00:00 - The following program is sponsored in part by

00:03 - customer's bank.

00:13 - Friend chado district attorney for dauphin county

00:17 - the pa supreme court ruled that a life sentence for second degree murder

00:21 - without the possibility of parole

00:24 - is unconstitutional

00:25 - but first tell us under what circumstances

00:28 - is murdered considered second degree.

00:31 - So it is felony murder involves a malice so

00:36 - but the malice is inferred from the fact that the

00:39 - the

00:39 - perpetrator

00:40 - is engaging in one of the top felonies such as

00:44 - rape.

00:46 - Robbery arson

00:48 - kidnapping

00:49 - which is a dangerous in and of itself

00:51 - and can cause the death of another person and during the cot

00:55 - course of that

00:56 - felony.

00:58 - Another person loses their life

01:01 - and

01:01 - so they are liable for second degree murder

01:04 - now the case in question in

01:06 - that we'll talk about today

01:08 - involves a man named Derek Lee

01:10 - what was his role in the second degree murder case

01:14 - so that it is outlined very in great detail

01:17 - and the supreme court doesn't say hey he can't get life

01:20 - you've got to look at it again to decide whether or

01:22 - not life is appropriate but what happened why did he do

01:25 - so he was involved in this.

01:28 - This.

01:29 - Home invasion

01:30 - really and

01:32 - there were multiple actors and so

01:33 - he didn't pull the trigger

01:35 - he's not the one who actually

01:36 - caused the death but he

01:37 - had a weapon and.

01:39 - He was

01:40 - using violence during it.

01:43 - During this episode and there was

01:46 - there were children

01:47 - around

01:49 - and so it was it was a violent violent

01:51 - offense.

01:53 - That tragically caused the death of another person.

01:56 - It mandated a life sentence.

01:59 - He so

01:59 - served

02:00 - although it's older he's only served five years so far

02:03 - because he was on parole

02:04 - for

02:05 - multiple counts of attempted murder

02:07 - when he committed this offense.

02:10 - I think five people were wounded in that attempted murder

02:13 - that he committed

02:14 - he was on parole so he was serving the back time when that attempted murder

02:17 - when he committed the

02:19 - second degree murder

02:20 - hm

02:21 - well back to the point about the pa supreme court saying that

02:24 - the penalty for this crime and his case is unconstitutional

02:27 - what's in our constitute ocean

02:29 - that could bar this kind of punishment that directly

02:32 - was sentenced to well let me

02:35 - just say that

02:36 - the court did not rule it was unconstitutional

02:39 - they said it can't be mandated as life imprisonment

02:42 - and there's two parts to the sentence there's the

02:45 - minimum and the maximum the maximum of life imprisonment.

02:49 - So that he would be.

02:51 - If he's paroled

02:52 - he'll be on parole for the rest of his life

02:54 - that's

02:55 - that remains and that was not affected by this

02:58 - this ruling.

02:59 - The other part is within minutes and the men could be

03:02 - life also so life to life

03:04 - without parole

03:06 - war

03:06 - a term of years

03:08 - so.

03:09 - If it was not a

03:11 - sir sentence of life imprisonment

03:13 - on both sides minimum and maximum

03:15 - where he

03:16 - is ineligible for parole

03:18 - it can be a sentence such as

03:20 - forty years to life or thirty five years to life

03:24 - and such he wouldn't be eligible for parole

03:27 - until he had served

03:28 - at least.

03:30 - That minimum sentence

03:31 - and then he would go before the parole board

03:34 - and the parole board would consider whether or not he.

03:37 - Done well while serving a sentence and deserve to be paroled.

03:41 - What did justice Debra Todd have to say about

03:44 - the the harshness of this sentence in Lee's case

03:48 - well because he wasn't the

03:50 - the

03:51 - person who actually.

03:53 - Quite indirectly caused the death of another

03:56 - person except not directly right and to i mean that

03:59 - that

04:00 - mandating.

04:01 - They beheld

04:02 - for the rest of his life just on that

04:05 - not take into consideration that he'd caused

04:07 - a

04:09 - no serious injuries in the attempted murders in.

04:12 - The previous cases or previous cases and they would impact his his.

04:17 - His sentence.

04:18 - Is another factor.

04:20 - Now.

04:22 - Considering the case of directly about how many other inmates in Pennsylvania

04:26 - are

04:27 - in the same boat in other words life without parole.

04:30 - For second

04:31 - we estimated

04:32 - about fourteen hundred

04:35 - but of course there's also life verse on other

04:37 - there's those on first degree murder

04:40 - and those worth other offences such as a

04:43 - third strike the people

04:44 - are habitual offenders that committed

04:46 - crimes of violence such as multiple.

