Maryland Parole Partnership

A Mother Has Waited Half a Century to See Her Son Be Paroled

Mrs. Eula Tucker is the mother of Kenneth Tucker. Her son was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole as a child and has been in prison for nearly half a century. While in prison, he has grown, taken classes, earned certificates, and rehabilitated himself. Unfortunately, because of Maryland’s broken parole system, he has not been granted the parole he earned long ago. In fact, he has never even been considered for parole by the only decision-maker in Maryland with the authority to grant someone serving a life sentence parole: the Governor.

Thirty-one years ago, on Jan. 26, 1993, at age 15, I was arrested on two homicide charges in Baltimore City. I was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life plus 20 years in prison. The judge who sentenced me mistakenly believed that I was unredeemable, unreformable, and that the actions I committed were unreconcilable. She stated that I had “little prospect of ever being able to come out and function,” and that I showed very “little hope of rehabilitation.” The judge was unconvinced that “job training, education, and such would make [me] a safe citizen.”

Thankfully, my sentencing judge was wrong about me. Today, I am not only redeemed and reformed, but I have also reconciled through victim/offender mediation with the daughter of the victim in my case — who has forgiven me.

December 8, 2021, was a great, long-awaited day for fairness and racial justice, as the Maryland General Assembly voted to override a veto of SB 202, a bill to fix the state’s broken parole system so that Marylanders serving life sentences finally have a chance to earn release. After a difficult, decade-long effort, this new law will correct an injustice that has caused Marylanders who have been repeatedly, wrongfully denied parole by Governors, even though they have the right to earn release. They, their families and their communities deserve this important reform.

In an important victory on the road to fixing the state’s broken parole process for Marylanders given life sentences, today the Maryland Board of Public Works (BPW) approved a legal settlement that requires the Maryland Parole Commission (MPC), Division of Correction (DOC), and Governor to adopt new regulations and policies to help rebuild Maryland’s parole process for those sentenced as children to life imprisonment.

Since 1995, when Maryland adopted its “life means life” policy, parole in Maryland has operated as a system of clemency that denied Marylanders sentenced to life with parole as children any meaningful or realistic hope of release. The settlement requires all the decision-makers to give mitigating weight to the age of children who are sentenced, provide much greater transparency about their decisions and their reasoning, and work more closely together to identify and advance those sentenced to life as children toward release. By doing so, the settlement seeks to eliminate the arbitrary barriers that have prevented Marylanders given life sentences as children from being paroled, notwithstanding their demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.

The lawsuit was brought by three Marylanders sentenced while children to life with parole – Nathaniel Foster, Calvin McNeill, and Kenneth Tucker – and the Maryland Restorative Justice Initiative, an organization that works for the rights of people who are incarcerated. When the case was filed in 2016, Maryland had functionally abolished parole for lifers in violation of the constitutional rights of those sentenced as children. No Marylander serving a life with parole sentence had been granted parole in more than two decades, including Marylanders sentenced when they were children. Everything about the parole process had adapted to the reality that parole was essentially unattainable for anyone sentenced to life. In 2020, both Mr. Foster and Mr. McNeill were released – Mr. Foster because his sentence was commuted and Mr. McNeill through a judge’s resentencing order. Mr. Tucker hopes to achieve release soon.

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• Call our Civil Rights Complaint Line on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1 to 3 p.m.: (443) 524-2558.
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