In 2024, Massachusetts voters effectively elected a new Governor’s Council.
Five previous members were re-elected—Paul DePalo, Joseph Ferreira, Tara Jacobs, Christopher Iannella, and Terrence Kennedy—while three new candidates won seats. They were Mara Dolan, and for the first time in the council’s history, two women of color—Tamisha Civil and Eunice Zeigler.
The Governor’s Council is the oft-maligned eight-member body that weighs in on all the governor’s judicial nominees, as well as on other court officials and picks for the state Parole Board. According to its charge, the council also has the last word on pardons and commutations. A pardon removes the underlying conviction, while a commutation is a reduction in a court-ordered sentence.
Elections for councilors take place every two years, with each councilor representing a particular geographic district. The Massachusetts legislature’s website clarifies that a district includes about 900,000 residents and covers five state Senate districts.
But despite a re-energized membership, it’s not clear that much has changed in the past two years, since BINJ published a revealing three-part series about this obscure but powerful group. Revelations in those articles concerned the council’s lack of transparency and communication with constituents, ethical issues, and the body’s function as a rubber stamp for governor-nominated candidates.
Two years later, voting down a nominee is still no easy feat.
Since Maura Healey took her post as governor in January 2023, she has sent six nominees for the Parole Board to the Governor’s Council. From a public records request, we also learned that she has nominated 104 judges to the bench (our inquiry required staff to copy voting records for each nominee, since the council does not digitize votes).
Only one of the 110 nominees during Healey’s tenure has been voted down. On May 20, councilors rejected Vincent DeMore, who was up for a position on the Parole Board.
The battle over DeMore
Councilor Kennedy chaired the open meeting in the State House council chamber on April 22 in which DeMore testified. All the councilors had previously met with the nominee, but in the open meeting, both those who supported and opposed him had their say. DeMore also gave a five-minute speech, and councilors questioned the candidate publicly. The meeting was recorded.
Councilor Jacobs asked DeMore why he wanted to be on the board. In response, the nominee said that it would enable him to “marshal areas of expertise,” including his 12 years of experience with the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office. He also cited his work with indigent clients and stated that his “experience with the Army as a special victims’ counsel [was] all about trauma-informed approaches.” Ultimately, DeMore said, the Parole Board offered him the opportunity “to have a greater systemic impact” and help his “community.”
DeMore noted he’d never been to a parole hearing or watched a hearing online for any life-sentenced prisoner. Parole hearings, which are conducted for all people seeking parole, help the board determine if the person is a threat to public safety and if they have benefited from their time behind bars. If they qualify, they earn a conditional release to the free world where they then live under strict supervision for the remainder of their sentence. Lifer parole hearings are open to the public and video recordings are available.
Those who testified against DeMore (including this reporter) found it problematic that he had not shown an interest in attending any prior hearings. Several people echoed a letter written by Olivia Dubois, a clinical social worker who founded Beyond Defense, a resource which aims to integrate social workers into legal advocacy teams.
Overall, opponents said DeMore lacked “professional experience working directly with people impacted by parole,” and argued he was aiming for a judgeship and unwilling to commit to a five-year board tenure. They additionally charged that he lacked expertise and “direct experience understanding adolescent/emerging adult brain development” and substance use disorders.
There were also statements made to the effect that the Parole Board has enough representation from “law enforcement,” and doesn’t need a prosecutor. Instead, advocates want to see more members with backgrounds in psychology, social work, or forensics, or someone with lived experience, i.e. a formerly incarcerated candidate.
The vote on DeMore was originally scheduled for May 6. According to State House News Service (SHNS), though, the governor’s pick did not have a majority of councilors behind him, and so Healey pulled the vote.
The shooting on Memorial Drive
Less than a week after the DeMore vote was postponed, on May 11 the Cambridge police reported that Tyler E. Brown was “allegedly in possession of an assault-style rifle, which he was actively firing in an erratic fashion at vehicles in the roadway” on Memorial Drive. Officials later confirmed that he shot and critically injured two bystanders while others fled for their lives. MassLive reported that Brown was eventually “subdued by a Massachusetts State Police trooper and a former Marine, who shot him several times.”
The tragedy was reported by some as “an outrageous act that was entirely preventable,” with the Boston Herald leading the charge. The tabloid and others criticized Brown’s sentencing judge for leniency, and for giving him only five to six years instead of the possible 10 to 12 allowed by law. The Parole Board was also knocked for granting Brown parole last year after he was convicted of “trying to kill Boston police officers in 2020.”
