Felony murder appeal before Pa. Supreme Court on Tuesday offers a slim hope for ‘lifers’

Denise Alexander couldn’t remember the last time she saw her younger brother John.

Convicted in 2007 of second degree murder for a crime in which he contends he was also a victim, John Alexander is serving a life sentence in state prison without the possibility of parole.

His absence for the past 17 years has strained the siblings’ relationship, tested their parents’ marriage to the point of breaking, and left John’s two children, now adults, without a fatherly role model and provider, Denise Alexander said.

“I tried my best, my mom and dad tried their best. But ever since this happened, everything’s just been different. Our family just hasn’t been the same,” she told the Capital-Star.

On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that offers a slim hope of freedom for 40-year-old John Alexander and more than 1,100 other people serving life sentences for killings they didn’t commit or intend.

Lawyers for former Allegheny County resident Derek Lee have been working to persuade the court to find that life in prison without parole for second degree murder is an impermissible cruel punishment under the Pennsylvania Constitution. Lee, 36, is serving life for a murder committed by his accomplice in a 2014 robbery.

A crucial part of the Supreme Court’s decision, if it finds the punishment to be unconstitutional, is whether it should apply to free people who have already been sentenced to life without parole, said Philadelphia attorney Teri Himebaugh, who is working to reopen John Alexander’s case.

“Until we know what they’re going to do, we don’t know whether Mr. Alexander has a basis for that,” Himebaugh said. “If they find it doesn’t apply retroactively, there’s not a lot we can do about it, and we’re going to have to continue reviewing other types of new evidence.”

Himebaugh, who specializes in wrongful conviction appeals, said life sentences have effects that radiate beyond the lives of those serving them. And although those sentenced to life without parole are disproportionately black and older, Himebaugh said the average age of the clients she represents has decreased over the last three decades.

“It impacts families. It impacts economically. It also is going to impact those children, if there are children, because they’re not going to have positive role models. And it is a vicious circle,” she said, adding fighting a wrongful conviction and supporting a loved one in prison is costly. “By the time most families get to the point where John’s family is, they’ve also worn out all their resources.”

Pennsylvania is the only state besides Louisiana that still mandates life without parole for second degree murder, also called felony murder.

Under Pennsylvania’s second degree murder statute, prosecutors can charge and convict a person of the offense without having to prove they intended to cause another person’s death; they need only to prove the defendant committed another felony and a death occurred.

In John Alexander’s case, the Philadelphia district attorney’s office and police said he was among several accomplices who kidnapped Renaldo Zayas in May 2003 in an attempt to obtain a $4,000 ransom from his family. Zayas, who was bound with packing tape and stabbed repeatedly, bled to death in a van parked on a north Philadelphia street, according to court records.

John Alexander told detectives investigating Zayas’ killing that he and Zayas were both kidnapped, that he was bound with duct tape, burned with cigarettes and beaten by three men who demanded money. But prosecutors contended that John Alexander had confessed to his girlfriend’s brother that he set up Zayas and pretended to be a victim too.

In a filing seeking to reopen his case under the state Post-Conviction Relief Act, Himebaugh raises issues with Alexander’s trial, including his court-appointed attorney J. Michael Farrell. At the time he represented Alexander, Farrell was “consigliere” for a Baltimore-based drug trafficking organization. Farrell was convicted in 2017 of money laundering and witness tampering.

Himebaugh argues Farrell’s criminal activities and other issues during trial meant that Alexander did not have adequate representation of an attorney. Himebaugh said she is also investigating whether two detectives in the case who have been accused of misconduct in other cases engaged in similar threatening and coercive interrogation techniques in Alexander’s case.

“Hopefully Lee will take it out of our hands,” Himebaugh said, noting that if the court finds life imprisonment without parole is unconstitutional, it could open a path to freedom for Alexander without reversing his conviction.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court to weigh life sentences for felony murder

Lee, 36, was convicted of second-degree murder, robbery, and conspiracy in the Oct. 14, 2014, shooting death of Leonard Butler in Pittsburgh. Butler’s long-term partner Tina Chapple testified that on the day of his death, Butler called her downstairs in their home where she saw two men with guns, court records say.

Although both men had partial face coverings, Chapple identified one of the men as Lee. She testified that Lee directed her and Butler to the basement and demanded money. After Butler gave Lee his watch, Lee went upstairs and the other man remained in the basement.

When Butler lunged at the other man, Chapple testified that she heard a gunshot. Butler was shot and died from his injuries, according to the petition asking the Supreme Court to hear Lee’s appeal.

“There was no dispute that Mr. Lee did not cause Mr. Butler’s death, nor was there any testimony indicating that Mr. Lee intended to kill Mr. Butler,” the filing says.

While the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual” punishment, Lee’s attorneys from the Abolitionist Law Center and the Amistad Law Project argued the corresponding section of Pennsylvania’s Constitution requires only that a punishment be cruel to be impermissible.

The omission of the term “unusual” from the Pennsylvania Constitution permits challenges to common punishments “if there is a basis for determining they are cruel in a constitutional sense,” the attorneys argue.

Pennsylvania courts, and other state courts, historically have interpreted the prohibition on cruel punishments as barring those that are unduly harsh and not those imposed with cruel intent, Lee’s attorneys contend.

And Pennsylvania has unique policy considerations that support a finding that life imprisonment without parole is unduly harsh. In addition to being an outlier, Pennsylvania’s prison population serving life without parole is aging or elderly. Criminologists have found that involvement with crime correlates strongly to age and older incarcerated people pose little risk to public safety.

To help Lee, Alexander and others already serving life sentences for felony murder, the court would have to determine that the punishment is unconstitutional and that its ruling should apply retroactively.

Himebaugh said that while the current Supreme Court has ruled that mandatory life without parole is unconstitutionally cruel for juvenile offenders and applied the ruling retroactively, it’s unclear whether it would do so in Lee’s case.

“My big concern is that they’re not going to apply it retroactively, because the statistics, the numbers are too significant,” Himebaugh said, noting that Pennsylvania courts are still working their way through a backlog of reviews for more than 500 juvenile offenders sentenced to life.

In an amicus brief on behalf of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s office, General Counsel Jennifer Selber urged the court to find mandatory life without parole for felony murder in violation of the state Constitution, but cautioned against making the new rule retroactive. Doing so would place too great a strain on the legal system, the brief says.

Denise Alexander said Lee’s case, nonetheless, gives her hope that her brother might someday come home. She remembers her brother as a jokester who invented card games for them to play. “He never wanted to be bored,” she said.

After graduating from Thomas Edison High School, John Alexander attended a technical school and got work renovating properties in the city to earn money for his son and daughter. “He was the one, you know, making sure the kids was okay. Had a place to live,” Denise said.

After John went to prison, his children bounced between their mother and grandparents’ care. And Denise Alexander said she worries that her brother has become hardened — “institutionalized,” she said — by prison, saying they don’t talk as much as they used to.

“I can’t get mad at him. But I just, I feel sorry for him,” she said. “I feel helpless. I just know that he’s not supposed to be there and I just think, like, how would I deal with knowing that I’m not supposed to be there and I don’t have a date to come home?”

Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and X.