Clock is ticking on PA legislature's responsibility to address felony murder sentences

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled life in prison for felony murder unconstitutional in March. The court’s decision affected all convictions going forward but left it to the state Legislature to decide by July 24 how it would impact past convictions, leaving more than 1,100 others in limbo, reported the Prison Journalism Project.

A bill authored by Senate Republicans, which passed the chamber on June 25, would impose a minimum sentence of 35 years for second-degree murder except in cases where the defendant meets a strict set of guidelines proving they had no intention, knowledge or participation in the murder itself, in which case they could be sentenced to 10 to 40 years. The bill still allows for life sentences in certain cases.

A competing bill in the Democrat-led House caps sentences at 50 years and expands eligibility for parole after 25 years based on the defendant’s culpability in the crime and consideration of public and victim safety. That bill remains in committee.

If lawmakers cannot reach a consensus, the fate of those convicted of second-degree murder will go back to the court system for resentencing. The uncertainty for the women is exacerbated by limited access to information.

“I feel like there is a lack of information, even conflicting information,” said Tequilla Fields, 53, who has served 21 years in prison for second-degree murder charges stemming from a crime she committed when she was 18. “No one seems to know what’s really going on, not even the people outside. That makes it hard to know what to believe.”

Fields said the mandatory minimum of 35 years imposed by the Senate-led bill is too harsh. 

“Thirty-five years? It doesn’t seem fair, right or logical — it doesn’t make any sense,” Fields said. ”It’s too much time for someone who had no intention to kill anyone, or who didn’t kill someone at all. I do not trust the justice system at all. They don’t care about us. We’re not human beings to them.” 

Tameka Flowers, 51, who has been incarcerated for 31 years for second-degree murder, said a minimum sentence of 35 years serves the same function as a life-without-parole sentence.

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“It is a blessing to have the opportunity to leave prison, but a minimum sentence of 35 is still a death sentence for most,” Flowers said. “They’re trying to sentence people as if they had the intent to kill when they didn’t.” 

Despite her anxiety over her own release, Reyes said she understands the reasoning behind the Senate bill’s 35-year minimum. 

“At the end of the day, we have to understand that a life was taken while we were there, even if we didn’t do it,” Reyes said. ”It’s a life sentence for them.” 

Markman said she was also thinking about her victim and their family.

“It’s hard for me to know that I might get a second chance at life, regardless of how many years from now it may be, but they will not be,” Markman said.

If lawmakers do not pass a bill by the deadline, judges will have wide latitude to impose new sentences. Some women at SCI Muncy are concerned that this scenario will result in further sentencing disparities. 

“My main worry is if a bill isn’t passed and people are kicked back to their counties for resentencing,” Markman said. “Judges will be able to sentence people however they want to, and some counties are harsher than others.” 

Flowers said smaller, rural counties will most likely impose harsh sentences while more liberal cities like Philadelphia will impose more lenient sentences. 

“The judges and attorneys will have to really dig into people’s lives prior to prison, figuring out who we were then and why we made the decisions we made,“ Flowers said. “I feel like a lot of us might get resentenced to the same amount of time.” 

Despite their concerns about how the state Supreme Court ruling will be applied, women serving second-degree sentences at SCI Muncy are hopeful that they will soon have a meaningful opportunity to be released, viewing it as a chance to contribute to society. 

”This means everything to me, and I will not waste the chance I am given,” Markman said. “I am determined to make the most of it by making a positive difference and helping other people. If I can help one person who is going through a similar situation to what I was, it will all be worth it. I have to do something to give back.”

While the state Legislature determines its next steps, the community of women at Muncy are hopeful that politicians will agree that everyone is more than the worst decisions they’ve made. 

”We are not who we were two, three and four decades ago,” Flowers said. ”We were women who were abused, used, put down and beat down. And yet, we have survived and found ourselves. We’ve learned how to aid others. We just want the opportunity to show society that we will be an asset to any community we are a part of. We want to show that change is real.”

