Mayde if they'd sentenced him to FOUR life sentences,...

[tbburg]

What the absolute f**k is the matter with these people,...

Massachusetts Cop Was Killed by Career Criminal Out on Parole Despite Three Life Sentences

The Massachusetts Parole Board is under scrutiny after a local police officer was killed by a career criminal who was released despite serving a term of three concurrent life sentences.

Dominic Cinelli was serving time for shooting a security guard during an armed robbery to feed his heroin addiction when he told the board in November 2008 that he was a changed man, the Boston Globe reported.

Four months later the board unanimously voted to free Cinelli, but police say the 57-year-old returned to his ugly ways Sunday, fatally shooting Woburn police officer John Maguire, 60, while robbing a Kohl's department store. Cinelli also died in the shootout.

But critics say Cinelli isn't the only person to blame for Maguire's death.

"I don't know how any member of the Parole Board justifies that," Laurie Myers, president of Community Voices, a Chelmsford-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of crime victims, told the Globe. "He shouldn't have been out, and now there's another person dead."

Cinelli had a lengthy rap sheet filled with armed robberies, assaults and other offenses, had been serving three life sentences since 1976, and had chronic disciplinary problems while in prison including two escapes during which he committed crimes, the Globe reported.

Still, he won the board over by saying the deaths in the family, including his mother's, and drug counseling changed him, the paper reported.

"When you hear that somebody who had been serving three life sentences is released on parole and commits another violent crime that causes the death of a police officer, that causes us great concern," Mark K. Leahy, president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association and the Northborough police chief told the Globe.

John Grossman, the state's undersecretary of public safety and security, told the Globe that Gov. Deval Patrick ordered the Parole Board to review the decision.

"We're doing a complete look at what happened, and whatever amount of time it takes to do it right, we're going to take," he said.

Well,... too bad he died in the shootout. No doubt they would have had to sentence him to life in prison again if he had lived.

Link to story at Foxnews.com
Link to full article at Boston.com

 

[DeftwillP]

Of course Mass would have just given him the life sentence again. Death Penalty is wrong. Murdering babies is ok though.


Did I turn this into a cloak room politics/religion thing?

 

[joe_peters]

Well, give the parole board a break.

The guy obviously batted his eyes and wore a nice cologne to the hearing.

 

[5-90]

Were the life sentences concurrent or consecutive?

If they were concurrent, I can vaguely understand the idea of paroling him - but if they were consecutive, there is no farkin' way that he should have ever gotten out.

And people wonder why I favour the death penalty. Although it does remind me of the one time I was being selected for Jury Duty out here...

"Would you have any objection to sitting in trial on a capital case?"
"No."
"Would you have any objection to assessing the death penalty?"
"No."
"It's been said that 'The man who eats the meat is brother to the butcher.' If you're going to benefit from an action, you are just as ethically responsible for it as the man who does it. How thoroughly do you support the death penalty?"
"If you can convince me that someone needs to die, I'm perfectly willing to drop the hammer on him myself."

"Your honour, we thank this potential juror for his service, but we would like to dismiss him."

Damned peacenik hippie freaks. Some people must be removed from society for its safety. I'm just pragmatic enough to realise that.

Let's see - three life sentences for an assortment of violent crimes, and a discipline problem while he was locked up? And now he's got some sob story about deaths in the family and how drug rehab has "changed" him? I don't buy it. Let him rot.

Of course, with three life sentences hanging over his head, we are now obliged to bury him in a maximum-security grave...

 

[joe_peters]

So, will this murder count as a parole violation in Mass.?

 

[scully]

The governor will be reviewing the parole hearing tape, and possibly re-vamp the system.
We shall see what happens, if anything.

 

[joe_peters]

The governor will be reviewing the parole hearing tape, and possibly re-vamp the system.
We shall see what happens, if anything.

REALLLLLLLY????

Not meant for you, Scully, but for your governor.

 

[tbburg]

The governor will be reviewing the parole hearing tape, and possibly re-vamp the system.
We shall see what happens, if anything.

REALLLLLLLY????

Well, yeah, they have to find out why the guy wasn't paroled earlier. He spent over 30 years in the slam. Conventional wisdom says a life sentence should be about 7 years, so really, he should have been released around '99-'00, right?



Maybe if they rounded up all the parole board members and charged them with accessory to murder,....

 

[scully]

REALLLLLLLY????

Not meant for you, Scully, but for your governor.

Not my governor!
I'm on the better side of the MA/NH border.But I am a former Masshole though,so I am very familiar with the,lol, "Commonwealth".

