The first time a Massachusetts man saw his mother cry was when he returned to the state to face the consequences for killing a cab driver.
“It shattered me,” Allen Alston said.
Despite being sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, his mother encouraged him to better his life.
So, he did.
He got his GED, has read countless books, joined groups in the correctional facility, continues to work out, has had jobs in the facility and has never been part of a fight or displayed any acts of aggression in prison.
“I wasn’t going to let my one mistake define who I was,” he told the Massachusetts Parole Board on July 2.
Now, his hard work is paying off as he’s getting a second chance outside prison walls.
Alston, 47, appeared in front of the Massachusetts Parole Board in Natick for the first time since he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibly of parole for first-degree murder more than 25 years ago.
Alston, who is incarcerated at MCI-Shirley, has been fighting for his chance to go in front of the parole board for months.
He was part of a group of seven men who sued the Massachusetts Parole Board, Gov. Maura Healey and others over a delay in conducting parole hearings for people who were unconstitutionally sentenced to life in prison without the possibly of parole.
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In a 4-3 Supreme Judicial Court decision issued Jan. 11, 2024, emerging adults between the ages of 18-20 cannot be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in Massachusetts.
The high court ruled that life sentences for defendants within that age group are unconstitutional and amount to “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Due to the decision, Alston, who was 19 when he murdered 56-year-old Ismael “Ish” Lopez Rivera in 1997, was allowed to go in front of the parole board for the first time.
But he was forced to continue waiting as the parole board worked to schedule hearings for about 127 people who became parole-eligible as a matter of law.
Months after the decision, the parole board sent a letter stating it had planned “to start scheduling hearings in September as time permits.”
“We hope you will be understanding and patient as this is an unprecedented amount of additional cases to add to the Parole Board’s calendar,” the board stated.
For Alston, the wait had devastating consequences.
Seven months after the decision, his mother, 79, who he said always kept him together, died.
He was allowed to attend the wake but otherwise has had difficulty grieving while remaining in prison. He said other inmates have tried to help him through this difficult time.
One man pointed out to Alston that he still has good memories of his mother.
“He’s like, ‘I don’t have that at all. I don’t know my mother. I never had that,’” Alston recalled. “So that made me have empathy for him and showed me that I can be here mourning, but I had something he didn’t have … I grieve my mother still, but I definitely celebrate her, too.”
What happened
Alston had recently lost his job, had a child he was helping care for and was just told another child was on their way. He felt hopeless and turned to drugs and alcohol.
Alston didn’t have the money to take the taxi from his mother’s house to his brother’s. He originally planned on simply stiffing the driver. But he was already carrying a gun for protection after recently getting jumped, so why not use it to rob the taxi driver?
What Alston said he didn’t plan for was the taxi driver fighting back.
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Rivera attempted to grab the gun from Alston and the two began fighting for control. That’s when Alston fired the first two shots, he recalled to the parole board.
Although they continued fighting over it, Alston said he had control over the gun when he fired it three more times. This time, hitting Rivera.
He recalled hearing Rivera say “help.” But Alston was already running out of the cab.
“My adrenaline was going,” he recalled. “I fled.”
When authorities found him in South Carolina, he confessed to the shooting but not the attempted robbery. He was too ashamed of that part, he said.
The shooting was uncharacteristic for Alston, who was described as a “gentle spirit.” But it reflected his upbringing.
Growing up as the youngest boy of seven children in Brockton, he was around violence and drugs daily. He didn’t have a relationship with his father, and his brother often beat him to try to toughen him up.
“I never was a fighter,” he said.
He left school but tried to come back. However, the school said he owed for books he’d never taken home — books still sitting in his old locker.
He couldn’t afford the fine.
“I definitely got discouraged when they wouldn’t let me back to school,” he told the parole board.
He wanted a different way of life than what was around him. But he didn’t see a way out.
Alston was a “young man who was searching for a foothold,” Dr. Jeff Long, a board-certified neuropsychologist, said. “Some of his early experiences caused deep cracks in his foundation.”
Long described Alston as “a very empathic, nonjudgmental and peaceful man.”
But Alston said he felt alone and got a pit bull to help with protection. Still, that wasn’t enough and he was jumped twice.
He thought he was going to die.
That’s when he started carrying a gun — a gun he never intended to use.
A second chance
When Alston decided to better himself, he never imagined getting a second chance outside prison walls.
He found mentors in prison, became religious and did everything he could to still be a father to his two children.
Robert Foxworth, who spent decades in prison after being wrongfully convicted, recalled being drawn to Alston for his integrity.
“It got to a point where he was the only one I was called to help,” Foxworth said, taking his first day off of work since being released from prison in 2020 to speak at Alston’s parole board hearing.
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Now, Foxworth hopes to be there for Alston as he makes the difficult transition back into society.
Foxworth received a $1 million settlement from Massachusetts after his wrongful conviction. He said he’s willing to help Alston financially, too.
“He’s one of probably the most humble guys I’ve met since I’ve been in there,” Foxworth said. “I just think he made a mistake and I beg this parole board to give him a chance.”
Alston admitted that staying away from fights wasn’t easy. He had to learn to control his own emotions and not be petty, even as blood splattered into his food from a nearby fight.
A changed man
The Supreme Judicial Court decision isn’t just about whether the person is ready for parole. It’s also about whether the crime they committed was due to their young, impressionable and impulsive minds.
“Advancements in scientific research have confirmed what many know well through experience: the brains of emerging adults are not fully mature,” Chief Justice Kimberly Budd wrote in the decision. “Specifically, the scientific record strongly supports the contention that emerging adults have the same core neurological characteristics as juveniles have.”
The Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office is against Alston getting parole, stating they don’t believe impulse control was a factor. They also have concerns with his lack of substance abuse treatment over the years.
Alston started using alcohol when he was 11. Although he has been clean the entire time he has been in prison, the state has concerns.
But his lawyer Lisa Newman-Polk stressed that they spent the entire day talking about the crimes of a person “that is not in the room today.”
Nineteen-year-old Alston and 47-year-old Alston aren’t the same person, she said.
“I think that Alan is a perfect example of the Mattis decision,” Newman-Polk told MassLive. “And I think it is a tragedy that we would have been paying as a society to have him incarcerated for decades more until his death rather than out contributing and paying taxes and helping the next generation of youth.”
On Nov. 18, the parole board agreed.
He will be granted parole after 90 days in a minimum security facility.
Once released, he will have electronic monitoring for 6 months a curfew of 10 p.m., be supervised for drugs and alcohol and must have mental health counseling for adjustment and grief.
Alston recognizes he can’t change the past. He can’t bring back Rivera. He can’t fix the pain a child felt listening to the gunshots he caused ring out as they tried to sleep.
But, as his lawyer flips the pages of his parole board speech, his hands still shackled at his side, he continues to apologize and says he plans to keep trying to do better, forever being the man he was supposed to be, not the boy he was.
“I thought I was a man, but I was still a boy, just trying to be seen,” he wrote in a poem in 2020, reflecting on the past.
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