Gov. Tom Wolf commuted David Sheppard’s sentence on Dec. 4. Even before the order was signed, Delaware County District Attorney Katayoun Copeland signaled her intention to keep him locked up.
A Pennsylvania man who earned a reprieve from a life sentence only to be held on a long-ago shoplifting charge is back on track to be released.
Governor Tom Wolf is commuting the life sentences of eight more people in prison, bringing the total to 19 since he took office in 2015.
Ralph “Malakki” Bolden and five other men, most of whom are also sentenced to life, chronicle their experiences in a new book called “Life Sentences.”
For more than 40 years, life sentences in Pennsylvania have only come one way: without the possibility of parole.
In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory sentences of life without parole for all juveniles were unconstitutional.
State corrections data show that Pennsylvania prisons house more than 5,100 people sentenced to life without parole. About 500 of them did not directly cause the death of a victim, according to a review the state’s Department of Corrections conducted last summer.
The lieutenant governor said he’d like to return to pre-1980s levels, when an average of 20 to 30 sentences a year were commuted.
