Aging lifers in Mass. look to self-improvement as a pathway to release from prison
Supporters say a small group of older lifers should be
at the top of the governor’s commutation list, citing their model
behavior
By Ivy Scott Globe Staff,Updated February 14, 2024, 5:49 p.m.
Daniel Ferreira
(left) and Lewis Dickerson have each served roughly 50 years in prison.
Both left prison to serve their communities and spend time with family
as part of a now-defunct furlough program.Sharon Chen
For
nearly all of his 50 years in prison, Daniel Ferreira has worked to get
right with God, and with those around him, transforming his own life in
the process.
Ferreira,
76, became a Christian four years after being sentenced to life for the
1973 murder of a Fall River police officer. He has since become an
ordained minister, serving for a time as an associate bishop and
preaching to youth around Massachusetts for several years through the
state’s now-defunct furlough program, which permitted incarcerated
individuals with a record of good behavior to return to their
communities for one weekend each month.
In 1987, Ferreira told the Globe that “through Christianity, I could love for the first time.”
“In a way, I am as free as I will ever be,” he added.
More than 35 years later, however, he’s preparing to petition the state to set him free from prison.
Governor Maura Healey said in October that her office will use new guidelines
to grant pardons and commutations that favorably consider petitioners’
ages if they are over 50, health issues, and “exceptional strides in
self-development.” Advocates have responded by championing lifers with
similar backgrounds to Ferreira as ideal candidates for a reduced
sentence.
Supporters
say this small group of older lifers should be at the top of Healey’s
list, citing their model behavior as mentors and students and a track
record of contributing positively to the community during the old
furlough program.
“There’s
no way some of these men, who are 60, 70, 80 years old, should be in
prison,” said Wayne Sorel, who spends hours in conversation with inmates
each week as part of his work with the prison ministry at the Christian
Fellowship Center in New Bedford. “Some of these crimes are very
heinous, but that doesn’t mean character is not built up along the way
if they have the proper facilities to [rehabilitate themselves].”
While there were only 24 pending applications for commutation as of last month, Massachusetts could see those numbers rise as Healey joins a national tide of governors
who are beginning to embrace pardons and commutations for the first
time in decades. Nearly 60 percent of the pending applications were
submitted by people serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. And
close to half of petitions were from people 60 and older, according to
the state’s parole board.
About
a third of all 805 people serving life without parole in Massachusetts
are Black, according to Department of Correction data from late 2022.
Nearly 20 percent are Hispanic, while close to 3 percent are Asian and
about 1 percent are Indigenous.
Healey
told the Globe her goal in revamping the eligibility requirements for
commutations and pardons was to directly address “issues of disparities”
and “of systemic race bias in the system.”
“We’ve
got a lot of people who are in the system who are incarcerated, who are
there because of serious issues with substance use disorder, with
mental health, with trauma,” she said, pointing specifically to people
incarcerated for offenses they committed as young adults. “We know
through science now, their brain wasn’t fully developed.
“You’ve
got people who’ve been serving their time, who in some instances have
gotten themselves further education, who are ready to contribute and
want to contribute, whose families want them to contribute,” she added.
“Let’s give them that opportunity.”
Ferreira’s
attorney, Tim Foley, said he’s hopeful that Ferreira’s time spent
preaching and mentoring youth while on furlough will “give him a better
position with the board” of pardons, particularly given the new
guidelines’ focus on self-development.
“It’s
just such a long history of being outside in the community, actually
helping the community . . . and doing very well,” Foley said. “He’s done
nothing but try to improve himself from where he was when he was first
incarcerated.”
Left: Daniel
Ferreira in July 1987. He became an ordained minister while serving a
life sentence.
Right: Ferreira in July 1973, being escorted by detectives after being
charged with the murder of Fall River patrolman John Ruggiero. Lane Turner/Globe Staff and AP Photo
Foley
said he believes that commutation petitions will “really pick up steam”
with Healey’s new guidelines and “become the norm rather than
extraordinary.” Foley said he anticipates that the Governor’s Council,
which must approve all requests for commutation, will serve as a check
and balance to the new guidelines.
“The
new guidelines cast a wide net in order to address long-existing
inequalities,” he said. “However, accountability, self-development, and
post-offense behavior are still balanced against the facts and
circumstances of the crime.”
Among the nearly two dozenpeople
whose commutation petitions are currently pending, several acknowledged
the role substance use played in their criminal behavior, while others
described growing up in homes where violence and incarceration were the
norm — a pattern that traces the lives of many men and women who
themselves are in prison for violent crimes.
Lewis
Dickerson, 75, also intends to make another petition to have his life
sentence for first-degree murder commuted. When Dickerson went before
the Governor’s Advisory Board of Pardons in 2005, he told Boston Magazine
that “his father beat him with belts, cords, and fists before dying in a
fight,” and that he grew up into a young man who was periodically
arrested for property crime and “experimented with heroin.”
His
2005 request for pardon was denied. Nearly two decades later,
Dickerson, who killed a young woman during a liquor store robbery in
1975, said in an email that his years spent working outside the prison
at several hospitals around the state taught him “patience and
discipline” and “matured” him.
“This
exposure and experience, it kept me from becoming involved in the
negativity of prison life and has resulted in the healthier, kinder,
more generous person that I am today,” he told the Globe.
At
the State House, Representative Russell Holmes of Boston is the lead
lawmaker pushing for the return of furloughs. In addition to filing a bill to restore the program, Holmes said he also continues to lobby Healey directly to bring the initiative back.
“I’ve met with the governor multiple times, and my number one ask is to begin furloughs again,” Holmes previously told the Globe.
“I’m trying my best to get folks [who are incarcerated] connected to
their families again, and if I can remove any barrier to that, I’m going
to do it.”
As
someone who struggled with substance abuse for years before becoming a
Christian, Sorel, the New Bedford prison ministry worker,said he
knows “what it’s like to have a bad record, and can relate to the ones .
. . who care to be changed.” He said any inmate who has worked
consistently to grow and mature while in prison has the potential to
contribute meaningfully to society upon release, “as long as he has a
safe place where he can go to continue rehabilitation and where people
can watch out for him.”
Sorel,
who recently started working with Dickerson as part of his prison
ministry, described Dickerson as an “honorable” man whose “whole
demeanor [is] to do everything good that he could” for his community. He
said Dickerson reflects often on his time spent outside the prison
walls, and sees the new commutation guidelines as a potential pathway
home.
The end of the furlough program “shot him down and put him in a sad place,” Sorel said, “but now he has renewed hope.”
Matt Stout of the Globe staff contributed to this report.
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