Since 2015, the Parole Board of Massachusetts has been known for its delays in getting lifer parole decisions to those who have had hearings before the full Board. In Mass, most of the men and women with life sentences who have these parole reviews are predominantly prisoners convicted of or pieading guilty to second degree murder, involving an actual taking of a life.

Lifer hearings are public (and anyone can attend) where the Board is to consider if the petitioner is no longer a threat to society. The hearings are intended to give petitioners a second chance. Ideally, people should have the opportunity to present how they have changed behind bars, and make a case for how they can productively and healthily complete their sentence in the community, if granted parole. While I have written often about the ongoing parole problems in the Commonwealth for DigBoston, Truthout, and Boston Magazine, many studies point to parole as an important public safety tool.

During Gloriann Moroney’s tenure as Board chair in 2020, these dalays (from actual hearing to receiving a decision) have continued to be problematic, and this year her Board took an average of 225 days or 7 montrhs from hearing to decisions, as Gordon Haas points out in his 2020 Parole Decisions for Lifers. In spite of repeated public records requests to the Board to find out more about these delays, the Norfolk Lifers Group was unable to ascertain pertinent information.

I sent my own public records request on August 20th, 2021, asking to see the decisions of 40 people who had gone before the Board for hearings between June and December, 2020. I was essentially told that they were all posted or had not been decided yet. That means, unless I copied a name incorrectly, unless the Board made a mistake, or if they have not yet posted those persons’ records of decision on their website, the 38 people listed below had hearings at least 8 months ago but some had hearings 14 months ago as of August 26, 2021. And they have not received a decision.

This backlog is unconscionable. Particularly when you realize someone who waits for their decision, either could have been released much more quickly (a positive vote) or more likely (a negative vote), has had no direction from the Board during that wait and no knowledge of what programs or education the Board recommends. Months are wasted in the Department of Correction at more than $70,000 a year per prisoner.

An interesting piece of data about lifers, says retired professor and stats guru Jerry Breecher, is that “the average individual has been incarcerated 24 years before they are first granted parole. That’s just the average – many are still incarcerated after thirty of forty years.”

As Haas says in his report, “While there is no required time for notification for those approved for paroles, the continued long delays between Hearing Dates and Dates of Decision only serves to lengthen the time of incarceration before a lifer is moved to lower security, released to the street or to another jurisdiction.” As the Coalition for Effective Public Safety (CEPS) pointed out in a 2021 letter to Gov. Baker, “the [parole] statute anticipates that the decisions would be completed within sixty days so that they would be issued prior to a person’s eligibility date.”

HEARINGS were held in the month listed, for the people listed below. Also important to know, there are many people who sought parole in these months who did receive records of decision. I have put the number of months in parenthesis, i.e the wait time from parole hearing date to August 26, 2021. (I AM STARRING NAMES AS DECISIONS ARE POSTED BY THE BOARD, ALL AFTER AUG. 26, 2021. Analyzing what this means will come later)

June 2020    (14)                               Nov. 2020 (9)
Damian Lamb                                  Kashmoni Murphy *
Charles Jaynes*                               Stephen Emmons*
                                                       Anthony Freeman*
July 2020   (13)                              David Proulx*
Richard Desrosiers*                          Arthur Remillard*
James Bing*

Aug, 2020  (12)                                      
Manuel Alarcon*
Patrick Nerette                                 Dec. 2020 (8)
Frank Robinson III*                            Charles Chase*
Justice Ainooson                             Anibal Izquierdo*
William Malloy                                  Patrick Werner
Gualberto Cruz*                               Bardillo Rosado Diaz
John McCabe*                                James O’Neill*
James Briere                                   Marcus Perry*
                                                       David Jones
                                                       Hector Robles
Sept. 2020 (11)
Celestino Colon
Wayne Miranda
Stanley St. Dic
Robert Guertin* 
Lorenzo Perdomo*
Eddy Lopez*
Steven Sargent

Oct. 2020 (10)
John Brennan*
Kurt Huenefeld*
Salah Shakoor*
David Stowell*
Thomas King*
Lawrence Bruen

What complicates this issue is that the Board is issuing “abbreviated” (i.e. 2 page) decisions, almost exclusively to people who have positive decisions. They did this first, saying expedidited decisions were helpful in the age of COVID. However, they have continued abbreviated decisions without specifically acknowledging so. This might make Moroney’s 7 months seem better than her rate from 2019. However, this practice seems to allow the Board to issue positive decisions much more quickly than negative ones. Hence, it is likely that many of the people on the above list are waiting in prison without any direction or idea what is going on with their case.

