For over three decades, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has argued that a West Philadelphia man who killed two people and left their infant daughter to freeze to death should be executed, until current District Attorney Larry Krasner sought to end pursuit of the death penalty entirely.

However, in a 12-page opinion issued late Monday, a federal judge denied Krasner’s request to vacate defendant Robert Wharton’s death sentence. In January 1984, Wharton and an accomplice murdered Bradley and Ferne Hart in their West Philadelphia home and turned off the heat before leaving so that the couple’s 6-month-old daughter would freeze, though she was eventually rescued.

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