BOSTON (SHNS) – The Supreme Judicial Court’s controversial Mattis decision earlier this year opened up the possibility of parole for as many as 216 inmates currently serving life sentences in Massachusetts. And in the process, it dropped a heavy workload on the Parole Board that some elected officials believe requires legislative intervention.
The high court ruled in January that it was a cruel or unusual punishment to impose a life sentence on certain emerging adults — those who were 18 to 20 years old when they committed their offense.
Applied retroactively, 160 incarcerated people became immediately eligible for parole with that ruling, a spokesperson for the Parole Board said in response to a News Service inquiry. A total of 216 “may be or become eligible” pursuant to Mattis, the spokesperson said.
The Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state’s public defender agency, responded by training and certifying around 40 lawyers to handle Mattis cases before the Parole Board, it said, while 35 to 40 other attorneys already handling so-called lifer hearings took on some cases.