Editor’s Note: The following is an op-ed submitted to BeaverCountian.com by Scott L. Bohn, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association. We are publishing his opinions in full as written.
The Pennsylvania General Assembly faced a difficult but necessary responsibility: establishing a constitutional sentencing framework for individuals convicted of second-degree felony murder after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life-without-parole sentences in certain cases could not stand. The court gave lawmakers a deadline to enact a new framework.
Meeting that responsibility required thoughtful deliberation, bipartisan cooperation and respect for constitutional protections. It also required lawmakers to preserve meaningful accountability when a person’s participation in a dangerous felony results in the loss of an innocent life. On that central point, the position advanced by Senate Republicans—and supported by members of both parties—deserves serious consideration.
The Senate did not ignore the court’s ruling or attempt to preserve an unconstitutional sentencing system. It twice passed legislation intended to comply with the decision while maintaining substantial consequences for second-degree felony murder. The proposal passed by a bipartisan 30–20 vote and was sent to the House with time remaining before the court-imposed deadline.
Rather than advancing that legislation or negotiating changes through the normal legislative process, the House substituted substantially different language immediately before the deadline and included broader medical-release provisions affecting individuals convicted of serious crimes. Regardless of political party, that is not how legislation involving murder, sentencing, victims’ rights and public safety should be developed.
The concerns about the House proposal are not limited to Republican legislators. They are shared by many of Pennsylvania’s most prominent law enforcement leaders and public-safety organizations. Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday, the Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police and the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association supported the Senate’s bipartisan approach. Following the House amendments, Attorney General Sunday, the Pennsylvania Fraternal Order of Police and the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association opposed the House language, while the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association stated that it did not support the proposal. The Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association has also expressed opposition to the House proposal.
That opposition is significant. Police chiefs, state troopers, rank-and-file officers, prosecutors and the attorney general are responsible for investigating violent crimes, prosecuting offenders, leading public-safety agencies and working directly with victims and their families. Their concerns cannot responsibly be dismissed as partisan talking points. These organizations may not agree on every criminal justice issue. But when the Commonwealth’s leading law enforcement organizations express opposition, concern or lack of support for legislation involving convicted murderers, lawmakers have an obligation to listen.
A matter of this importance deserved public hearings, meaningful debate and careful consultation with prosecutors, police leaders, corrections professionals, medical experts, defense representatives and constitutional scholars. Most importantly, it required direct and respectful engagement with crime victims and their families.
Yet the people who have already paid the highest price appear to have received the least consideration. Attorney General Sunday’s objections reportedly included concerns that the House proposal failed to adequately protect victims, provided victims with minimal opportunities to participate, and was assembled without meaningful feedback from victims’ families. That should trouble every Pennsylvanian.
When elected officials discuss sentencing reform, the conversation frequently centers almost entirely on the person convicted: the offender’s age, health, rehabilitation, personal circumstances and prospects for release. Those can be legitimate considerations in a constitutional justice system. But justice cannot be measured solely by what happens to the offender. There was also a victim—a person whose life ended during the commission of a serious felony. That person lost every future opportunity: another birthday, another holiday, another conversation with a spouse, parent, child, or friend. No legislative action, court ruling, treatment program or demonstration of rehabilitation can return those years. The victim’s family must live permanently with that absence.
Many families endured lengthy investigations, court proceedings, testimony and sentencing hearings. They may have spent years attempting to rebuild their lives with the understanding that the sentence imposed by the court provided some measure of accountability and finality. Changing that sentence can reopen wounds that never fully healed. Families may once again be required to attend hearings, prepare victim-impact statements, confront the person responsible for their loved one’s death, and argue that the original crime—and the life that was taken—still matters. Lawmakers should never treat that burden as an incidental consequence of criminal justice reform.
This does not mean constitutional concerns should be ignored or that every existing sentence must remain unchanged. Our justice system must respect court decisions, due process and the constitutional rights of every person. Individualized sentencing may be appropriate when mandatory laws fail to account for legally significant differences among cases. But constitutional compliance does not require abandoning accountability.
Pennsylvania can establish a lawful sentencing structure that recognizes individual circumstances while still imposing meaningful penalties when criminal conduct results in death. Constitutional protections and victims’ rights are not mutually exclusive. Neither are rehabilitation, proportionality, and public safety.
Medical release may also have a legitimate place in a humane correctional system, particularly for individuals who are terminally ill or profoundly incapacitated. But release standards involving people convicted of murder and other violent crimes must be narrow, medically credible, and transparent.
At a minimum, such decisions should require evaluations by qualified physicians, independent judicial review, a thorough public-safety assessment, notice to prosecutors and victims, and a meaningful opportunity for victims’ families to be heard. Medical release must not become an indirect method of reducing serious criminal sentences through vague eligibility standards or procedural shortcuts.
Public safety should not be exclusively a Republican concern or a Democratic concern. It is a shared responsibility of government. Nevertheless, the Senate position cannot fairly be characterized as merely partisan. It was advanced through a bipartisan vote and supported by Pennsylvania’s attorney general and leading public-safety organizations. Likewise, opposition to the House language cannot be responsibly ignored when it comes from organizations representing Pennsylvania’s police chiefs, state troopers, police officers, and prosecutors.
The General Assembly should return to the negotiating table and produce a genuinely bipartisan solution. That legislation should establish constitutional sentencing ranges, preserve meaningful accountability, narrowly define eligibility for medical release, require rigorous medical and judicial review, and guarantee victims and their families notice and participation at every consequential stage.
A fair justice system must recognize the humanity and constitutional rights of the person accused or convicted. It must also remember the humanity of the person who was killed.
Rehabilitation matters. Mercy can have a place in the law. Constitutional protections must be honored. But accountability, public safety, finality and the voices of grieving families matter as well.
Crime victims and their families should not be consulted only after decisions have been made. They should never be treated as obstacles to reform, political talking points or afterthoughts.
Before Pennsylvania changes the consequences for criminal conduct that results in the taking of an innocent life, it must listen to the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association and the other law enforcement professionals responsible for protecting our communities. Above all, it must listen to the crime victims and families who will live with their loss forever.
– Scott L. Bohn
Scott L. Bohn is executive director of the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association, which is comprised of over 1,200 command-level law enforcement officers. It includes not only chiefs of police, superintendents, and commissioners, but also the commanding officers of federal, state, and industrial agencies across Pennsylvania.
