Parole

The Massachusetts Parole Board has denied parole for Herman Hall, 49, a serial rapist who was sentenced to multiple life terms in prison in 1986, the Essex district attorney's office said in a statement yesterday. Hall, formerly of Lynn, who was denied on Monday, raped three teenage girls and tried to rape another in the spring of 1985 in Salem, Swampscott, and Marblehead. The district attorney's office said Hall claimed he attacked his victims because he was angry with his girlfriend for various reasons.

Son of Sam serial killer David Berkowitz has been denied parole by New York authorities for the sixth time. A parole board concluded on Tuesday his release would be incompatible with the welfare of society and would undermine respect for the law. The Son of Sam terrorized New York City in 1976 and ‘77 and took responsibility for a string of handgun assaults. He was convicted of fatally shooting six people and injuring several others. Berkowitz is 58. The former Yonkers resident is serving 25 years to life at the maximum-security Sullivan Correctional Facility northwest of...

LIMA — An American activist convicted of aiding leftist rebels surrendered to police yesterday after a court struck down a decision granting her parole and ordered her to return to prison, where she is to remain with her 15-month-old son for the time being. Lori Berenson, 40, was arrested by police at the US Embassy, where she had been attending a meeting about consular issues when she learned of the court’s ruling, Embassy spokesman James Fennell said. “She’s calm.

DEER LODGE, Mont. - Montana officials on Friday rejected parole for a notorious "mountain man" who abducted a world-class athlete in 1984 to keep as a wife for his son, and then shot her and left her to die during a rescue attempt. The state Board of Pardons and Parole held its third parole hearing for Don Nichols, 81, as federal authorities search for his son Dan, accused earlier this month of drug and gun crimes. The hearing included testimony from kidnapping victim Kari Swenson, her husband, her father, plus former and current law enforcement officials.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to say anew that young people who commit even the most brutal crimes should not be punished as harshly as adults, taking up a pair of cases in which 14-year-olds convicted of murder are serving life sentences with no chance of parole. The latest in a line of cases asks whether young teenagers facing the rest of their lives in prison deserve the possibility of a second chance. In recent years, the court has ruled out the death penalty for juveniles and life without parole for young people whose crimes did not involve killing.

BERLIN -- A court paroled a one time leader of Germany's notorious Red Army Faction yesterday after 24 years in prison, amid bitter memories of the left-wing terrorist group's attacks on law enforcement and business leaders, which plunged the country into fear three decades ago. Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, is to leave prison March 27, the first day she becomes eligible for release, the Stuttgart state court ruled. Her case has set off a public debate about whether it is time to show mercy to those who showed none to their victims and has made Germans relive a tense time when their country...

NEW YORK — The only man to admit shooting Malcolm X was freed on parole yesterday, 45 years after he assassinated the black leader. Thomas Hagan, the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing, was freed from a Manhattan prison where he spent two days a week under a work-release program, state Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia said. Hagan, 69, has said he was one of three gunmen who shot Malcolm X as he began a speech at Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965.

One 16-year-old went looking for marijuana at a Brookline High School graduation party and shot the guest of honor in the chest when he got a racial slur instead. The other 16-year-old stabbed a man 23 times inside his Springfield apartment, returning the next day to steal things from the victim's home as his body lay nearby. Both crimes were horrific, but the punishments were strikingly different. The teen convicted in Springfield, Edgardo Rodriguez, accepted a plea deal for the 2004 killing of Joel Rivera Delgado that allows him to potentially walk free within...

WASHINGTON -- The number of prisoners serving life sentences has increased 83 percent in the past 10 years, as tough-on-crime initiatives have led to harsher penalties, a study says. Nearly 128,000 people, or one of every 11 offenders in state and federal prisons, are serving life sentences, according to the study released yesterday by The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that promotes alternatives to prison. In 1992, 70,000 people had life sentences. Nearly 17 percent of inmates in...

