Kids who killed could get a break

Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia who represented Batts, said most Pennsylvania prosecutors opted not to hold resentencing hearings and instead reached agreements to resentence defendants under a statute Pennsylvania legislators passed in 2012. Act 204 calls for a sentence of 25 years to life for juveniles 14 years old or younger who killed and 35 years to life for those 15 years or older.

Pennsylvania had 514 juveniles serving life sentences as of January. As of Aug. 4, 69 were released, 73 were paroled but not yet released, and 122 were resentenced under the Act 204 guidelines, according to the state Department of Corrections. Of those resentenced, only eight were again sentenced to life without parole, Levick said.