The First Street Journal has twice noted the case of Derek Lee, convicted of second degree murder for the killing of Leonard Butler in Pittsburgh. Under Title 18 §2502(b), second degree murder is defined to be “A criminal homicide constitutes murder of the second degree when it is committed while defendant was engaged as a principal or an accomplice in the perpetration of a felony.” The penalty for second degree murder in the Keystone State is specified as life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. That’s pretty simple: the murderer is already committing a crime, so even if he wasn’t necessarily planning on killing someone, he was already on the scene, already planning on committing a crime, and prepared to kill if he thought it necessary, even if you were not the person who pulled the trigger.

Whether you’re the guy who fires the fatal shot or not, you’re still a really bad guy, and there’s no good reason for you to ever be put back out on the streets with decent people again.

Derek Lee and a gentleman named Paul Durham broke into Mr Butler’s home. I’ll let The Philadelphia Inquirer give you the details:

In 2014, Lee and Paul Durham pushed their way into a Pittsburgh home armed with a handgun and Taser. Police said they went at the request of the spurned ex-lover of the man living there, Leonard Butler, 44.

Inside, Lee and Durham forced Butler and his girlfriend into the basement. They ordered them to their knees. Lee struck Butler with the gun and used the Taser on him before going upstairs with Butler’s watch.

So, Mr Lee was not only committing a crime, but a violent crime, as he pistol-whipped Mr Butler. This wasn’t just a burglary where the homeowner surprised the criminals, but one in which the criminals were actively attacking the victim.

In the basement, Butler lunged for Durham’s weapon, and in the struggle, Butler was shot and killed.

Both criminals were packing heat that day.

Well, the newspaper is never content at just giving us the facts, but wants to weave a sob story about poor, poor Mr Lee:

Lee grew up in Pittsburgh, a small, wiry boy, the youngest of three children in a close-knit family. He played baseball and basketball, and worked as a youth camp counselor at his grandmother’s church.

His father later moved to Ashtabula, Ohio, splitting the family across state lines. Lee went back and forth between them.

In his teens, Lee’s life shifted. He drifted into street life and graduated high school “by my teeth,” he said.

At that point, at least in the online version of the story, the Inquirer gives us a photo of a smiling Mr Lee, in his graduation gown and holding his diploma.

Have your heartstrings not yet been pulled? Are you not feeling sorry for Mr Lee yet? But the newspaper continues:

When Lee was 18, he and another man shot at a group of basketball players outside a college party. Although five players were injured, none of the bullets from Lee’s gun struck anyone. Lee was convicted of attempted criminal homicide and sentenced to seven to 14 years in prison.

When he was released, Lee’s family welcomed him home with a celebration and his mother’s seven-cheese macaroni. He was 25. He found work as a dishwasher, but struggled to stabilize his life, Lee said.

So, young Mr Lee and his buddies, for whatever their reasons, were armed, and shot into a group of young men outside a party, firing indiscriminately, trying at the very least to shoot some people, and probably hoping to kill some of them. And thus, that good young man, who “worked as a youth camp counselor at his grandmother’s church,” and suffered as the son in a broken home found himself exactly where he belonged: behind bars.

Well, I’m from a broken home, too, but somehow, some way, I never tried to kill anybody due to that.

Mr Lee was then a convicted felon. And that means premeditation when Mr Durham and he broke into Mr Butler’s home, because just by carrying a firearm, Mr Lee was committing a second degree felony under Title 18 §6105.

Then came the burglary and the murder. Mr Lee was a previously convicted felon, in the process of committing more felonies. Apparently his first stint in prison did not teach him the lesson it should have, as the second group of crimes occurred less than a year after he was released from his previous time behind bars.

Why, I have to ask, would any decent people want someone like Mr Lee back out on the streets?

The Inquirer continued with their sob story:

In prison again, Lee said he reached a breaking point. “I just hit that rock-bottom place where I knew I had to do something,” he said.

He turned to religion. He entered a chaplain’s program, and trained service dogs. He also appealed his case himself, and began mentoring incarcerated men serving long or life sentences.

“Society throws away people like us,” Lee said. “It … judges them by one of the worst moments in their life. But I truly believe that people can be redeemed.”

No, Mr Lee, “society” didn’t throw you away: you did that! One of the “worst moments of (his) life”? Mr Leonard didn’t get any further moments in his life; he’s stone-cold graveyard dead because of what Messrs Durham and Lee did.

Naturally, Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, wants to see the murderers previously sentenced under the second degree murder stature given a break:

(Mr Krasner) was joined by several criminal justice advocates, including Saleem Holbrook, executive director of the Abolitionist Law Center, and John Pace, associate director of reentry and engagement at the Youth Sentencing and Re-entry Project. Both men had once been sentenced to life in prison and were later released after U.S. Supreme Court rulings barred mandatory life sentences for juveniles and made those decisions retroactive.

Holbrook stressed that the hundreds of men and women incarcerated under the former law were waiting for an opportunity to be released and show they could contribute meaningfully to their communities.

“(S)how they could contribute meaningfully to their communities”? Yeah, uh huh, right. I have a bridge you can buy, too.

So, what’s the outcome? Mr Lee will have to be resentenced, and his new sentence could still be life, even life without the possibility of parole. But the decision in his case could mean that others in the Keystone State sentenced automatically to life without parole could have their cases reopened for more lenient terms. Some could even be sentenced to time already served, letting actual killers back out on the streets.

The Abolitionist Law Center does not believe anyone should be incarcerated at all, and would if they could opposes all prison sentences, and would, if they could, free every murderer, every rapist, every drug dealer, and every assailant locked up in Pennsylvania’s prisons.

But there’s one person in Mr Lee’s case who cannot be resentenced, and that’s Mr Butler: he was sentenced to death, executed on the spot, and there is no appeal from that.

Despite the efforts of the newspaper to paint Mr Lee as a basically good kid who just made a couple of forgivable mistakes, I remain unmoved. He has already proven himself to be a cancer on civilized life, and should never be allowed to menace decent people again.