Black leaders fear the bill could mean that people, a disproportionate number of them African-Americans, could spend a lifetime in jail for nonviolent offenses that don’t warrant such punishment.
The bill emerged in an emotionally charged atmosphere last year after a parolee with a long, violent criminal history, Domenic Cinelli, shot and killed Woburn police Officer John B. Maguire during a robbery attempt Christmas weekend in 2010. Black leaders recently began organizing opposition, but felt they needed support outside Boston.
“The key to this statewide mobilizing effort is to reach out to the clergy leadership in suburban and rural communities,’’ said the Rev. Eugene Rivers III, cofounder of the Boston TenPoint Coalition, who is helping to lead the opposition. “They have the institutional network for mobilizing their communities.’’
Rivers and his group will make their first public appeal today to religious leaders, including Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, across the state in cities and towns such as Acton, Dover, Framingham, Springfield, and Worcester. They will also take their case to the State House tomorrow in a similar effort to press Governor Deval Patrick to veto the bill if it passes.
“We are calling on the people of God to engage as public witnesses’’ and to examine the “financial and moral costs’’ of the legislation for themselves, Rivers said in a statement.
James Driscoll, executive director of the Massachusetts Catholic Conference, said he has not heard from the Boston group but his organization is receptive to anyone supporting the conference’s stance on the bill.
“If the bill is over-broad, it is not only a cause of concern for the church, but it will cause more overcrowding, which I don’t think the state can handle.’’
The measure is still in conference committee after versions of it overwhelmingly passed in both chambers of the Legislature late last year. But the House recently signaled willingness to embrace some of the broad changes the Senate plan would allow.