 

[Jeepman401]

Being sentenced to more than one life term should automatically be rolled over into the death penalty. I would gladly travel the country and do it myself. What do you thing most states budgets would look like if all the prisoners serving more than one life sentence were removed from the population permanently? A brick of 22 ammo sent to each state would go a long way

 

[billyjp2]

Maybe if they rounded up all the parole board members and charged them with accessory to murder,....

This is the best idea i've heard

 

[Boatwrench]

I generally have a very liberal outlook, but do believe there are times when someone forfeits their right to walk among the civilized. The death penalty is just the tool for that.

Some people must be removed from society for its safety.

 

[5-90]

I generally have a very liberal outlook, but do believe there are times when someone forfeits their right to walk among the civilized. The death penalty is just the tool for that.

I've noted your "liberal bent" from time to time - but I figure that thirty years or so as a Coastie has tempered that with a rather pragmatic outlook.

My problem with the liberals isn't that they're liberal - but that they're more "Pollyanna Liberal" than anything else. No pragmatic thought whatever.

Then again, I've been compared to Cassandra far more often than anything else.

"How do you always come up with the worst-case scenario?"
"I practice."

 

[tbburg]

Update: apparently enough people got their panties in a twist about this that the poor miss-understood, overworked parole board members just had enough and had to quit.

The mass resignation Thursday of five board members who participated in a 2008 vote to parole Domenic Cinelli, a career criminal who killed a Woburn police officer Christmas weekend, will almost certainly reduce paroles to a trickle until Patrick replaces them, according to people familiar with the process.

link to story about parole system being revamped
I love the tone of this article. the writer seems genuinely upset that "Lifers"won't be able to get parole hearings until the parole board slots are re-filled, and also that likely candidates for the open slots will probably say no to future parole requests for murders. His major concern seems to be prison overcrowding.

quote from article: "...,so-called lifer hearings, mostly for inmates convicted of second-degree murder, who serve sentences of 15 years to life."
quote from article: "The two remaining board members cannot hold lifer hearings, but they can conduct the other sessions."

Further, the writer also seems upset that the new board will take into consideration(be forced to consider?) weather a violent offender would be likely to re-offend.

“Would you apply for a job if you knew that if you made one mistake, you were going to get fired?’’ Leslie Walker, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, a Boston-based group that provides civil legal services to inmates, said. “So who’s going to apply? People who don’t mind saying no.’’

Britt agreed. “My sense,’’ he said, “is the Parole Board will be very reluctant to release a ‘lifer’ or anybody who’s committed a serious violent crime if there’s even the slightest indication that they could do this again.’’,...

...,Patrick has also proposed a series of changes in state law that would increase the time served by third-time criminal offenders, while tightening a variety of parole eligibility requirements. The changes are intended to address repeat offenders like Cinelli, a habitual armed robber.

To which I would respond: Isn't that the WHOLE POINT?

 

[5-90]

Life w/o parole should be an automatic death sentence. Problem solved.

The idea of LWP (Life Without Parole) is that you are adjudged entirely too dangerous to be allowed back into civilisation. On that logic, if you should never be allowed back into polite company, the potentiality for that event should therefore be removed utterly.

And, as I've maintained for a good long time, if you can convince me that someone needs to die for the good of society I have no trouble dropping the hammer (or whatever) personally. I may be Draconian, but I am neither arbitrary nor capricious - so it does take some convincing. But it's certainly possible.

Some people need to die, just as some people need to be whacked upside the head on a regular basis just to get their minds right (for instance, most O-1s and E-1s. Some E-2s. E-5 through W-5 should be allowed to do this without repurcussions - as long as it can be justified to the CO.

(Similarly, in the civilian world, if you can justify the need for someone to be whacked in the head - and you fill that need - you should be able to get a walk from the judge.)

Yeah, that may sound a bit backwards. But, there are far more cases of "He needed that whack in the head" than there are "he needed killin'," no?

 

[srimes]

... Conventional wisdom says a life sentence should be about 7 years...

Really? Wow, I've lived over 4 lifetimes already. Maybe that's how we can reduce healthcare cost: anyone over 7 has already lived a full conventional life and doesn't need any more expensive healthcare.

 

[joe_peters]

Conventional wisdom says a life sentence should be about 7 years

I think those saying that are talking about MARRIAGE.

 

[casm]

Really? Wow, I've lived over 4 lifetimes already. Maybe that's how we can reduce healthcare cost: anyone over 7 has already lived a full conventional life and doesn't need any more expensive healthcare.

CAROUSEL!

 

[aintright]

there should be no life sentences. only death. give them 10 years to appeal, just to make sure they weren't wrongly convicted, then take them out back and put a bullet in their face.

 

[RichP]

Put a suicide pill in every lifers cell and let them decide.