We, the
comrades of Unit 1012, are truly well aware that once the death penalty is
abolished, the ACLU Demons will want to end LWOP.
We, the comrades of Unit 1012: The VFFDP, DO NOT TRUST them at all and we know that they
are nothing but liars who value the lives of murderers and evildoers, with the
plan on putting innocent people’s lives at risk of getting murdered. These
Anti-Death Penalty Activists are all the ACLU
Demons.
We present this case in Boston to proof what we mean….
Should life without parole be eliminated?
By Michael P. Norton, State House News Service
UPDATED: 03/01/2019 10:52:46 AM EST
BOSTON -- Now
that the landmark 2018 criminal justice reform law is on the books, lawmakers
are exploring additional ideas and "even harder work," as Sen. Jamie
Eldridge put it Thursday, including the possibility of releasing prisoners
serving life-without-parole sentences for the most serious crimes, including
murder.
Eldridge and
Rep. Mary Keefe on Thursday hosted a meeting of the Criminal Justice Reform
Caucus where the focus was on legislation eliminating life sentences without
the possibility of parole. Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project said a record
206,000 people are serving life terms in prisons across the nation. That's more
than the entire prison population in 1970, he said.
In
Massachusetts, 1,018 people in 2016 were serving life sentence without the
possibility of parole.
"There's
beginning to be increasing questioning of these policies around the
country," Mauer said, adding that "people age out of the high crime
years" and pose "very much diminished" public safety risks in
their older years.
Under
legislation sponsored by Rep. Jay Livingstone (H 3358) and Sen. Joseph Boncore,
all people serving life sentences would have the opportunity for a parole
hearing after 25 years, a change in law that would apply retroactively so that
it would affect people currently incarcerated. Both bills are titled "An
Act to Reduce Mass Incarceration."
Noting the
number of people serving life sentences has "skyrocketed," Eldridge
said the bill deserves attention, although he told the News Service after the
briefing that as chairman of the Judiciary Committee he needs to fully review
the bill and declined to comment on his position on the legislation.
"We
addressed some of the non-violent mandatory minimum drug crimes, repealing them
last session," Eldridge said, referring to a law that also
emphasized treating offenders for substance use addiction. "But now we need to get into, in some ways, the more
nuanced discussions around people who are in prison for violent crimes and
whether we should be changing the sentencing for some group of those
individuals."
A provision
in the 2018 law permitting medical parole, Livingstone said, shows lawmakers
are open to changes that reduce incarceration costs while taking into account
the danger that individuals pose if released from prison.
Asked about
her position on the bill, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan, who attended
Thursday's briefing, told the News Service that she was still gathering
information on the topic. In 1980, Ryan was the victim of a vicious assault and
a witness to the murder of her then-boyfriend.
Ryan said the
life-without-parole sentence is reserved for first degree murder, and outlined
considerations for lawmakers weighing the bill.
"There's
all of those considerations of - what are we trying to accomplish through
incarceration? How has somebody behaved while in custody? And as is clearly
true, none of us would ever want to be defined by the worst act of our
lives," said Ryan, a veteran prosecutor whose district
spans 54 cities and towns and includes a quarter of the state's population. "And then you have to weigh against that the loss
that victims' families have suffered and sometimes it isn't just the immediate
loss, it's the continuing piece. So, many of the things you heard about that
continued for years when someone's in custody, obviously the same thing is
happening on the other side. So it is a balance. And then obviously our overall
goal is the protection of the public safety and the concern about - what does
real rehabilition mean? When and is someone ready to be back out in society,
while the rest of us are keeping folks safe?"
Livingstone,
who attracted 27 co-sponsors to his bill, noted it's been 22 years since the
last commutation of a sentence for a person serving life without parole.
Commutations must be recommended by governors, and approved by the eight-member
Governor's Council. He also said the bill would apply to convicted murderers,
people with stacked sentences and those convicted under the "three
strikes" law.
According to
backers of the Livingstone and Boncore bills, Massachusetts has a lower overall
incarceration rate than most other states but ranks second among all states for
the highest percentage of its prisoners serving life-without-parole sentences.
The number of
incarcerated men over the age of 60 increased 41 percent between 2010 and 2018,
while the overall prison population declined by 18 percent, according to
Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts, and it's up to three times more
expensive to house an elderly prisoner in the general population.
The
proclivity to commit crime is "highly age dependent," the group said
in literature distributed at the event, adding, "The peak age is in one's
early to mid-20s, and continues to decline as one ages. It makes little sense
to mandate that a person in their twenties must stay in prison for the rest of
their life without a chance to later determine if they still pose a threat to
public safety. Incarcerating people who pose no threat is a waste of
resources."
Membership in
the caucus co-chaired by Eldridge and Keefe has increased in the past four
years, Eldridge said, and the "standing room only" attendance at
Thursday's briefing "reflects the fact that as much as we passed a major
reform last session, there's still a need and an interest and enthusiasm for
more reform."
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