A Cambridge state lawmaker is defending the judge who sentenced the Memorial Drive shooting suspect when he had attacked Boston PD years ago, opposing the criticisms leveled by fellow Democrats like Gov. Maura Healey and former Suffolk DA Rachael Rollins.
Rep. Mike Connolly says the failure leading to last Monday’s chaotic shooting isn’t the five- to six-year prison sentence that Judge Janet Sanders handed Tyler Brown after his 2021 conviction of trying to kill a Boston police officer.
Rather, the Cambridge Democrat, whose district includes a part of Memorial Drive, believes that the “failure appears to be in the mental health response and the conditions leading up to Mr. Brown’s reentry.”
Connolly is backing the judge’s sentencing ruling, slamming commentators who, he says, “immediately lambasted” Sanders.
“Conservatives and right-wingers are incredulous that the judge didn’t follow the prosecutor’s recommendation for a 10- to 12-year prison sentence,” Connolly wrote in a blog post that he shared on his social media accounts on Friday. “Even former DA Rachel Rollins is complaining about that sentencing decision, as is Governor Healey.”
Healey has slammed Sanders’ sentencing of Brown after he was convicted of firing over 13 rounds from a handgun at Boston police officers in May 2020.
Brown, on probation at the time for a 2014 conviction of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and witness intimidation, pleaded guilty to eight charges related to the 2020 shooting.
The Massachusetts Parole Board granted Brown’s early release from MCI-Shirley last May, and he was allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence under parole supervision.
“The judge provided a sentence that was way too low. And that’s a serious problem,” Healey told the Herald on Thursday.
Rollins, a disgraced former U.S. Attorney and then- Suffolk DA who called for Brown to be sentenced to 10 to 12 years after he was convicted of shooting at Boston police, has said it’s a “miracle that this was not a mass casualty incident.”
“Brown should have been held accountable in 2021. He wasn’t,” Rollins, who’s running again for Suffolk DA, said in a statement to the Herald. “Sadly, dozens of people on Memorial Drive paid the price for that decision.”
In his Friday blog post, Connolly sided with retired Superior Court Judge Jack Lu, who has said that criticism of Sanders’ sentencing decision is “misplaced.”
Instead, the lawmaker said the chaos “raises questions about how the criminal legal and mental health systems deal with individuals struggling with substance use disorder, PTSD, and other issues.”
Brown had finished up a stint in McLean psychiatric hospital on May 8 and was set to complete his parole at the end of this week. Instead, another parolee informed the parole officer that Brown was “off his rocker,” hours before the shooting, a police report said, after he drank and gotten high.
“While a full investigation is pending,” Connolly wrote in his blog post, “ … we should address much harder questions around mental health treatment, state budgets, and re-entry supports for people who are incarcerated.”
“Finally, there’s the question of how Mr. Brown got his hands on that terrifying rifle,” the lawmaker added.
In a statement shared with the Herald on Saturday, Lu, a former chair of the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission, said Connolly is right in his assessment, and that “longer sentences do not increase public safety — the evidence runs the other way.”
“Completely well-intentioned cries for harsher sentencing and criminal justice policy,” Lu said, “will cause more crime and create more crime victims.”
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