Prisoner rights advocates say outgoing Massachusetts Parole Board Chair Tina Hurley was dedicated and effective. So why is she leaving and who will replace her?
When Tina Hurley tendered her resignation as chair of the Massachusetts Parole Board on April 24, it was a shock to prisoners, activists, and the legal community, as well as to families of those seeking parole.
Hurley’s resignation email to her staff and fellow board members stated her last day would be May 27, 2025, but Hurley never mentioned why she was leaving. Rumors have run rampant; according to multiple sources, she was pushed out. Some speculated, it must be something personal. But Hurley made it clear that she will not speak to reporters about the situation.
There has been no clarification from the Executive Office of Public Safety (EOPSS). And as of this writing, there has been no announcement of a new person the governor might nominate for the Parole Board. Nor is there a public online job posting to fill the vacancy.
Parole allows successful petitioners to serve the remainder of their sentence in the community under supervision. The seven-member board reads literally hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of pages related to applicants prior to hearings so they can effectively vote on applications and lay out conditions for parole.
In an email to the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, an EOPSS spokesperson hedged: “The Executive Office of Public Safety and Security is grateful to Chair Hurley for her leadership, service, and dedication during her tenure with the Parole Board. The process to identify a successor is underway, and we will provide updates as information becomes available.”
So far, EOPSS has not revealed a potential new chair. There has also been no public announcement thanking Hurley for her service, as Gov. Maura Healey issued for other officials. On May 6, for example, the governor congratulated her chief counsel Paige Scott Reed in a lengthy press release about Reed’s leaving and announced her successor.
“Her leaving is a removal of hope,” Abiona Sharpe said. Once sentenced to serve a life sentence for second-degree murder as a 21-year-old, Sharpe was granted parole in 2024 after 15 years, and said Hurley had “the experience and the respect of those behind bars” and “from other recently released men.” He told BINJ in a telephone interview, “Some guys are rushing to get [parole hearing] dates, afraid that the direction of the board will change.” Sharpe, who appeared before Hurley’s board in 2024, added that replacing Hurley would be tough because she has “the wisdom to know what questions to ask and when to ask them.”
The hell of holdover status
Patricia Garin, a longtime parole attorney who trains future lawyers at the Northeastern University School of Law Prisoners’ Rights Clinic, said in an interview for this article that no matter the reason Hurley is leaving, her departure is a “huge loss.”
“In the 32 years I’ve been appearing at parole hearings, I’ve never seen a chair like Tina Hurley—she knows and honors the law, respects and understands the people who are before her, including the families of parole petitioners, and she has always sought to improve the board’s functioning while increasing the paroling rate and improving public safety. Her dedication is unparalleled.”
Garin added, “I wish those in government had done more to keep her there. She was sitting in holdover status for one year and that seems like a lack of support to me.”
Board members are nominated to serve five-year terms on the board. “Holdover status” is when a board member’s term has expired and they are not reappointed to another term nor let go. According to advocates, this is extremely difficult for the board member who, needing a job, continues to serve on the body and earn a salary, but effectively has no job security. They can be fired at any moment.
The Vacancies Act for federal employees allows a person to be in holdover for a maximum of 210 days. Hurley was in state holdover status for 365 days without any action from the governor—the only one who can solve the problem in this state.
Hurley was first nominated to the board in March 2014 and was last reappointed and approved by the Governor’s Council in October 2022. Former Gov. Charlie Baker named her chair in November 2022. But Hurley’s term on the board expired in June 2024. We asked Healey’s legal counsel for more information about why she wasn’t reappointed, but received no response.
We also asked all members of the Governor’s Council if they had taken action on Hurley’s holdover status, and if they knew when Healey might reveal a nominee. Only District 3’s new councilor, Mara Dolan, answered our email. She wrote: “I have spoken a number of times with the Governor’s chief legal counsel and assistant legal counsel about the need for more timely hearings. . .and the overall workload currently straining the Parole Board. I am confident that the Governor and her team are keenly aware of these issues and working for solutions as quickly as possible. I am very grateful to outgoing Parole Board Chair Tina Hurley for her outstanding dedication and service. Based on my conversations, I am hopeful that Governor Healey will nominate a new Parole Board Chair very soon.”
Regarding the next head of the Parole Board, in order for a person to serve as chair, the governor must first nominate them to serve on the board. Then, if the nominee is approved by the Governor’s Council, an obscure eight-member elected body that we have reported on extensively, the governor can tap the new board member as chair.
Garin of the Prisoners’ Rights Clinic said, “Hurley should have been renominated and reappointed to the board given everything she has done.”
The Parole Board under Hurley
Records of decisions for those with life sentences eligible for parole are posted regularly on the Parole Board’s website. According to approximately 340 parole decisions posted since Hurley began chairing the board in 2022, the paroling rate is greater than 65%. This parole rate is substantially higher than that of the last chair, Gloriann Moroney, who in three years averaged 46%.
In the 18th report that he has produced about lifer parole decisions, Gordon Haas, chair of the Lifer’s Group at Norfolk MCI, said that in 2024, the average wait time between a hearing held in Natick and a decision under Chair Hurley was 97 days. Compare that to an average wait time of 225 days in 2020 under former Chair Moroney.
In his latest report, Haas, who provides year-by-year comparisons of parole rates, expressed concern about Hurley’s departure, writing, “The resignation at the end of May of Chairperson Tina Hurley is very distressing. … Under Ms. Hurley’s leadership, the Parole Board’s priorities were reoriented away from a regurgitation of the facts of the cases to each lifer’s program participation and development while incarcerated.”