DEER LODGE, Mont. - Montana officials on Friday rejected parole for a notorious "mountain man" who abducted a world-class athlete in 1984 to keep as a wife for his son, and then shot her and left her to die during a rescue attempt. The state Board of Pardons and Parole held its third parole hearing for Don Nichols, 81, as federal authorities search for his son Dan, accused earlier this month of drug and gun crimes. The hearing included testimony from kidnapping victim Kari Swenson, her husband, her father, plus former and current law enforcement officials.

CORCORAN, Calif. - A prison panel denied parole Wednesday to mass murderer Charles Manson in his 12th and perhaps final bid for freedom. Manson, now a gray-bearded 77-year-old, did not attend the hearing, at which the parole board ruled he had shown no efforts to rehabilitate himself and would not be eligible for parole for another 15 years. "This panel can find nothing good as far as suitability factors go," said John Peck, a member of the panel that met at Corcoran State Prison in central California.

The Massachusetts Parole Board announced decisions Thursday to parole three convicted murderers, marking the first time a so-called lifer has been granted early release from prison since the 2010 fatal shooting of Woburn police Officer John Maguire by a career criminal who had been paroled while serving three life sentences. Each of the three decisions was dated Monday, the same day the Globe reported that the Parole Board had held 139 votes over the last year on whether to grant parole to serious offenders serving sentences of 15 years to life, but had informed only 13 inmates of the...

Governor Deval Patrick's revamped Parole Board has voted since last April to grant early release to 17 serious criminal offenders, most of them probably convicted murderers, but the panel has not notified any of the inmates - or the families of their victims - that they are on the path to freedom. The delay in processing applications for parole by so-called lifers - inmates serving sentences of 15 years to life - is part of a broader backlog that has built up at the Parole Board since a paroled lifer fatally shot a Woburn police officer, triggering a shake-up at the agency.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court appeared ready Tuesday to say anew that young people who commit even the most brutal crimes should not be punished as harshly as adults, taking up a pair of cases in which 14-year-olds convicted of murder are serving life sentences with no chance of parole. The latest in a line of cases asks whether young teenagers facing the rest of their lives in prison deserve the possibility of a second chance. In recent years, the court has ruled out the death penalty for juveniles and life without parole for young people whose...

A Haverhill man was convicted of first-degree murder Thursday in the stabbing of his wife in their apartment in February 2010, the Essex district attorney's office said in a statement. Craig Mulgrave, 35, killed his wife, Christina, 45, "with extreme atrocity," according to the district attorney's statement. The stabbing was the last in a disturbing series of domestic homicides - eight in 31 days - that occurred in the state during the first weeks of 2010. A Salem Superior Court judge sentenced Mulgrave to life in prison without parole, the district attorney's office said.

A Level 3 Massachusetts sex offender arrested outside a Maine elementary school routinely got permission from the state Parole Board to travel out of state for work, but he did not have the board's approval when he drove to Maine Thursday, officials said today. John A. Rosacq was arrested by Sagadahoccq County Sheriff deputies after a wary grandparent found Rosa sitting in his car parked outside the West Bath Elementary Schoolcq around 8:35 a.m. Thursday, according to the sheriff's office.

A new analysis says more than one-third of Massachusetts prisoners with serious criminal convictions who were paroled over the past five years ended up back in prison. The Boston Globe reports Sunday that its review found 69 of the 201 prisoners who were paroled from their sentences of 15 years to life ended up back behind bars. Thirty were accused of committing new crimes — including violent offenses — and 39 others were sent back after parole violations. The Massachusetts Parole Board’s new chairman says more rigorous decision standards are being adopted, so the...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - The convicted felon suspected in the Chicago slayings of Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson's mother, brother, and nephew was arrested on a drug charge in June, but authorities declined to return him to prison on a parole violation, internal parole records show. Corrections Department spokesman Derek Schnapp said officials who reviewed the cocaine-possession case against William Balfour determined "the evidence that was presented during that time wouldn't have necessarily warranted a violation.