As CEPS wrote in its 2021 letter to the Governor, outlining many issues that need to be acted upon to improve the functioning of parole, here are some actions needed on the delays:

• There must be an action plan to address this backlog of cases in order to get caught up.
• If the Parole Board’s response to not getting its work done in a timely way is that there are not enough Board members, the Legislature has provided a safety valve for this situation. MGL c. 27 § 7 allows the Secretary of EOPSS to name up to three retired judges or retired Board members to the Parole Board, temporarily, when “a significant number of cases is pending and has been pending for a least thirty days and . . . the active members of the parole board could not dispose of these cases within sixty days.”
• There is also a bill pending in the Legislature to expand the number of people on the Parole Board to nine. This bill, H.4607 in the House Ways and Means Committee, should be passed and enacted now.

In a very unsurprising turn of events, the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union (MCOFU) plans to sue the Baker administration after it issued its vaccination mandate on August 19.

The vaccination mandate reads: “Today, Governor Charlie Baker issued an executive order requiring all Executive Department employees to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination on or before October 17, 2021. The COVID-19 vaccine is the best and most effective way people can protect themselves, their loved ones and their community from the virus.”  This includes correction officers, state police, parole personnel and “any agency, bureau, department, office, or division of the Commonwealth within or reporting to such an executive office of the commonwealth.”

MCOFU, in a letter to its union members, i.e. all state correctional officers, wrote that “it is an individual choice for each person, uniformed or civilian, whether they choose to receive (the vaccine).”

Anthony Benedetti, Chief Counsel for the Committee for Public Council Service, which provides legal representation for those unable to afford an attorney in all matters in which the law requires the appointment of counsel, tweeted a significant phrase in the MCOFU letter. He wrote, “The Massachusetts Correction Officers’ Federated Union, which represents guards and officials in the state’s prison system, said it ‘does not agree with a forced vaccination’ and is pursuing legal options against the governor’s office. 

They stated their intentions to sue the Baker administration in the following way: “The MCOFU Executive Board has begun the process of pursuing all legal and legislative remedies at our disposal, up to and including an injunction in court.”

In February, 2021, I asked the question WHY ARE HALF OF MASS CORRECTION OFFICERS REFUSING THE COVID VACCINE? in an article for DigBoston, which was the first in Massachusetts to report this issue.

The answer, at the time, still holds true: “Even as the pandemic rages in prisons, vaccines and masks are seen as ‘a sign of weakness’. While COVID was raging, 53% of DOC staff and correctional officers (COs) “refused the vaccine.”

As I reported, “According to state data from a Feb. 10 Special Master’s Report, commissioned to fairly assess the situation from all angles, 3,074 DOC employees, or more than half the staff who work for the DOC, have “refused” the vaccine. Some of the COs possibly got the vaccine elsewhere, DOC’s attorney Stephen Dietrich said at the Feb. 9 hearing, although he did not disclose any numbers.” That information is still the same today per the latest August report. 

Baker’s August 19 announcement said, “Executive Department employees who are not vaccinated or approved for an exemption as of October 17, 2021 will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination.”

UPDATE (July 29): For the first time in Gov. Charlie Baker’s two terms, on July 28, the Governor’s Council rejected the governor’s pick for the Parole Board in a 5-3 vote. Voting for nominee Sherquita HoSang were Councilors Joseph Ferreira, Mary Hurley, and Terrence Kennedy. Voting against were Marilyn Devaney, Paul DePalo, Robert Jubinville, Christopher Iannella, and Eileen Duff. Duff, in an email said, “The MA Parole Board has been put on notice that things need to change dramatically and fast. Justice delayed is Justice denied and the citizens of the Commonwealth are asking for The board to do their jobs in an efficient and fair way which frankly isn’t much to ask.” 

