December, 2024 was a banner month for executive clemency, and not just in Washington D.C., where President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 murderers. He also granted clemency for 1,500 other federally convicted criminals, and 2,500 inmates convicted of drug offenses.

Here at home in Massachusetts, the state Parole Board was busy at work, granting parole to 23 of the 26 murderers eligible for parole. Even more remarkable was that the board granted parole to each and every adult murderer who had killed when they were between the ages of 18 and 20 years old. The parole board went eight for eight.

Eleven of the decisions granting parole to murderers were released just before Christmas, delivering undeserved joy to convicted murderers and intensifying the grief and agony for families of victims. I was outraged that the state Parole Board chose to grant parole to these murder defendants, betraying surviving family members who believed that these killers — who deliberately planned and brutally murdered their loved ones — would never be released.

On July 29, 1986, 79-year-old Lewis Jennings was murdered, left strangled to death on the kitchen floor of his Middleboro home. Mr. Jennings had been badly beaten in a botched home invasion, concocted by Jeffrey Roberio and Michael Eagles. Mr. Jennings’ spine, ribs and neck were fractured, his elbow dislocated, and he suffered extensive injuries to his face.

In 1989, Roberio and Eagles were separately convicted of first-degree murder in this brutal slaying, and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. In 2024, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Mattis, that life without parole sentences are “unconstitutional” as applied to “emerging adults” between the ages of 18 and 20 at the time of the crime. Massachusetts is the only state in the country to have this new standard of so-called justice.

The SJC majority created this new constitutional right based on “contemporary standards of decency.” That is, their personal view of the way the world should be, with no deference to the Legislature and no regard for the victims of crime or the welfare of society. As a result, Eagles became eligible for parole. I testified at his initial hearing held on Jan. 8 before the parole board. I also testified twice against Eagles’ co-defendant Roberio on prior occasions. Roberio was 17 at the time of the murder, but had an earlier parole hearing because of the Commonwealth v. Diatchenko decision, which had moved the age of majority from 17 to 18 for murder prior to Mattis. Roberio has since been paroled.

Since Lewis Jennings’ murder in 1986, his family has endured endless heartache. Only families of these murder victims can truly appreciate how unfair the SJC Mattis decision, and the state parole board, have been to them. Jennings’ family has spent the past 39 years reliving the most painful details of the night their loved one was killed: in court, during appeals, and at parole board hearings. They have clung to the hope that Michael Eagles would remain in prison and never return to society.

The Mattis decision affects this family and 285 other victims’ families in Massachusetts. In Plymouth County, we have 28 families to support through this painful process. These families have to come to grips with the reality that these defendants are now up for release, and potentially will be walking our streets someday once again.

The blanket granting of parole without any significant recognition or consideration of the suffering of the victims is at best ill-considered. At worst, it disregards the part of the parole statute that requires that not only if released, a prisoner will not violate the law, but in addition, the release is “not incompatible with the welfare of society.” Using the possibility of parole, and the excuse that the murderer was a young adult as a reason for granting parole turns the parole option into an eventual get-out-of-jail-free card. The fact that a murderer has done rehabilitative programs, or furthered their education, is not sufficient enough to grant parole.

The welfare of society must demand more; we must demand that the gubernatorial-appointed parole board demonstrate real compassion and understanding for the victims and for the welfare of society. To the extent that murderers deserve compassion and understanding, the normalization and glorification in this narrative must end. Those who want, can voluntarily visit murderers in prison, serving the lifetime that they were sentenced to spend — the lifetime they stole away from the true victims of crime and their families. The welfare of society deserves no less.

Timothy J. Cruz is District Attorney for Plymouth County