NEWS

February 22, 2010
Parole Board Recieves Public Scrutiny After Paroled Killer Kills Again.

The sweet-voiced grandmother sat at a table before the Massachusetts Parole Board and said she was not the same woman who killed her sleeping 16-year-old daughter with a shotgun blast on Valentine’s Day in 1990.

“I have no expectation to be forgiven by anyone, nor by myself,’’ said Susan Biancardi, 61, who now takes medication to control bipolar disorder. “If I could cut off both my arms and have that night never happen, believe me, I would do it in a heartbeat.’’

Five board members heard Biancardi’s plea for freedom recently following another horrific area slaying, one that has cast a pall over the panel and underscored just how high the stakes can be when weighing whether to give a convicted murderer, no matter how seemingly reformed and remorseful, a second chance.

The arrest of Edward Corliss, paroled in 2006 and now charged in the shooting death of convenience store clerk Surendra Dangol, has prompted the panel to conduct an internal review of how it handled the case, with results due in a few weeks. The slaying, which is believed to be the first in at least a decade in which a paroled murderer is accused, has also drawn attention to how the board functions.

Immediately after Corliss’s arrest last month, Daniel M. Dewey, one of the former board members who had participated in the 5-1 vote to parole him, said the case was tragic but that he could not remember the vote because the board held so many hearings each year.

On average, board members hold more than 1,300 hearings a year - sometimes as many as 20 a day, according to Donald V. Giancioppo, executive director of the Parole Board.

Every day, individual board members convene hearings at county jails across Massachusetts for people serving relatively short sentences. For more serious crimes, two or three board members participate. The full board votes on the roughly 100 requests for parole made each year by “lifers,’’ prisoners serving sentences for second-degree murder. (People convicted of first-degree murder are ineligible for parole.)

Board members, who are paid $80,000 to $100,000 a year, drive an average of 23,000 miles a year in cars issued to them by the agency, according to Giancioppo.

Overall, the board has paroled about two-thirds of the inmates who appeared before it each year, although less than one-third of all lifers were released annually since 2005, the statistics show. About 6,000 convicted criminals are freed each year.

Giancioppo said the Dangol slaying marked the first time in his seven years as the agency’s top administrator, and in his 13 years as an employee, that a paroled murderer was charged with another killing, although some have committed serious crimes.

The clerk’s killing in December captured the region’s attention. The day after Christmas, a gunman wearing a scarf over most of his face robbed Dangol, a Nepalese immigrant working at a Tedeschi Food Shop in Jamaica Plain, of $746 and then shot him. The crime was captured on a store surveillance videotape.

A state parole officer who saw the video said he recognized the gunman as his parolee, Corliss, a 63-year-old convicted murderer freed in 2006.

After Corliss was arrested, Parole Board records reviewed by the Globe showed that he had a criminal record that dated back more than 40 years, including a conviction for a remarkably similar slaying, the 1971 shooting of an unarmed store clerk in Salisbury. He had also escaped from prison twice, and in 1991 had violated parole three months after the board released him.

But Corliss was 60 when he appeared before the full board in 2006. Most inmates that age, criminologists say, have long passed the time when they are most likely to commit crime. And the records provided to the Globe mentioned no disciplinary problems in prison since 1991.

Five board members voted in July 2006 to parole Corliss over the objections of one member who wrote that Corliss posed an “ongoing public safety risk.’’ As is customary, board members who participated are named, but not how each voted, out of concerns about retaliation.

Only two of the current board members - Candace Kochin and Thomas Merigan - participated in the decision to release Corliss. Both declined to comment.

So far, the panel’s review of the Corliss case indicates that parole officers gave the board all the criminal and prison records it needed to judge whether Corliss was suitable for release, said Giancioppo. Likewise, he said, parole officers in the community had made sure Corliss followed the conditions of his release.

“I think it’s important to recognize that we’re in a risk-management business,’’ Giancioppo said in a recent interview. “Ninety-five percent of all inmates are ultimately going to be released to the community. That’s just a fact.’’ Each board member receives a case file two to three inches thick on every convicted murderer who comes before the panel, “but ultimately there’s no guarantees with human behavior,’’ Giancioppo said.

Parole Board chairman Mark A. Conrad, appointed to the board by Governor Deval Patrick the year after Corliss was freed, said he cannot discuss the case in detail because Corliss, who is being held without bail, will ultimately have to appear before the panel for likely revocation of parole.

Speaking generally, though, Conrad said the case is to the agency what a spaceship explosion is to NASA, an example of how things can sometimes go spectacularly wrong despite the best efforts of people to carefully weigh risks against benefits.

“Any time you make a decision [to grant parole] and you’re signing your name, all board members are under the thought, ‘I’ve taken the best risk-assessment tools available, and I have to believe this person is going to try to do the right thing,’ ’’ he said.

Jack McDevitt, an associate dean at Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice, which was recently invited by Conrad to study the agency’s performance, said Massachusetts parolees appear to behave well compared to those in other states.

Some 78 percent of parolees in Massachusetts completed parole supervision without reoffending or violating conditions in 2008, according to the Parole Board. That is far higher than the 49 percent completion rate nationally that year, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

“Whatever they’re doing seems to be more effective in terms of fewer parolees committing new crimes while under supervision,’’ said McDevitt, who characterized the Corliss case as an “outlier.’’

Nonetheless, he said, it is always wise for the state to consider ways to improve the parole agency, perhaps by adding members to reduce workload, or by providing them with more information on inmates.

Giancioppo said that months before Corliss’s arrest, the agency had taken steps to do the latter, by providing board members with a “risk assessment’’ scale for each inmate as an additional tool.

Laurie Myers, president of Community Voices, a Chelmsford-based nonprofit group that advocates on behalf of crime victims, said the agency needs to do more. Conceding that no parole system is perfect, she said many crime victims in Massachusetts feel the board is too lenient.

“If you’re holding somebody who’s already committed a violent crime, and they’re released and they go on to do it again, the system has to be looked at,’’ she said.

Some defense lawyers, however, fear the Corliss case could make it harder for deserving inmates to win parole.

“The Parole Board is already very, very cautious,’’ said Patricia Garin, a prominent Boston lawyer who oversees a program at Northeastern University’s School of Law that trains law students to represent convicted murderers seeking parole. “I think there are a lot of people in the system who could be paroled.’’

Up for consideration is whether Susan Biancardi, the grandmother convicted of murdering her daughter in what supporters called a psychotic episode, is one of them.

Biancardi told the board that her other daughter, 34-year-old Audrey Biancardi, has forgiven her, even though she was also an intended target.

Susan Biancardi promised that, if paroled, she would stay on her medication for bipolar disorder, and offered to take weekly blood tests. “I want you to know that from the bottom of my heart, I am sincerely sorry for my actions,’’ she said.

Board chairman Conrad told Biancardi he was impressed by her apparent transformation, but the panel must proceed cautiously. “Our biggest fear,’’ he said, “is of you doing harm to yourself or someone else.’

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