13 May 2021 :
In Commonwealth v. Melvin Speight, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court vacated a Philadelphia trial court’s order that had reimposed a death sentence on Speight instead of enforcing a federal district court that had vacated the death penalty and remanded the case to impose a life sentence. The Court held that the trial court’s authority to act was limited to resentencing Speight to life.
On February 24, 1994, Speight, now 47, Black, was sentenced to death in Philadelphia County for the August 31, 1992 shooting deaths of two rival gang members
On March 7, 2017, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania vacated the death penalty and remanded the case to impose a life sentence. On March 20, 2019, Judge Streeter Lewis of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia reimposed a death sentence on Speight.
