Court to decide when 'murder' occurred in Pittsburgh beating
Posted: April 8, 2015 - 5:47am

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The Pennsylvania Supreme Court must decide whether a man who fatally beat a Pittsburgh woman should be sentenced to the maximum third-degree murder penalty in effect when she was beaten or the stiffer penalty in effect when she died 14 years later. Allegheny County prosecutors on Wednesday will argue against a lower court order overturning the 20- to 40-year sentence that 51-year-old Stevenson Rose is serving for the death of Mary Mitchell, of Pittsburgh. Rose was convicted of beating her in 1993, but she remained in a vegetative state until she died in 2007. The lower court agreed with Rose, that his conviction should carry the 10- to 20-year maximum in effect when the beating occurred. But prosecutors say the murder didn't "occur" until the woman died -- by which time the maximum penalty had doubled.