We wrote earlier this year about the overworked Parole Board, stemming in large part from the impact of the Mattis decision. The Mass Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) rendered that ruling in January 2024, providing those 18 to 20 years of age—who were saddled with a first-degree sentence for murder and doomed to serve life without parole (LWOP)—with protections against a mandatory death-in-prison sentence. This followed many of the same studies that led to laws based on juvenile development, ending LWOP for those under 18, thus allowing 150 emerging adults in state prisons to become immediately eligible for parole hearings.
Parole Watch (PW), a citizens’ advocacy group that attends parole hearings for life-sentenced prisoners, keeps records on the Parole Board. (This reporter participates in the group). Jerry Breecher, a data collector in PW, emailed that Hurley’s board has held 47 Mattis hearings and issued 14 decisions as of this writing.
In addition to the increased workload stemming from Mattis, the current board is handling an increasing number of hearings, both lifer and non-lifer. The Parole Board’s 2023 report lays out the uptick: 3,100 hearings for non-lifers in state prisons or houses of correction where one or two board members travel several days a week; 133 life sentence hearings in Natick held before a full board; and 19 hearings held for those on parole seeking to terminate their parole conditions after successful completion of parole in their communities.
In its other role as the state’s Advisory Board of Pardons, the Parole Board also reviews clemency petitions, including requests for both commutations and pardons—a commutation is a reduction in sentence; a pardon removes the underlying offense. Per its own report, the body held nine such hearings in 2023. This practice continued, and with updated clemency guidelines issued by Gov. Healey, the number of these hearings doubled in 2024.
In a phone call, Laura Wyman, also a member of Parole Watch, echoed how hard the board has been working in the face of uncertainty. She explained, “It’s been a mixed bag with the governor. [Healey] revised the clemency guidelines early on in her tenure and that was very encouraging, but her failure to address the fact that the Parole Board is overwhelmed and the fact that she didn’t reappoint Tina Hurley makes me wonder about her commitment to criminal legal reform.”
Radio silence from the governor
Private attorney Kim Jones, executive director of the Massachusetts Parole Preparation Project (MPPP), a nonprofit that supports people with parole eligible life sentences, sent her first email urging the governor to reappoint Hurley in December 2024. That letter was signed by more than 50 attorneys, organizations, and community members “who care deeply about the state of parole in Massachusetts.”
Jones sent the letter to all of the governor’s four legal counsels at the time, asking them to share it with Healey. There is no way for the public to email the governor unless one fills out an unwieldy form online. Jones received no response.
In late March 2025, Jones and other parole advocates urged members of the Governor’s Council to contact the governor. Some councilors wrote that they were supportive of Hurley; some said they had spoken with her counsel; but again, no response.
Jones interpreted the lack of response as “a message,” adding that the silence from the governor on this front was emblematic of Hurley’s experience as chair this past year.
“Many of my clients are disappointed in the governor because they felt ‘humanized’ by Chair Hurley,” Jones said. She wonders if Healey “doesn’t know or understand the big effect that the chair of the Parole Board has on incarcerated people in Massachusetts.” It seems, Jones says, that parole is “not a priority for [the governor].”
Sharpe, who began serving on MPPP’s board in prison and continues to help others with parole preparation, said the governor’s lack of response is “a political calculation.” He added, “If I’m being fair-minded, the prison population has dropped in half, a number of prisons have been closed, and she [Healey] can risk being criticized for her actions instead of being criticized about how she handles immigration, medical issues, taxes, employment, housing, and education.”
Who will the governor appoint as Hurley’s successor?
Some Parole Board watchers say that for her new pick, the governor might nominate a prosecutor and then appoint them chair. The fear, they say, is that law enforcement has been overrepresented on the board in the past, and often prosecutors see this as a step to judgeships. People I spoke with want more social workers, as well as those with experience in psychology, knowledge of juvenile development, and clinicians with re-entry experience.
In combing through files at the Governor’s Council office, I found that nine former board members—seven of them chairs (C), and seven former assistant district attorneys (ADA)—sought and obtained judgeships. They are: Paul Chernoff (C), Jack Curren (C), Michael Pomarole(C, ADA), Caeser Achilla (ADA), Paul Treseler (C, ADA), Joshua Wall (C, ADA), Maureen Walsh (C, ADA), Ina Howard Hogan (ADA), and Gloriann Moroney (C, ADA).
Haas, the lifer who follows these issues closely, wrote in his report centered on this issue: “Why Governor Maura Healey chose not to reappoint Ms. Hurley is a mystery. But, we urge Governor Healey to appoint a successor to Ms. Hurley who will continue her excellent work and not regress to the days of chairpersons who were only interested in obtaining judgeships.”
Garin, who has seen 32 years’ worth of rotating chairs, said, “We need somebody who has a history of working with and advocating with incarcerated people. In addition, a new chair needs some management experience and a thorough understanding of parole laws, policies, and practices.”
David Harris, former managing director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute of Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, sees the current situation as an opportunity to gauge the transparency of the new Governor’s Council. As we wrote in January, members spoke about the importance of transparency during their recent campaigns. Harris said he expects the same transparency from the governor he expects from councilors. If the governor is going to nominate someone from law enforcement, Harris said Healey should explain “why she nominated who she nominated.”
“I hope the Governor’s Council can claim its stake in this process and reject a nominee who comes from law enforcement,” Harris said. “They need to send her [Healey] a message that they will hold this line and demand someone with non-law enforcement credentials and experience. It’s an opportunity to change the balance and play the role they are supposed to play.”
There are currently three Parole Board members—Tonomey Coleman, Charlene Bonner, and James Kelcourse—serving as rotating chairs at lifer hearings. Until the governor nominates a new board member, after Hurley’s final day next Tuesday there will be six members juggling a herculean job. They will all be waiting for the governor to act.