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As substance abuse declines, so goes the murder rate

Professor James Tuttle of the University of Montana writes in The Conversation, the murder rate in 2025 was the lowest in modern American history.

Preliminary data shows the murder rate fell nearly 20% from 2024, likely making it the lowest rate since reliable national data began to be collected in 1960.

Why was the murder rate so low?

I’m a professor of sociology and criminology who studies crime trends. In my book, “Crime Wave,” I explore how homicide rates have closely followed three trends over the past decade: alcohol consumption, drug abuse and firearm purchases. Now that the drug and alcohol crises are waning and gun purchases are falling, so too is the murder rate.

The 2015-2021 murder increase

The murder rate’s previous low came in 2014, capping a decline that had been more or less continuous since the early 1990s.

The murder rate usually rises and falls alongside other crimes, so through the 2010s, with property crime and overall youth offending dropping, criminologists expected the murder trend to follow suit.

Instead, the national murder rate increased sharply in 2015 and 2016, and then by an even larger margin in 2020.

Suddenly, it appeared that violent crime was spiraling out of control. By 2021, the homicide rate hit its highest level since the mid-1990s.

Popular, but incomplete, explanations

Some researchers and commentators attributed the homicide spikes to a so-called “Ferguson effect” in 2015 and, likewise, a “Minneapolis effect” in 2020. These theories are based on the idea that law enforcement officers were reluctant to be proactive or make arrests after nationwide protests against police brutality related to the police killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 and George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020. The evidence for these claims is mixed.

There is little consistent indication that a decline in proactive policing contributed to a crime increase in 2015, although the homicide spike in 2020 was likely exacerbated by a police “pullback”.

Still, the majority of the homicide spike took place before June 2020, when protests over Floyd’s death spread nationwide. A study published in the journal Epidemiology found that the increase began as early as October 2019, suggesting de-policing in the summer of 2020 likely worsened the rise rather than caused it.

De-policing is, at best, an incomplete explanation.

Substance abuse, guns and the ‘homicide epidemic’

As I document in “Crime Wave,” the crisis in violence was related to another crisis: deaths of despair, which include drug overdoses, suicides and alcohol-related fatalities.

In the years leading up to the 2015 homicide spike, the prescription opioid crisis gave way to the illicit opioid crisis. As opioid use shifted toward heroin and fentanyl, it became deadlier. People were more likely to overdose, and the drug market moved from pharmacists into the hands of street dealers. It wasn’t just the pharmacological effect of drugs but the systemic nature of drug markets – disputes between dealers, buyers and users – that contributed to the spike in homicides.

At the same time, alcohol consumption began to accelerate. Alcohol is connected to homicide rates in part because it decreases inhibition, nullifying social and personal constraints. A high percentage of both homicide offenders and victims are under the influence of alcohol during a fatal assault.

Finally, amid growing distrust of the police and the government, firearm sales began to increase during 2015 and 2016, setting an all-time record in 2020. Given that assaults with a firearm are more likely to lead to the death of the victim than assaults using other weapons, confrontations became deadlier.

In my assessment, the homicide rate moved in near lockstep with trends in drug overdoses, alcohol consumption and firearm purchases, each of which increased by its largest margin in 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic likely exacerbated the substance abuse crisis, and the gun-buying spree was especially pronounced at three points: in March 2020, when the U.S. declared a national emergency over COVID-19; in June 2020, following the Floyd protests; and in the months surrounding the 2020 presidential election.

With more people under the influence of alcohol, an expanding illicit drug market and more guns available, the murder rate dramatically increased.

The murder rate decline after 2021

After peaking in 2021, the murder rate began to fall. This occurred slowly at first in 2022, but the estimated declines in 2023, 2024 and 2025 have been substantial. The reversal in the homicide trend has followed a similar timeline as the substance abuse and firearm purchasing patterns, though some indicators of firearm possession, such as their use in suicides, remain elevated.