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This is a travesty, again. Read my article on the newest Parole Board applicant about to be voted in by the Governor’s Council of Massachusetts. 

The article at DigBoston begins:

“I am not sure you have done enough homework to be sitting in this seat.”

Those were the words of Governor’s Councilor Eileen Duff on July 21, spoken to Massachusetts Parole Board nominee Sherquita HoSang during a three-hour long hearing, after HoSang said that she had never attended a Parole Board hearing in person or read any parole decisions regarding life-sentenced prisoners (that are published on the Parole Board website). MORE

Joe Irizarry featured (center) with family and friends, July 2020 at his sister’s house

Please see my newest article at DIGBoston, HIRED TO HELP END LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE, SHOWING WHY SECOND CHANCES ARE NEEDED. It details Joseph Irizarry, the newest member of CELWOP, the Campaign to End Life Without Parole, and begins:

““People need to understand how much impact formerly incarcerated people can have on the community,” said Joseph Irizarry, the newly hired community organizer for the Campaign to End Life without Parole in Massachusetts (CELWOP). CELWOP (which this reporter participates in) did a statewide search for an organizer before it hired Irizarry.” More

William Allen in an undated photo. (Photo courtesy of Att. Kristine McDonald, posted WBUR)

Today, a surprise turn of events occurred in the 4th hour of merely the second commutation hearing held for a lifer in more than a decade. William Allen, who has served twenty-seven years of a first-degree life sentence, must have been as surprised as the rest of us when  Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz made headlines with “Today I am taking the unprecedented step in supporting [Allen’s] petition for commutation.”

No one serving a life-without-parole sentence has been granted a commutation since 1997. The Mass Advisory Board of Pardons (the Parole Board) hears these cases and then forwards successful ones to the Governor.

Having the DA support a commutation is certainly unusual. But Cruz mentioned how this is a “rare case,” and he was asking [the Board] to recommend to Gov. Baker that Allen’s petition be forwarded.

Thomas Koonce, who had a commutation hearing on Oct. 27, 2020, and was approved by the Board of Pardons, is still waiting for the Governor to sign off and commute his first-degree life sentence to second-degree with parole eligibility.

Allen, who was charged with armed robbery and the felony murder of Purvis Bester in 1994, received a life-without-parole sentence as a joint venturer. He has admitted that he participated in the robbery but his co-defendent committed the murder, took a plea, served a second-degree sentence, and is now out on parole.

These factors plus the fact that Allen made “a strong case” for himself as Board member Tonomy Coleman and others noted, may be enough for Allen’s sentence to be commuted. Once the Parole Board votes to send his petition to Governor Charlie Baker, the Governor has a year to sign off on the petition. Then Allen will have to seek parole from the Board.

A recent Massachusetts Bar Association Clemency Task Force report pointed out the woeful lack of commutations (reduction of sentence), and pardons (forgiveness of the underlying conviction) in Massachusetts and made recommendations to the Governor.

At today’s hearing, all the Board members commented on the progress and transformation as well as the numerous programs that Allen had completed behind bars. Board member Tina Hurley did specifically mention his powerful work ethic, to which he responded “I try to do a good deed a day.”

Allen, who has been active in a particularly important program for his development, the Companion Program, told a story that detailed his growth. He said that before he became a companion at Old Colony, he helped out at Bridgewater Hospital. There he met Eddie, who was in his 60’s, relegated to the infirmary with slight dementia. Eddie wasn’t allowed out of the unit, said Allen, but one day Allen heard him singing and so he started singing with him. “I saw him dancing, and then I started dancing with him,” he said. In 2004, Allen became Eddie’s companion. “We were The Odd Couple. He was an old white guy.” William is a Black man, now in his late 40’s.

Since then, he has been a companion to seven men. Chair Gloriann Moroney complimented him on helping people feel less alone.

Allen talked about how he thought about Bester every day and lived his life in a way that “honors” him. Allen wants to help young people like his son, whom he feels he abandoned to the streets and is currently incarcerated.

“He’s a very good candidate for commutation,” said DA Cruz.