Governor Deval Patrick plans on Monday to propose broad legislation that would sharply reduce the number of teenagers sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder convictions, his aides said.
The changes would allow some of these offenders to get parole hearings as soon as 15 years after their incarceration, and even sooner in some cases in which, for example, the offender did not pull the trigger or otherwise kill the victim. Parole boards would still have discretion to keep them behind bars for life.
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More taxe's, softer crimminal laws. What do people see in this guy?
Oh, the dream that if we tax a lot more, it will start looking like something out of Star Trek around here, no crime, no guns. You know, the usual Utopian dream. Sort of like dreaming about winning the lottery.
Great idea, let's raise taxes, confiscate the guns and release more criminals into society, what can possibly go wrong?
That about sums up the week. Thank you.
Be sure to encourage more crimes by wacko's by performing free sex-change operations once you are in jail!
the facts, circumstances and probability to recommit crime based on mental state and environmental influences should all be considered important factors in releasing a murderer. Not everyone who kills does it out of pure malice. I feel that IF a kid commits a heinous crime like the guy in the Halloween movies maybe freedom shouldnt be an option. but I also feel that if they go through serious psychological counseling, neuropsych testing, job training, medication then maybe they can slowly work their way to a "normal" life. But to the families who lost their loved one their is no normal life.
No they shouldn't. [be considered]
Kills is one thing, murders is a different story, people really should learn the difference. You KILL a person in self defense, legal. You murder a person and go to jail.
Ok, if you let them out, then fine, we all get to keep our guns, no bs regulations. Deal.
I can see if you didn't pull the trigger, not life without parole, but at 17yrs of age you damn well know right from wrong if you kill someone.
The problem in the inner cities...murder is nothing to them, because the sentence is not servere enough.
I agree with you. This law he is trying to propose is stemmed from a lot of injustice in the sentencing. There is a 30 something year old woman on you tube who has been in jail since she was a teen for killing her "escort". The problem with trying to be fairer on some is that a loop hole is created for everyone else.
oh, but they want MANDATORY sentences for gun possesion violations, no wishy washy sentencing based on cirucumstances with that!
Dear Governor Patrick: While your intention to free these grown men who were sentenced to life for murder as teens seems noble you are forgetting at least in one case the raw brutality of the murder of one victim. A teenager who was lurid into a nearby wood by a neighborhood fellow teen who coldly had planned the murder of his victim. The teen murderer had stashed a baseball behind a tree and when his schoolmate was not looking he grabbed the bat and smashed the unsuspecting victim in the head till he fell to the ground. He left his teen victim lying on the ground and it is suspected that this teen victim was lying paralyzed for at least 16 hours before he died alone in the woods. His killer was 15 years old. He knew right from wrong. This was labeled a thrill murder. I feel that murderer of this teen has no right to ever walk the streets as a free man due to the horrific nature of the crime he commited.
I think if you read the article carefully, you would find that this extreme brutality would be considered in the judge's decision. I''d have him executed if the death penalty were allowed. But not all murders are the same and can a muderer finally be rehabilitated and not be a threat to society? You have to ask this question and deal with iit. This is not being weak and "liberal." If a murderer is no longer a threat, then what is the point of keeping him in prison except for punishment only? Prisons are supposedly "Correctional Instituions." But of Course. (Cough, cough.)
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Why do Devalue and the moonbats love rapists and murders more than decent citizens?
Cause they are not the brightest bulbs in the pack and are scared to death of guns?
Looks like Patrick wants gun control so that none of us can defend (make that protect our families) when he lets the killers out of prison. Glad that I never voted for him. So when a second time around killer threatens your unprotected family, what are you going to do? How long will it take the police to get to your house after you have called them?
Well long enough that if you have survived, you might have settled down enough to be able say your name without stammering, your wife, maybe not so much.
"The police are just minutes away, when seconds count!"
"To protect and to serve" Not really, no legal duty to protect anyone. Never have figured out what they serve?
Hey, Patrick and I are sort of on the same page on this! I also want the number of teenagers sentenced to life sharply reduced ... because I want fewer murders committed!
What? Not exactly Patrick's plan?
Tom Reilly, when he was Middlesex District attorney in 1987 put 17 year old Daniel LaPlante away for life with no parole for a crime he could not have committed. He was attending his neice's birthday party in Fitchburg when the triple murders were committed in Townsend Ma, where Daniel lived. He is still serving time at Norfolk Correctional at 42 years of age. He had no previous record of violence but the Boston Herald had him guilty well before the actual trial. The jury pool was by then thoroughly polluted by these newspaper articles which increased readership for the Herald but rendered LaPlante a serious injustice by trial by media. If anyone deserves release it is this innocent man.
Tom also put away a former altar boy, Edmund O’Brian, for a crime he could not have committed if you take into account his background as an altar boy and with no prior criminal record of any kind. Thank you, Tom Reilly. I bet you also sleep well. Edmund’s father accused Reilly of being a liar.
CORRECTION: His name is Edward O'Brian.
This article states clearly at least twice that the US Supreme Court ruled that sentancing juveniles to life without parole is unconstitutional using the same criteria as those applied to adult murders. The proposals described here are in resonse to that ruling. Yet all the gun lovin' Deval hatin' commentors use this article to bring in the gun issue and vilify Deval Patrick. And you wonder why "liberal elites" think people like you are shallow minded ... you apparently can only see the parts of the artcles that you want to. I'm with Giermund; there are lots of states that are reliably red.... and roomy too. Pick one, move there.