Justice of a second chance

So much pain, so much waste.

The cases — the shattered lives — that lie behind last week’s landmark ruling putting an end to life sentences without the possibility of parole for those under 21 make it hard not to ask: Who benefits from such draconian punishments? And how did justice take so terribly long?

Until the Supreme Judicial Court ruling, Massachusetts was one of only 10 states mandating that 18- through 20-year-olds found guilty of first-degree murder be sentenced to life in prison with no way out. The much anticipated decision now puts the state in the vanguard, declaring unconstitutional all life-without-parole sentences for those under 21. It is grounded in simple logic — something teenagers making horrific, life-altering choices find hard to summon. Science shows that the brains of emerging adults exhibit the same developmental characteristics as those of juveniles. They lack impulse control, are more prone to risk taking, more susceptible to peer influence. Their brains also, importantly, have more plasticity, more capacity to change.

The ruling is seismic for the 200 or so people who had faced the certainty of dying in prison for murders committed when they were 18, 19, or 20. Now they will be eligible to go before a parole board after serving between 15 and 35 years, depending on when they were convicted.

That doesn’t mean they’ll all be freed. Burned by a couple of releases that went wrong, this state’s parole board has been cautious when it comes to freeing those convicted of murder.

“This is not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” said Eva Jellison, an attorney who represents two men affected by the ruling. “This is, ‘Get out of jail if you have put in the work to change yourself.’”

Still, even for those who put in the work, there is no guarantee. After the SJC in 2013 declared life sentences without parole unconstitutional for those under 18, 50 of the people affected have come before the parole board after serving at least 15 years. Of those, 37 have been granted parole and 13 juvenile lifers were denied it, according to a brief by the Committee For Public Counsel Services.

There’s no reason to expect the parole board to soften its standards. But for those who previously faced the inexorable certainty of dying in prison, just the chance at parole will be transformative.

“Having no possibility of parole crushes some people,” Jellison said. “But some people can move beyond that.”

Her two clients have embraced whatever education and training opportunities they could get. In its brief, the CPCS described other men who have also overcome hopelessness, including William Florentino, 20 years old when he participated in a 1977 liquor store robbery in which his partner shot and killed a customer named Edward Stevens. Even though he did not fire the gun, Florentino was convicted of first-degree murder and received the forever sentence. It took a decade, but eventually he embraced every chance he could to improve himself, throwing himself into recovery, Catholicism, education, and earning hundreds of days in good time he could never hope to use.

Now more of those who have not been able to summon that sort of will and tenacity will be motivated to prove they can better themselves and return to society. That will make prisons safer, and less costly, for everyone.

Of course, some people will argue that those who take someone’s life don’t deserve second chances. Those they have killed — including the people murdered in the two cases that led to last week’s ruling — certainly won’t get them.

Witness Jaivon Blake, 16, shot to death on a Dorchester street in 2011 when Sheldon Mattis, 18, handed a gun to a 17-yearold Nyasani Watt, who killed the boy. Like Watt, Mattis will now be eligible to apply for parole in a few years. Blake’s family continues to serve their life sentence without the teenager who cooked when nobody else felt like it, taught his brother to ride a bike, and always listened when somebody had a problem.

For those who loved Stevens and Blake and other victims, the SJC decision will be painful. But it is also just. It is simply wrong to impose the harshest possible sentence upon those whose youth compromises their judgment, and who have more capacity than their elders to be redeemed.

No one gains anything from yet more wasted potential.