04:49 - Rapes and robberies

04:50 - as their third offense

04:52 - that they get life on

04:53 - now again in the case of

04:55 - death Eric Lee the court needed a way to

04:57 - proceed and what did they do and ultimately they they gave law

05:02 - makers a job didn't they

05:04 - well they

05:05 - the

05:06 - supreme court indicated that

05:08 - it would not go into effect for one hundred and twenty days and

05:11 - that just expired recently

05:14 - with the instruction that

05:15 - it's not for the court

05:17 - to set the

05:18 - the new minimum.

05:20 - That that's for the the general assembly

05:24 - and with the hope

05:25 - i believe and we certainly had that hope and went

05:28 - hoping that we would get to a new.

05:31 - The minimum sentence and that just didn't occur

05:33 - well yeah let's talk more about that in detail because lawmakers did take on this

05:37 - subject and there was the senate bill and there is a house bill

05:40 - and there are very different in their approaches let's talk about the senate bill.

05:44 - They wanted to establish a thirty five year minimum for second degree

05:48 - murder convicts tell me more about that

05:50 - well i mean that's that

05:51 - made a lot of sense

05:52 - to me because

05:53 - the current law as.

05:56 - Accepted by

05:58 - the general assembly and

05:59 - signed by the governor and applied for

06:01 - for a long time now

06:03 - for those

06:04 - under the age of eighteen.

06:06 - A juvenile that commit second degree murder

06:08 - has a mandatory minimum

06:10 - of thirty years

06:11 - to life they could get more

06:13 - depending on the circumstances but there's a third of your men.

06:16 - So

06:17 - because adults.

06:20 - It could be or more culpable

06:22 - and

06:23 - deserve a higher sentence usually.

06:26 - The minimum

06:27 - we expect to be higher than thirty years

06:30 - and what happened to that bill in the senate chamber

06:32 - anyway even though ultimately it didn't become law

06:35 - so it it it passed in the senate

06:37 - and then goes over to the house for consideration

06:40 - the house

06:41 - did not act on that

06:43 - bill they.

06:44 - Acted on

06:45 - a separate one

06:46 - yeah the house had their own idea and it had to

06:48 - it didn't set a minimum sentence but it was asking for guidelines

06:53 - the judges could you

06:54 - tell me more about that what kind of guidelines

06:56 - well in all offenses that don't have a mandatory minimum.

07:00 - Well including the ones that mentoring the gnomes

07:03 - the sentencing commission.

07:05 - Issues sentencing guidelines and these are advisory to the court

07:10 - to decide whether or not to impose this sentence

07:13 - with the idea that consistency is a good thing statewide

07:16 - but that

07:17 - there may be exceptions to the rule

07:20 - and

07:21 - and so i would expect the guidelines to be

07:24 - somewhere around.

07:26 - I would hope

07:27 - where we've been sentencing them around the

07:29 - juveniles above that because they're adults.

07:34 - But we don't know and it takes a lot of time to to prepare those

07:38 - and i expect the sentencing commission to act

07:41 - but mandatory minimums

07:44 - have a greater

07:45 - deterrent effect than the center guidelines because you don't expect

07:48 - would be offenders to say okay well what would i get

07:51 - if

07:52 - if i offended

07:53 - what are the sentencing guidelines going to call for

07:55 - now in the case of the house bill which would not set a minimum and asks for these

08:00 - guidelines that we're talking about

08:01 - that sounds like the courts would have more discretion in that case

08:04 - and if that's the case just

08:06 - how much uniform d would there be

08:08 - among sentencing

08:09 - for the most part we see

08:11 - a uniformity through.

08:13 - The sentencing guidelines

08:14 - the judges

08:15 - will

08:16 - follow it

08:17 - and there's a

08:18 - if they're going to deport usually it's to the

08:20 - aggravated range where the mitigate range which is.

08:24 - Not.

08:25 - A

08:26 - huge deal departure

08:28 - but there are exceptions to that and sometimes it's.

08:31 - A enormous departure

08:33 - now the

08:34 - court gave the legislature four months to act on

08:37 - this and they've had debates and we just talked about

08:41 - those two bills and now lawmakers have missed

08:44 - that deadline other consequences for missing

08:46 - that day deadline that was imposed by the court

08:49 - while there's two sets of consequences the first goes to the

08:53 - the prior convictions

08:55 - and this is these are cases where we rightfully told the families

08:59 - of the victims this mandatory minimum life sentence

09:04 - and the expectation was that's what it was

09:06 - and many of these families didn't register

09:09 - so

09:09 - such that they would be notified if there was consideration for parole

09:13 - why would they

09:14 - because there there wasn't going to be

09:16 - and now the law has been rewritten such that.

09:20 - We have to find these families so that they can be hurt

09:23 - because victim impact is part of the sentencing.

09:27 - Process yes and should be considered.

09:29 - So the old ones.

