DA to offer new sentence to juvenile lifer Songster, 44

The District Attorney's Office on Monday reversed course and agreed to offer a new sentence to convicted murderer Kempis Songster, 44, one of 300 people in Philadelphia serving unconstitutional sentences of life without parole.

Songster's case bounced back to the Court of Common Pleas, before Judge Kathryn Lewis, who is overseeing the so-called "juvenile lifer" cases, after a federal judge last week admonished the District Attorney's Office for making uniform offers to the inmates. The office agreed to drop an appeal of his order and proceed with re-sentencing Songster, who is in his 29th year of a life sentence for the 1987 murder of another teenager.

Assistant District Attorney Chesley Lightsey told the judge she had not planned to make an offer because it would not make Songster immediately eligible for parole. District Attorney Seth Williams has offered all inmates who were at least 15 when they committed their crimes a new sentence of 35 years to life. But Songster's attorney, Douglas Fox, said he and his client wanted to hear the offer.

The cases are back in the courts as a consequence of Montgomery v. Louisiana, a U.S. Supreme Court decision in January that made retroactive the court's ban on automatic life-without-parole sentences for juveniles. Songster's potential rejection of the offer would lead to the first contested resentencing in Philadelphia of a juvenile lifer.

Lightsey said an offer would be ready by Nov. 21.