225 people. Life without parole. For murders they did not commit.

225 people are serving life in Massachusetts for murders they did not commit.

Under Massachusetts law, if you are present when someone else commits a murder — even if you did not know it would happen, even if you tried to stop it — you can be convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. This is called joint venture liability.

What does that look like? A 17-year-old drives a car during a robbery. Someone else in the car shoots someone. The 17-year-old is charged with first-degree murder. Life without parole. No possibility of release. Ever.

The database the state never built

A researcher named Peter Bin is incarcerated at MCI. Using LexisNexis and court records, he built a case-by-case database of every person in Massachusetts serving a life sentence as an accomplice — the database that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts never built.

The numbers:

291 first-degree convictions. $39.5 million per year in taxpayer costs to incarcerate them. At $175,000 per person per year, we must ask what that money could do in our communities instead.

Why this matters to you

Every dollar spent incarcerating someone who did not commit a murder is a dollar not spent on our schools, our housing, our communities. When we lock people up for life at $175,000 a year for crimes someone else committed, we are choosing punishment over investment. We are choosing a system that does not make us safer — it just costs more.

What I will fight for

Reform joint venture liability so that people are punished for what they did, not for what someone near them did. End life without parole for juveniles. Eliminate cash bail. End prison labor exploitation. Address the structural racism that fills our prisons — and invest in what actually keeps our communities safe!