NEWS

January 17, 2010
Setting compassionate release back

Standing before the parole board in 2006, Edward Corliss presented himself as a frail, meek man who had battled cancer, hepatitis, and alcoholism and overcome the anger and bitterness that led him to kill a store clerk in Salisbury decades before.

“I’m definitely a changed man from what I was back then,’’ Corliss said in a high, raspy voice, according to a tape of the roughly hour-long hearing obtained by the Globe last night. “I know now life is something you can’t give back, and I’ll always regret that.’’

But one board member was not convinced and asked him whether he was really remorseful since two years before the hearing he had sought the help of the Innocence Project, the nonprofit group that uses DNA evidence to clear the wrongly convicted.

He replied: “I know I ain’t going to do no harm to anybody. I just want to get out and try to start a good life.’’

Two months later, on July 18, the board voted 5-1 to release him from prison, despite a record that included two prison escapes, a parole violation, and a charge for possession of explosives while in prison.

Last month, less than four years after his release, police said, Corliss robbed and fatally shot Surendra Dangol, a 39-year-old clerk who was working behind the counter at Tedeschi Food Shop in Jamaica Plain.

Daniel M. Dewey, a member of the panel that freed Corliss, said he could not remember how he voted but was horrified to learn of Corliss’s arrest.

“It’s just terrible,’’ Dewey said in a telephone interview from his home. “You let out so many [prisoners on parole], that something’s going to happen sooner or later. It’s not like we just let out one person. It’s tragic. You try not to have any mistakes, but you’re not dealing with a population that’s too dependable.’’

The board’s ruling was made over the objections of Essex District Attorney Jonathan W. Blodgett.

Essex prosecutors successfully argued four times before, as recently as 2004, that Corliss had not accepted responsibility for killing an unarmed store clerk in Salisbury in 1971 and presented “a risk to commit further crimes’’ if paroled, according to a letter to the state Parole Board made public yesterday.

The board’s 2006 ruling, which was released Thursday, identified members who participated in the decision but not how each voted, because that information is confidential. At the time, the board majority ruled that Corliss finally understood the depths of his substance abuse problems.

The panel, Dewey said, sometimes held as many as 60 hearings a day for inmates at state prisons and county jails. Some hearings lasted only a few minutes.

“I literally saw a couple of thousand guys a year,’’ said Dewey, 66, a retired state probation officer appointed to the board by Governor William F. Weld and reappointed by governors Paul Cellucci and Jane Swift. He served from 1993 to 2007.

Four of the six Parole Board members who participated in the decision were appointed by former governor Mitt Romney. None of them could be reached for comment.

Romney’s political action committee, Free and Strong America PAC, issued a statement yesterday saying that Romney “didn’t have a vote on the matter, but if he did, he would have voted to keep this man behind bars.’’

John Hayes, who was appointed Corliss’s lawyer, said he plans to meet Corliss for the first time today at MCI-Cedar Junction at Walpole, where his client is being held.

Corliss will be arraigned Tuesday in West Roxbury District Court.

Hayes questioned one of the reasons police tied Corliss to the crime: Corliss’s parole officer told investigators he had a parolee whose features resembled the man caught in a surveillance video of the shooting. In the video, the gunman’s face is partially concealed by a scarf and most of his head is obscured by a black cap and a long wig.

“Was [Corliss] arrested because there was a similar crime in his past, and that’s where they’re starting at without any real hard evidence?’’ Hayes said.

Corliss was convicted in 1972 of fatally shooting 61-year-old store clerk George Oakes after trying to steal $15 from his cash register.

In a brief phone interview, Oakes’s stepson, Frank Ellis, said it was still painful to talk about Corliss. “He didn’t stay in jail long enough,’’ Ellis said, his voice rising. “I loved my stepfather.’’

Corliss filed a series of unsuccessful post-conviction motions, trying to pin the murder on his brother-in-law.

Essex prosecutors urged the board to reject his many parole requests based on Corliss’s long criminal history and his checkered record as an inmate.

“The record thus shows not only contempt for the criminal justice system, but that Mr. Corliss has the propensity to commit crimes while on parole or escape from confinement,’’ prosecutors wrote.

Around 1971, Corliss escaped from a Rhode Island prison camp where he was serving a four- to seven-year sentence for breaking and entering. Corliss shot Oakes while he was a fugitive.

In 1980, when he was serving his life sentence at MCI-Norfolk for the murder, he walked away from a prison detail on a February afternoon.

In May of that year, State Police found him in Ball Square in Somerville in a car with another man and a woman. Inside the car, was a .38-caliber pistol, a set of license plates, a wig, gloves and dark glasses, according to Globe reports at the time.

Seven years later, while he was in custody at a minimum-security prison, he was charged with possession of an explosive device. He was later transferred to a higher-security prison, according to parole records.

In 1991, the parole board voted to release him but he was back in prison three months later after he got into a car accident in Newton and left the scene.

After that, each time he requested parole the board rejected his pleas based on his past, his record in prison, and his addiction to alcohol.

In July 2006, the board majority decided to release him as long as he followed several conditions, including getting substance abuse treatment.

Sometime after his release, Corliss moved into a studio apartment in Roxbury in a sprawling cream-colored building of 36 units for older and disabled people.

He lived there about two years and moved out last summer, according to several of Corliss’s former neighbors, who described Corliss as affable and polite.

“Eddie was a good guy,’’ said Alan Jones, 64. “We all liked him.’’

His nickname was “Fast Eddie,’’ because he liked to walk around all day. “He was always on the loose,’’ Jones said.

Julian Prevost said that Corliss volunteered for a local church and often kept Prevost’s 89-year-old father company, playing dominoes with him and cooking him chicken.

“This man loved my father so much,’’ Prevost said.

Corliss rarely talked about his criminal past, he said, except to say he was once jailed for fraud.

“I can’t believe it,’’ he said. “This is sad because Eddie is such a nice person.’’

At the 2006 parole board meeting, a longtime female friend of Corliss and his brother, Bill, attested to changes they had observed in Corliss and implored the board to release him.

“I mean, he’s done two lifetimes. I think terrorists get off easier than he does,’’ said his brother. “He knows he done wrong. . . . Give him a chance.’’

Maureen Walsh, chairwoman of the board, said the Essex district attorney’s office was not properly notified of the hearing and therefore could not attend. But she said prosecutors could return to make arguments at a follow-up hearing or submit a letter.

Prosecutors later submitted a letter of opposition. No one from the Oakes family attended the hearing, and no one testified against Corliss.

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