When the homicide rate was rising, it defied criminologists’ expectations, breaking away from the property crime decline of the 2010s. Now, the murder rate is falling back in line with other crime trends, many of which are also among the lowest ever recorded. As the substance abuse crises continue to wane, I expect murder rates to fall even further in the near future.

Additionally, with youth criminal involvement hitting historic lows, the next generation appears to be one of the least criminally prone in decades, which bodes well for continued reductions in the murder rate.

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New Mexico AG accuses DOJ of withholding Epstein documents

New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez publicly released a letter to Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche accusing the US Department of Justice (DOJ) of withholding unredacted copies of documents that are pertinent to New Mexico’s investigation of Zorro Ranch, which was owned by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, reported JURISTnews.

New Mexico reopened its investigation into possible sex trafficking at the ranch in February, but Torrez has not yet announced any findings. In the letter, he summarized a series of unmet document requests, made under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, some dating back to February. Torrez wrote:

The USDOJ’s continued withholding of unredacted records is causing real and escalating harm to the NMDOJ’s criminal investigation. Every day that the USDOJ withholds these records, the foundation upon which a New Mexico prosecution could be built erodes. Witnesses relocate and become unreachable. Memories, already strained by years of trauma, fade further. Physical and documentary evidence degrades, is lost, or is rendered more difficult to authenticate with the passage of time … more than 130 days have now elapsed since the NMDOJ’s initial request. The NMDOJ views this length of time as an unreasonable delay under any rule of reason.

A DOJ spokesperson replied, “DOJ reiterates that it welcomes New Mexico(‘s) … investigation of the Zorro Ranch and stands ready to provide … assistance with New Mexico’s investigation. Should that investigation uncover potential federal crimes, the DOJ will work closely with our law enforcement partners to investigate and, as appropriate, prosecute.”

According to one of the Epstein files that has been released, conservative talk show host Edward Aragon brought a tip to the Albuquerque office of the FBI in 2019. The tipster offered Aragon “7 videos of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and the location of two foreign girls buried on Zorro Ranch for sale for one bitcoin.” In the same year, The New York Times published an article alleging that Epstein planned to impregnate multiple women at his Zorro Ranch.

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Houston authorities will investigate ICE killing of Mexican immigrant

Hours after three witnesses questioned the official account of how an immigration agent killed a man in Houston this week, city officials said they would begin their own investigation of the federal government’s actions, reported The New York Times.

Mayor John Whitmire of Houston said he, the city’s police department and the district attorney’s office would work aggressively to obtain all evidence and uncover the truth, reversing his earlier position that the city had no jurisdiction over the case.

“We are not settling to wait for an F.B.I. report,” Mr. Whitmire said during a news briefing on Friday afternoon. “We want answers.”

The episode began about 6:50 a.m. on Tuesday as Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican immigrant, was driving in East Houston on his way to work at a construction site in a van with three other workers. Agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement began tailing him.

On Friday, the agency said in a statement that Mr. Araujo had rammed an ICE vehicle, had not followed orders and had tried to run over an officer. An ICE agent fired in self-defense, the statement said. Mr. Araujo was shot in the abdomen and taken to a hospital, where he died.

No evidence was provided to support ICE’s account.

On Friday, the three men with Mr. Araujo said through a lawyer that he had not used his vehicle as a weapon or tried to run over the immigration officers. The men were arrested and provided their version of events to the lawyer, Hugo Balderas-Ibarra, who visited them in immigration detention.

“I have no doubt that what they are saying is the truth,” Mr. Balderas-Ibarra said during a news conference on Friday. “All three reiterated that at no point was an agent standing in front of the vehicle nor was an agent placed in the line of danger.”

Mr. Araujo’s death came as ICE officers are increasing arrests across the United States, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. In five days at the end of June, agents arrested more than 10,000 people, the documents show. From Tuesday through Thursday, ICE officers arrested more than 6,000 people, internal records show.

Previous surges have been accompanied by violence, and video evidence in recent months has disproved federal law enforcement’s accounts of several shootings.

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Do states' "Unnecessary Rigor Clause" go above and beyond the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment?

