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Gov. Maura Healey nominated a seasoned prosecutor for the Parole Board. A heated debate ensued.

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Last week, the sometimes-overlooked Governor’s Council found itself in the spotlight when it narrowly voted against confirming an experienced lawyer as a new member of the state’s Parole Board. 

Rejections of Parole Board nominees are rare, and this one came after Gov. Maura Healey directly appealed to the council in the hope that they would confirm her nominee. District attorneys across the state also pushed for Healey’s nominee to be confirmed, and some are now speaking out in the wake of the rejection. 

These developments come as the board faces heightened scrutiny in the wake of the shooting on Memorial Drive in Cambridge earlier this month, which was allegedly carried out by a parolee. 

Here’s what to know. 

Who was the nominee?

In April, Healey nominated Vincent DeMore to serve on the board after former member Tonomey Coleman was confirmed as a district court judge. The governor praised DeMore’s “deep understanding of the justice system from multiple perspectives” in announcing his nomination. 

DeMore served as a prosecutor in the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office from 2007 to 2019, including a one-year stint overseeing a team of 70 attorneys as the office’s Chief of District Courts and Community Prosecutions. DeMore went on to found Henning Strategies, a Boston law firm, where he now works as a defense attorney. He is also a U.S. Army Reserve captain, representing victims of crimes in the Judge Advocate General Corps. 

DeMore appeared before the Governor’s Council at a hearing in April, where he spoke about his work history and advocated for himself as someone ready to positively impact his community in a new position. He said he wanted to improve public safety through a “compassionate and principled approach to recovery, rehabilitation, and reentry.” He vowed to “respect the voices of victims and survivors, while never forgetting that all of us are more than the sum of the decisions we make.”

But at the same hearing, six people testified against DeMore’s appointment to the board. They pushed against the idea of adding a former prosecutor to the board and said that more than 400 people had signed a letter urging the council to reject him. 

“If parole is about public safety and second chances, then the board must reflect those values. We do not need another person whose professional lens has been shaped by only prosecution, surveillance, or enforcement,” Stacey Borden, the founder of New Beginnings Reentry Services Inc. in Roxbury, said at that hearing. 

The Parole Board currently consists of six people, including a licensed clinical social worker, a forensic psychologist, and multiple former probation officers. 

What happened last week?

Before the council took its final vote on DeMore’s nomination, both Healey and the Massachusetts District Attorneys Association attempted to apply last-minute pressure on behalf of DeMore. Healey sent a letter to the council two days before the vote, again running through DeMore’s qualifications and insisting that it was “imperative” that he be appointed. 

The day before the vote, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden authored a letter to the council on behalf of a “majority” of the state’s 11 district attorneys. He urged the council to reexamine the standards it uses to evaluate Parole Board nominees, taking issue with the idea that anyone with a prosecutorial background is not fit for the board. 

“Given the current constitution of the Parole Board, any suggestion that a clearly qualified candidate lacks the multidisciplinary and rehabilitative expertise needed is misplaced. In fact, we believe what the Board needs now is the restoration of more balanced perspectives,” Hayden wrote. 

Healey took her advocacy for DeMore a step further, appearing before the council on the day of the vote to back her nominee one last time. The board has a clear need for someone with DeMore’s combination of prosecutorial, criminal defense, and “victim-centered” experience, she said. 

“The board needs someone with Vince’s experience and background, someone who will center the voices of victims and seriously consider impacts to public safety in each and every decision that it makes.” Healey said. 

Councilors Joseph Ferreira, Tamisha Civil, and Terrence Kennedy all spoke in favor of DeMore. Ferreira expressed frustration with the idea that a candidate could be disqualified in his colleagues’ eyes just because they have a prosecutorial background. 

 “When you put people in a box like that, you don’t capture the individual complexities, you don’t capture the wholesomeness of humanity, you lose all that,” he said. 

Kennedy stressed that DeMore is more than just a former prosecutor, emphasizing his work as a defense attorney. He said that DeMore’s impending rejection may hinder efforts to find Parole Board nominees in the future. 

“It’s going to be a great loss to the commonwealth that he’s not going to be on the Parole Board, and I wish the governor’s office good luck finding somebody else who’s going to apply after this,” Kennedy said. 

Ultimately, Councilors Mara Dolan, Christopher Iannella, Paul DePalo, and Tara Jacobs voted against DeMore’s nomination. 

“Public safety must come first. Yet we must also ensure that no one is wrongfully denied parole who does not pose a risk to public safety and has paid their debt to society,” Dolan said in a statement when asked for comment on her vote. 

Response and wider context

Now, at least two district attorneys are responding to the council’s vote with pointed criticism. 

“The Parole Board as currently constituted is in desperate need of a prosecutor’s perspective, and this was a missed opportunity to balance out this board. This is what happens when people choose politics over public safety,” Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz said in a statement Tuesday.

DeMore was more than qualified to serve on the Parole Board, and the body is in need of a “seasoned prosecutor” who can make fair decisions, Cruz said. 

“For victims and witnesses, their families and communities impacted by crime, parole decisions need to be made with representation from a prosecutor, someone who has fought and advocated for victims and public safety.” he added. 

Bristol District Attorney Thomas Quinn also weighed in publicly, telling The Boston Herald that DeMore’s rejection was “outrageous,” especially in light of recent decisions by the board to release defendants convicted of first-degree murder. 

A 2024 Supreme Judicial Court Ruling raised the minimum age a person can be sentenced to life without parole from 18 to 21. Previously, anyone convicted of first-degree murder for a killing that occurred when they were over 18 faced a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. 

The decision applied retroactively, meaning that 210 offenders became eligible for parole overnight. So far, the board has decided on 89 of those cases, granting parole to 65 people, according to data tracked by The Boston Globe. Prosecutors have expressed ongoing concerns about the ramifications of the SJC decision. 

Earlier this month, 46-year-old Tyler Brown allegedly began firing erratically at vehicles on Memorial Drive in Cambridge. The area was typically busy at the time, and two people were seriously injured. Brown has a long criminal history, including a 2020 incident where he fired several rounds at police officers in the South End. 

Prosecutors asked for Brown to be sentenced to 10 to 12 years in prison, but a since-retired judge instead sentenced him to five to six years, with credit for time served. Brown was on probation at the time of the Memorial Drive shooting, and authorities were alerted that he may be dangerous by his parole officer. 

The fact that Brown was let out of prison so quickly demonstrates that “something’s wrong with our system,” Ferreira said at the Governor’s Council meeting as he pushed for DeMore’s approval.