill would end mandatory DBI for felony murder going forward and give the more than 1,100 people currently serving these sentences a path to go before the parole board.

In the 75 days since the Court's ruling, the legislature has done nothing. Both parties, in both chambers, have had every opportunity to act on a bill with broad support from prosecutors, defense attorneys, faith leaders, and crime survivors alike—and both parties have let it sit. 

After the rally, we went to House Majority Leader Matt Bradford’s office to make sure he understood what this delay actually means: not an abstract legislative timeline, but real people running out of time inside Pennsylvania's prisons while Harrisburg calculates the political cost of doing the right thing.

Every day lawmakers wait is another day someone's father, sister, aunt, uncle, or child stays locked up under a sentence the state's highest court has already determined is illegal. People are aging and dying inside PA's prisons while the General Assembly hums and haws, weighing political risk instead of doing what the Constitution requires. With 45 days left on the clock, there is no more time for hedging. If our elected officials can't meet this moment, it will be on us to elect people who can.