 A handful of prisoners in Oregon who filed a proposed class action lawsuit in mid-June challenging the Oregon Department of Corrections' (ODOC) solitary confinement practices. It alleges that the ODOC is violating the state constitution's "Unnecessary Rigor Clause," which goes above and beyond the Constitution's Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, reported Reason Magazine. States like Indiana, Tennessee, Utah, and Wyoming also have similar protections in their constitutions. 

The plaintiffs seek a declaration that the ODOC's practices are unconstitutional and an injunction prohibiting the department from continuing the practices in the future. They also want to establish a monitoring regime so that the ODOC does not fall back into its old habits. 

"It's ironic that in a state that is pushing back against the Trump administration and is a progressive leader in so many ways is at the same time subjecting people to these degrading, cruel and inhumane issues," said George Mills, a staff attorney at the Prison Law Office, a nonprofit public interest law firm representing some of the plaintiffs. 

A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Corrections told Reason that the agency can't comment on the specifics of the lawsuit but remains committed to maintaining "safe, secure, and humane operations for adults in custody, staff, and the communities we serve." That includes, but is not limited to, increasing out-of-cell time for people in solitary confinement, building peer mentorship programs, and enhancing violence prevention tools. 

"DOC remains committed to this long‑term cultural transformation and to ensuring our practices continue to evolve in alignment with research, safety needs, and constitutional standards," the spokesperson wrote in an email. 

Solitary confinement—also known as restrictive housing or administrative segregation—has a long and sordid history in the U.S. The Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia is widely considered the birthplace of solitary confinement. As early as 1829, some prisoners were kept in tiny cells only containing a worktable, a toilet, a skylight, and a Bible. Historian William Kashatus argued in a 1999 article for Pennsylvania Heritage Magazine that the cells were designed in such a way to "remind the inmate that penitence would only be achieved through the light from heaven, the word of God, and honest work." 

In 1890, the Supreme Court recognized that the assumption underpinning solitary confinement is inhumane and counterproductive in a case known as In re Medley. The case concerned a convicted murderer named James J. Medley who was held in solitary confinement for 45 days in Colorado before his execution. Chief Justice Samuel Miller, after going through a lengthy historical analysis of the practice, found that prisoners subjected to solitary confinement often "did not recover sufficient mental activity to be any subsequent service to the community." 

Keeping prisoners in solitary confinement is also inherently dangerous. Studies have shown that extended time in solitary can permanently damage an individual's brain by shrinking the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for memory and sociability. That is one reason why many prisoners who are sent to solitary return with symptoms of "depression, paranoia, lack of concentration or memory, anger, and hallucinations," according to a 2018 study. Solitary confinement can also cause muscular degeneration, cardiovascular issues, and dermatological conditions because of the lack of regular exercise and restricted hygiene habits. 

Jenkins-Millage claimed in the lawsuit that he has experienced similar symptoms since he was sent to solitary confinement. For instance, he said he developed symptoms of depression or bipolar disorder, including suicidal ideation, while he was in solitary. He attributed these symptoms to a lack of meaningful human contact, recreation, and mental stimulation.

Even so, reforming solitary confinement practices has been slow and arduous work. According to 2023 estimates, more than 122,000 people are held in solitary confinement across the U.S., representing just under 7 percent of the nation's total prison population. While many assume that the worst of the worst criminals live in solitary confinement, multiple studies have found that prisons routinely use solitary confinement as punishment for nonviolent offenses like tobacco use and talking back to a prison guard. Solitary confinement is also often considered the "de facto mental health unit" in many prisons, according to the Vera Institute of Justice. 

"When we made the decision to do whatever put us in prison," Jenkins-Millage told Oregon Public Broadcasting in June. "We didn't stop being humans."

The lawsuit claims directors at the ODOC are aware that their practices may run afoul of best practices. In the 91-page complaint, lawyers point to memos sent by senior ODOC leaders outlining the need to "reduce the use of segregation" and acknowledging that the practice is "detrimental to an individual's health." Another superintendent at Oregon's Coffee Creek Correctional Facility claimed that "segregation isn't an effective tool to change behavior." 