09:32 - That's going can be part of it and we're going to have to re sentencing hearings in

09:35 - all those cases fourteen hundred.

09:37 - Cases.

09:39 - For

09:40 - most likely some of them were there was an agreement

09:42 - to reduce from first degree murder to second degree murder which is

09:46 - was common because there were both life cases i suppose

09:49 - you could make an argument that there shouldn't be

09:51 - of recency.

09:53 - Then there's all the cases going forward.

09:56 - New cases

09:58 - and

09:59 - that's less impactful because we know now

10:02 - that

10:02 - there is not

10:04 - a mandatory minimum

10:05 - now since lawmakers miss this deadline what our county

10:09 - judge is expected to do

10:11 - right now even today

10:13 - what

10:13 - we expect is that

10:16 - to answer two motions i mean this is not something that they would

10:19 - act

10:20 - unilaterally

10:21 - it would require

10:22 - emotion from

10:24 - a defendant serving the sentence

10:26 - a timely motion from

10:28 - a defendant serving the sentence.

10:30 - Presumably through counsel

10:31 - asking for a resetting hearing.

10:34 - On

10:35 - these

10:35 - cases where

10:36 - a life sentence had been imposed.

10:39 - That it is going take a lot because we're going to have to look at not just the

10:43 - circumstances of the offense we're going to have to hear from

10:47 - the families of the victims for victim impact

10:50 - but how have they done

10:52 - while they were serving that sentence

10:54 - have they.

10:56 - Perform well have they committed other

10:58 - violations in the in the prison i mean.

11:02 - You can

11:02 - consider

11:03 - the re sentencing as we did in the juvenile.

11:08 - Offenders

11:08 - because

11:09 - the supreme court of the united states ruled that we could not mandate

11:13 - could not mandate we could give life sentences.

11:16 - For first and second degree murder

11:17 - for juveniles that committed those offences

11:20 - we had re sentencing on all those

11:22 - cases

11:24 - and so

11:24 - some got

11:25 - first degree

11:27 - first and second.

11:28 - Cases

11:29 - some of the first Scott life

11:31 - second degree murder we we

11:33 - saw less than that

11:34 - but we'd looked at what they were doing.

11:37 - Serving their sentences in the department of corrections and we saw many of them.

11:43 - Did not

11:44 - take

11:44 - advantage of any.

11:46 - Programming in any way.

11:48 - At the it was limited programming

11:50 - because they

11:51 - weren't expected to

11:52 - be released ever

11:54 - and the prison has to

11:55 - use that programming

11:57 - but some of them were

11:58 - re offending

11:59 - and were.

12:01 - Committing violence against others

12:03 - that's a big big factor.

12:05 - Now the court had given lawmakers a deadline to act on this they for failed to act on

12:08 - it within one hundred and twenty days

12:10 - but at this point our lawmakers can still act

12:13 - and do something today if i had mine too right

12:15 - absolutely and.

12:17 - Listen

12:18 - hopefully it's something that that addresses the seriousness of

12:22 - of these crimes.

12:23 - There's this

12:25 - misapprehension i think

12:26 - that

12:27 - this is just about as somebody that was not

12:29 - an active participant in the cause of death

12:33 - and

12:33 - look at

12:34 - a lot of these are

12:35 - jury determinations and.

12:38 - Oftentimes you have people working together

12:40 - co-defendants.

12:42 - Offering together in a murder

12:44 - or

12:45 - a

12:46 - in a in a robbery

12:47 - or in a burglary or an arson

12:49 - and the the jury

12:51 - because it's happening operating in secret don't know who pulled the trigger were set

12:55 - the fire or did any of those things

12:57 - and so

12:58 - they agree that okay

13:00 - they're both guilty of second degree murder we don't know which one

13:03 - fired the shot

13:04 - that killed

13:05 - this individual and I've had cases like that where

13:08 - they're both firing they're both firing

13:10 - but we'll know which one

13:12 - caused the death.

13:14 - Now let's consider your status as immediate past president of the state.

13:19 - District attorneys association so

13:21 - in that capacity

13:22 - how do you hope this will work itself out

13:25 - well we

13:26 - were going to

13:27 - take a team approach and try and help each other identify

13:30 - these issues and

13:32 - we're going to have a lot of resentenced things

13:35 - and

13:36 - i'm

13:37 - sure we're going to need

13:38 - some expertise in the area

13:40 - maybe it's going to be

13:41 - psychiatrist to evaluate some of these individual would you like to see lawmakers

13:45 - follow up on some of the plans they've already proposed

13:47 - i think the ideal as long as it's a appropriate sentence

13:51 - as a minimum

13:53 - that would be great otherwise nice.

13:55 - I'd just as soon leave it to the judges if there's not a

13:58 - fair mandatory minimum

14:00 - franchise to district attorney for a dauphin county thank you very much thank you.

14:16 - It.