The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has kicked three juvenile life sentence cases back to the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas for resentencing in line with a decision it issued earlier this year in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's invalidation of mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles.
The high court instructed the defendants be resentenced in line with Commonwealth v. Batts, in which the justices decided to remand Qu'eed Batts' case back to a Northampton County judge to resentence the killer. The fate of Batts, who committed the crime when he was 14, will come down to a trial judge's analysis of a number of factors originally set forth in Miller v. Alabama and then adopted by the Pennsylvania justices in Batts' own case. The justices decided Batts in March of this year and, at the time, legal observers noted the court's ruling would only apply to a handful of appeals — cases where juveniles had preserved their direct appeal rights and received sentences of life without parole before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller.
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