Thank you so much for your calls over the past weeks for fair sentencing for youth. It made a difference! In the bill reported out of the Conference Committee,  we stopped the 10 year setback for all lifers and we won a right to treatment/education/allowable minimum classification if applicable for those sentenced as juveniles for homicide.

THE BILL, HOWEVER, STILL CONTAINS EXTREME SENTENCING MEASURES FOR CHILDREN CONVICTED OF FIRST DEGREE MURDER. While it provides for initial parole eligibility at 20-30 years in felony murder cases, it enhances the sentences to 25-30 years in cases of premeditation, and to a mandatory 30 years in cases of cruelty and atrocity. Also, there is no right to counsel at parole hearings in the final bill.

The House and Senate voted yesterday to pass this bill, S.2246. The bill will move to the Governor’s desk TODAY

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PLEASE MAKE ONE FINAL CALL TO THE GOVERNOR and urge him to amend the bill before signing it.

1. *THE BILL SHOULD PROVIDE FOR A SENTENCE OF 20-30 YEARS TO LIFE FOR ALL FORMS OF JUVENILE FIRST-DEGREE MURDER.Treating different theories of murder differently ignores the fact that these are KIDS who generally act impetuously, without considering consequences. There should be NO enhanced sentencing for Extreme Atrocity and Cruelty and NO enhanced sentencing for premeditated murder! THEORIES OF MURDER DO NOT ACCOUNT FOR JUVENILE DEVELOPMENT AND BEHAVIOR.

2. *RIGHT TO COUNSEL and to ACCESS TO NECESSARY EXPERTS at their parole hearings. It will be impossible for these prisoners to mount an effective parole hearing on their own after so many years in prison.

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CALL THE GOVERNOR ASAP:

 Governor Deval Patrick, Phone: 617-725-4005
Office of the Governor Room 280 Boston, MA 02133
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Things are moving very quickly so we need you to CALL to Governor Patrick IMMEDIATELY to ask him to amend the bill.

*NOTE: These provisions ignore our SJC’s understanding of “the unique capacity of youth to change and be rehabilitated” and are inconsistent with the Court’s finding in Diatchenko, based on extensive scientific evidence and prior rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court, that “it is impossible to determine, at the time of sentencing, which youth are capable of rehabilitation and which are not.” The bill that is finally signed into law should provide for a minimum term of not less than 20 years nor more than 30 years for murder in the first degree committed by a person on or after the person’s fourteenth birthday and before the person’s eighteenth birthday.