Still, the ODOC has been slow to address its issues. For instance, a 2015 study by Disability Rights Oregon found that prisoners in solitary confinement had no access to mental health treatment. A 2016 study conducted by the Vera Institute found that segregated prisoners in the ODOC lived in conditions marked by "isolation, idleness, and sensory deprivation" that created or exacerbated serious mental health issues. 

"They know that this is wrong, and they know that they need to make progress on this," Mills said. 

The lawsuit was filed at a time when solitary confinement is under strict scrutiny across the globe. In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly revised what are known as its Nelson Mandela Rules, which seek to create an international standard for the treatment of prisoners, to state that solitary confinement should be used only as a "last resort" and should not last longer than 15 days. That led to prison reforms in European countries such as Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, as well as in South Africa. 

Several U.S. states are creating more humane approaches to solitary confinement. Nevada reduced the amount of time prisoners can spend in solitary confinement to 15 days in 2023. A bill passed in Virginia adding new restrictions on when a prisoner can be sent to solitary confinement. Other states like Louisiana passed a law to increase access to educational materials for people in solitary confinement, and Tennessee now prohibits pregnant women from being sent to solitary.  

To Mills, these initiatives come back to one of America's original principles: "You can't torture people, and that's a foundational principle of our country."

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Conservative 11th Circuit Court of Appeals strikes down Florida's 'Stop WOKE Act'

 Part of a Florida law limiting discussions on race, gender and diversity unconstitutionally restricts the speech of college professors, a divided 11th Circuit panel ruled, according to Courthouse News Service.

“If the First Amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it,” U.S. Circuit Judge Britt Grant wrote on behalf of the majority.

In a 2-1 decision, the Atlanta-based appeals court rejected a request by Florida officials to toss out a federal judge’s ruling preventing the Sunshine State from enforcing a provision of Florida’s Individual Freedom Act, also known as the Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act (Stop WOKE Act).

The law would have restricted state university professors from endorsing certain views on eight concepts related to race, color, national origin or sex during classroom discussions.

The Individual Freedom Act amended the Florida Education Equality Act by creating new speech restrictions barring any “training or instruction that espouses, promotes, advances, inculcates, or compels” students at public state universities to believe any of eight concepts: a “blacklist of ideas,” an attorney for the plaintiffs said.

The concepts include ideas suggesting that members of one race, color, sex or national origin are morally superior to others, that a person is “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive” by virtue of his race or sex, or that people should feel guilty about the actions of their ancestors.

Students, professors and a student organization at six of Florida’s public universities sued the Florida Board of Governors to prevent officials from enforcing the provision.

“Viewpoint-based restrictions designed to compel or ban a set of beliefs are dangerous in any setting, and they are especially pernicious in the classroom context,” Grant, an appointee of Donald Trump, wrote on Tuesday. “That goes double for broadly worded yet imprecise regulations like these, which are sure to leave both professors and their students guessing about what kind of speech might violate the rules.”

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Woman who said her 18-month-old twins died from vaccinations is indicted for their murder

An Idaho woman who said her toddler twins died last year after being vaccinated faces murder charges connected to their deaths, reported The Associated Press.

A grand jury indicted Andrea Shaw, who is accused of suffocating her 18-month-old twins in May 2025, on two counts of first-degree murder on June 29, according to court records and a statement from the Payette Police Department.

While appearing last year on an internet show produced by Children’s Health Defense — an anti-vaccine group founded by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — Shaw said her twins died after getting vaccinated. Kennedy has not been affiliated with the group since December 2024, when he formally resigned as chairman to join President Donald Trump’s administration.

Shaw, 23, was arrested by Boise police officers Tuesday and arraigned Thursday. She is being held on a $2 million bond and could face life in prison or the death penalty if convicted or if she pleads guilty to first-degree murder. Her next court appearance is July 14.

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