NATICK — The family of Jennifer Perkins never expected to sit in on a parole board hearing for Leon Stewart, the man who murdered her in 2000. But that’s where they found themselves on Oct. 21, reliving the day the 20-year-old single mother was shot and killed.
Stewart was 18 years old when he fired several bullets into a parked car Perkins was in. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Perkins’ family expected he would die behind bars.
That changed in 2024 when a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision (Commonwealth v. Mattis) allowed Stewart, and about 200 other inmates convicted of first-degree murder, the possibility of parole. The court ruled that a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for persons 18 to 20 years of age was unconstitutional based on evidence that brains of “emerging adults” are less developed, particularly in terms of impulse control.
The hearing
Stewart was led into the Massachusetts Parole Board hearing room in handcuffs, two officers on either side of him. His hair and moustache were neatly trimmed. He wore a blue-checked Oxford shirt. His hands were cuffed to a belt around his waist…