Others had concerns as well, though they didn’t make the five o’clock news. Derek Washington, a life-sentenced prisoner at MCI-Shirley, wrote to me in an email that “Tyler Brown exposed skeletons that the Department of Correction (DOC) has been working for years not to let be seen when he had a severe mental collapse on Memorial Drive.” Washington continued: “Those skeletons exposed the total lack of mental health treatment or services provided by the DOC to the incarcerated population.”
These diverging lines of thought—that incarcerated individuals need either more help or more severe punishments—naturally surfaced in the looming debate over appointments. Prior to the Memorial Drive shooting, Gov. Healey had already been accused by the tough-on-crime crowd of having a lenient Parole Board, and was attacked with accusations like, “Why do victim impact statements from family members and pushback from prosecutors bear so little weight?”
The Herald suggested that if a prosecutor like DeMore would have been on the board, Brown never would have been released.
The vote
Healey went to bat for her nominee.
On May 18, two days before the rescheduled DeMore vote, Gov. Healey sent a letter to the Governor’s Council. She didn’t specifically mention the Brown shooting, but rather tried to dispel criticisms of DeMore. The governor reiterated her support, framed him as both a defense attorney and a seasoned prosecutor, mentioned the importance of DeMore’s work with victims, cited “public safety” twice, and wrote that she understood “we are all working towards a stronger, safer Massachusetts.”
On the day of the actual vote, Healey spoke to councilors during their assembly for 10 minutes. Though the lieutenant governor presides over these meetings, 33-year councilor Iannella said later in a phone interview that it is uncommon for the governor to make such an appearance. In her remarks, Healey said the board needs someone who “will center the voices of victims and seriously consider the impacts to public safety in each and every decision.”
The three councilors who planned to vote for DeMore spoke for another 25 minutes—also uncommon. Mixed in with support of DeMore, Councilor Ferreira said about Brown and the Cambridge shooting, “And the Parole Board lets him out? After three years? Something’s wrong with our system.”
In her support of DeMore, Councilor Civil said, “I want to make sure what happened to that innocent victim in Cambridge never happens again.”
Checks and balances vs. rubber stamps
None of the councilors who voted against DeMore spoke out during the May 20 assembly. Asked to explain their decisions, they said their votes spoke for themselves.
Iannella noted that his vote had been well-publicized. He said he has always advocated for more members from “social science backgrounds,” and feels extensive mental health and substance use expertise are necessary.
Councilor Dolan said that while she prioritizes public safety, DeMore did not address “the issue of the wrongful denial of parole.” “Keeping people in prison who are no longer threats,” she added, “does not make sense either.”
Councilor DePalo indicated ahead of the vote that he would go against DeMore “because the nominee lacks expertise to evaluate whether a prisoner would be a good fit for parole.”
Councilor Jacobs told the State House News Service, “The board could also benefit from someone who ‘wants to be there.’” Despite her asking DeMore why he wanted the job, Jacobs said the answer remained unclear.
Councilor Zeigler was not in attendance. So when Councilor Kennedy concluded his remarks in support of DeMore, he recognized that there would be four “no” votes, and said, “I wish the governor’s office good luck in finding someone else who’s going to apply after this.”
The media weighs in
As BINJ reported in January, local news outlets have fueled misinformation about parole and the Mass Parole Board. A lot of criticism has focused on the body’s handling of Mattis decisions, relating to those eligible for parole following the state Supreme Judicial Court’s ruling involving emerging adults initially sentenced to life without parole.
The Boston Globe echoed Councilor Kennedy’s frustration. A May 28 editorial headline read: “Finding the next Parole Board member just got harder.” The subtitle: “Turning down a decent public servant for no good reason is not a good look for the Governor’s Council.”
To be clear: This was the first of more than a hundred nominations by Healey they had rejected.
I asked Councilor DePalo about the editorial, and how he feels the system should work. He said that “public scrutiny is appropriate.” I also asked Councilor Dolan why she thinks there haven’t been more votes against the governor’s nominees. “Because she is nominating really good people,” Dolan said.
The process of identifying nominees is extensive, and significant vetting happens before a candidate gets to the governor. BINJ covered this in April and noted that “councilors approved all but one of former Gov. Charlie Baker’s 350 nominees in an eight-year stretch, with only five people withdrawing their nominations when they realized they would not be approved.” Occasionally there is a rare divided vote, which happened this year during Healey’s tenure on April 1.
The body’s responsibility, to offer advice and consent, was summed up by Attorney Mia Teitlebaum in a letter to the Globe: “The Governor’s Council should not be a rubber stamp for the governor’s nominees. Its vote to reject this particular nominee is an example of the system working as it should.”
Clinical social worker Olivia Dubois, who authored a letter signed by more than 400 people in protest of DeMore, said, “I’m hopeful that the governor will listen to those who were in opposition to her nominee, including the councilors who voted no.”
