The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Thursday declined to exercise special jurisdiction to address a constitutional challenge to the state's death penalty, but left the door open for questions about the cruelty of capital punishment to be brought in individual cases.

Death-row inmates Jermont Cox and Kevin Marinelli had asked the state's high court to use its so-called king's bench powers to declare the state's use of capital punishment unconstitutional following a sweeping legislative study outlining numerous flaws in sentencing decisions that included racial disparities and problems with ineffective assistance of counsel.

But in a one-page order on Thursday following oral arguments earlier this month, the justices declined to take the petitioners up on the opportunity to immediately address the issue.

Instead, the court said it was prepared to move ahead with "discrete review of properly presented claims" in individual cases.

Shawn Nolan, an attorney with the Federal Community Defender Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania representing Cox and Marinelli, told Law360 that his team was already moving forward with post-conviction proceedings before trial courts to raise their constitutional challenges.

"Obviously, we're disappointed that they wouldn't take jurisdiction, but they did leave that door open, and in both of these cases, Cox and Marinelli, these issues are pending in the lower courts already," Nolan said.

Assuming the trial courts reject their constitutional challenges, the cases would move automatically to the state Supreme Court for an appeal by right.

Cox and Marinelli face the death penalty following murder convictions, respectively, in Philadelphia and Northampton counties. They asked the justices in August 2018 to exercise extraordinary jurisdiction to consider the constitutionality of capital punishment.

The petition followed a non-partisan report commissioned by the state legislature and released in June 2018 outlining a number of problems with the state's use of capital punishment, including inadequate funding for defense counsel for indigent prisoners and the disproportionate number of defendants who face death penalties when their victim is white.

While Pennsylvania juries have handed down 441 death sentences since capital punishment was reinstated in the 1970s, 270 — more than half — have been overturned either on appeal or as a result of other post-conviction proceedings.

The state has not executed a prisoner since 1999, and Gov. Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on capital punishment after he took office in January 2015.

The justices initially agreed to hear the challenge from Cox and Marinelli last December, but said that as part of the case they would consider whether they had jurisdiction to strike down the death penalty unilaterally.

Ultimately joining Cox and Marinelli in their quest for an end to the death penalty in Pennsylvania was Philadelphia's reform-minded district attorney, Larry Krasner, who filed a brief with the high court pointing out that more than 70 percent of the death penalties returned in the city from 1978 through 2017 were overturned on appeal.

Krasner said in a statement on Friday that he was disheartened by the court's decision not to address the challenge.

"I am disappointed that the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has declined to address a constitutional issue that is literally a matter of life and death," he said.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro, meanwhile, urged the court to reject the challenge and leave it up to the General Assembly to address any flaws in the death penalty identified in the legislative commission's report.

A representative for Shapiro's office did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Friday afternoon.

Cox and Marinelli are represented by Shawn Nolan, Timothy Kane, Stuart Lev, Helen Marino and Leigh Skipper of the Federal Community Defender Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

The cases are Jermont Cox v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, case number 102 EM 2018, and Kevin Marinelli, case number 103 EM 2018, both before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

--Editing by Peter Rozovsky.