Opinion ID: 196495
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The 1988 Policy.

Text: 23 The Commonwealth revisited its parole-eligibility policy anent life prisoners facing from-and-after sentences in 1988, and resumed the practice of providing them with parole hearings at or near the fifteen-year mark. A 1990 document prepared by the respondent, entitled Parole Eligibility Regulations, Policies, Procedures, explains that parole-eligible life sentences are an exception to the general aggregation policy because of the statutory requirement that a parole hearing be held after a definite period of time. The about-face did not ameliorate the petitioner's professed plight; the respondent declined to apply this policy retroactively because such an application, it feared, might hurt prisoners approaching their aggregated parole-eligibility dates. Thus, Hamm's parole-eligibility date was not recalculated, and he remains incarcerated with no parole hearing on the horizon until November of 2001.E. The Habeas Proceedings. 24 The petitioner initiated state habeas proceedings in 1990, arguing, among other things, that the Commonwealth's failure to provide him with a parole hearing in 1983 deprived him of his right to due process of law, and that the 1977 policy, as applied to him, violated the prohibition on ex post facto laws. A state superior court judge dismissed the petition, and the Massachusetts Appeals Court upheld the aggregation of the petitioner's sentences for purposes of determining parole eligibility. 10 See Hamm II, 564 N.E.2d at 1033-34. After the SJC denied further appellate review, the petitioner initiated federal habeas proceedings. 25 The district court found that the Commonwealth had in fact applied a change in the law to petitioner, but it concluded that the change did not harm him and therefore posed no ex post facto problem. On the due process claim, the court took a more receptive stance. It interpreted section 133A as mandating that petitioner receive a parole hearing on his life sentences after fifteen years, and ruled that the Commonwealth's failure to provide him a hearing in that time frame deprived him of due process. The court ordered the state to convene such a hearing nunc pro tunc, and to continue convening such hearings at three-year intervals should parole be denied. See Hamm v. Latessa, No. 91-10667-WJS, slip op. at 14 (D.Mass. May 18, 1994) (Hamm III ). The court also decreed that if, despite the serial parole hearings, the petitioner remained in custody beyond 2001, then in such event, the 1977 policy should be applied to him as written from that date forward. See id.