Gov. Josh Shapiro commutes sentence for Marie Scott, who led push to end life without parole

After spending almost all of her adult life in prison for her role in a robbery-murder, 71-year-old Marie “Mechie” Scott has hope for freedom.

Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an order Friday commuting Scott’s life without parole sentence for the 1973 murder of a gas station attendant as she and her boyfriend robbed the business. In six months, Scott will be able to go before the Pennsylvania Parole Board to make her case for release.

Scott had an outpouring of support at the May 9 public hearing where the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons recommended clemency, said Rupalee Rashatwar, staff attorney at the Abolitionist Law Center, which has represented Scott.

“I think that’s one of the most exceptional things about Mechie’s case — the whole movement that’s behind her,” Rashatwar said. 

In a recording on the Abolitionist Law Center’s Instagram page, Scott described how her cries of joy upon learning of Shapiro’s decision spread among others at SCI Muncy, where she is incarcerated. Scott said she couldn’t find words to describe how she felt.

“There was not even an expression that I could have picked, that would have brought out and made you understand and feel what I felt,” she said in the recording.

Pennsylvania and Louisiana are the only states that impose mandatory life sentences without parole for felony murder. Under Pennsylvania law, that’s when a person commits a crime that leads to another person’s death, even if they didn’t directly cause or intend the killing.

Pennsylvania Supreme Court to weigh life sentences for felony murder

Scott, then 19, and her boyfriend, 16-year-old Leroy Saxton, plundered a Philadelphia gas station’s safe amid a string of robberies while high on sedative pills. Saxton shot the attendant, Michael Kerrigan, but because Scott took part in the robbery, she was also held responsible for Kerrigan’s murder under the felony murder rule.

Kerrigan was a Philadelphia firefighter and father of three who was filling in at the gas station for a friend who was sick. Saxton, who was a minor at the time he killed Kerrigan, was released in 2020 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled mandatory life sentences for juveniles violate the U.S. Constitution.

In Pennsylvania, some 1,100 people are incarcerated for felony murder; more than two-thirds of them are Black, according to the Felony Murder Reporting Project. 

Scott’s case has been a focal point for those working to end what advocates call “death by incarceration.” With a moratorium on executions that began with Gov. Tom Wolf and continues under the Shapiro administration, life without parole is effectively the most severe criminal penalty Pennsylvania courts can apply.

In 2020, Scott led a group of six Pennsylvania prisoners serving life sentences for felony murder in a lawsuit, arguing that mandatory life without parole for those who did not kill or intend to kill violates the state constitution. 

That case was thrown out when the state Supreme Court found it was improperly filed as a civil lawsuit in Commonwealth Court, which lacked jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ criminal cases. 

In October, the state Supreme Court heard arguments in the case of Derek Lee, who is also serving life without parole for felony murder. His lawyer, Bret Grote, also with the Abolitionist Law Center, told the Capital-Star he anticipates a decision this summer.

Lee, now 36, was convicted of felony murder in 2016 for his role in a 2014 Pittsburgh home-invasion robbery, when his accomplice fatally shot the homeowner.

Lee’s appeal challenges mandatory life without parole based on the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, and the state Constitution’s bar on cruel punishment.

Lee’s attorneys are joined by two former state secretaries of corrections who say keeping people who did not intend or cause the death of another in prison for the rest of their lives is financially insensible, prevents finite resources from being used for rehabilitation of those who could benefit, and has little effect on public safety.

Like the backing Scott received before the Board of Pardons, Grote said the support for Lee has been remarkable. Lee’s case drew the friend-of-the-court briefs from state officials, organizations, victims and former lifers who argued the court should end death by incarceration. 

They included Shapiro.

“It is certainly unprecedented for a governor of Pennsylvania to submit an amicus brief supporting striking down the life sentence of a person convicted of felony murder,” Grote said.

In a friend of the court brief on behalf of 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.

Grote said the effect of striking down all 1,100-plus felony murder sentences should not be burdensome. Like Scott, each would be resentenced to a minimum that would make many eligible for parole soon after.

With Scott’s felony murder sentence commuted, she must still serve an aggregate sentence of six months for escaping from prison decades ago. 

While noting Kerrigan’s daughters have opposed her release, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Rashatwar remains hopeful that the Parole Board will consider how Scott has changed for herself and helped others during her decades of incarceration.

“She has countless people supporting her,” Rashatwar said, noting the Board of Pardons received letters from people who served sentences alongside Scott saying she taught them what she had learned about herself in prison. State House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D-Philadelphia) was among those who wrote in Scott’s support.

“It’s pretty amazing the amount of support that she had that led to this outcome,” Rashatwar said.