A 37-year-old man convicted in the death of a retired Philadelphia police officer has been resentenced to life in prison.
Aaron Smith was 17 years old when he was found guilty of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison for the 1998 shooting death of Frank King during a botched robbery right before Christmas.
Smith did not pull the trigger and was not carrying a gun at the time of the shooting.
He has since served 19 years in prison. On Tuesday, a Philadelphia judge resentenced Smith to 22 years to life. Because he has already served most of that sentence behind bars, Smith could be released in three years.
King's son told NBC10 that he was deeply disappointment by the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office recommendation to resentence Smith.
"It just shows you the DA's office has abandoned us," Ace King said. "We have actually been sitting in ... our own mental, emotional prison for 20 years."
But ending mass incarceration has been a top priority for District Attorney Larry Krasner, who vowed to reform the juvenile justice system after taking office earlier this year.
In a statement, the office extended renewed condolences to King's family and acknowledged "the re-traumatization families go through when resentencings of juvenile lifers take place" as a result of a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
That decision deemed life sentences for juveniles unconstitutional because the brains of young people are still developing well into their late teens and early 20s. As a result of their immature brains, they are "less capable of consequential thinking and more capable of rehabilitation," Krasner's office explained.
Smith is one of approximately 500 so-called juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania now facing resentencing. The other two gunman involved in King's death remain in prison without any possibility of parole.
