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Lowlife who murdered store clerk in Jamaica Plain to spend rest of miserable existence behind bars
By adamg on Tue, 01/20/2015 - 11:45am
The Supreme Judicial Court ruled today that Edward Corliss of Roslindale, who has a criminal record dating to 1962, got a fair trial for the 2009 shooting death of Surendra Dangol and that it saw no reason to overturn his first-degree murder conviction.
A Suffolk Superior Court jury quickly convicted Corliss on charges he shot Dangol to death even after Dangol, a clerk at the Monument Square Tedeschi, gave him everything he demanded - which turned out to be $746.
Dangol was a Nepali immigrant who was working to bring his family over to the US when he was murdered. Corliss, in contrast, was on parole at the time for murdering a store owner in Salisbury in 1971.
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Comments
Justice!
I always felt especially close to that shooting, as I used to go into that store just about every day on the way home from work. If ever there was a senseless killing, this was it.
Justice prevails.
Justice will be served. YES.
Until he's paroled again.
Until he's paroled again.
Not this time
The SJC was his last chance, short of some miracle involving a parole board, governor and governor's council all deciding he needs a pardon.
A first-degree murder conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life without parole; unlike the second-degree murder conviction from which he was sprung on the earlier murder.
Murder who was out on parole
Murder who was out on parole murdered someone else?! This is totally unacceptable !
Hyperbolic headline
The subject of the story aside, I'm not entirely comfortable with "newspapers" (or any media outlet for that matter) publishing this level of hyperbole.
The facts of the case will outrage me enough, thank you, without being "told" how to feel about it.
I would like at least the veneer of impartial journalism at least.
Most of the time I try
But this case has bothered me in particular since learning of the details of the murder, of Dangol's life and of Corliss's life. If anybody deserved better, it was Dangol; if anybody deserved worse, it was Corliss. Just a horrible, horrible person. So think of it not trying to convince you what to think (you're right: the facts of the case speak for themselves here) but what I think.
But what you think is an
But what you think is an editorial and should be reserved for the editorial page. A long standing tenant of journalism is to try not showing your bias in an article (in a certain way this is "becoming part of the story").
Let's say that this fellow was framed (not likely, but for argument's sake). Can we trust your further reporting on this subject? Can we trust that you would wholeheartedly dig for the truth?
I might even be willing to concede one hyperbolic word if that's the nature of the publication (ahem Herald ahem), but this moved me to comment.
Sorry, but I just think this is a terrible trend in reporting these days.
On a side note, my condolences to the Vitim's family.
Where is the UHub editorial page?
And more important to my reading level, where are the comics?
Adam's headline is akin to what one might find in a tabloid, and like it or note, there's a lot of "journalism" on the Internet more sensational than this.
Oh come on
Adam, you could at least offer the man a refund.
The service around here.
Welcome to the blog
This isn't actually a newspaper. Yes, Adam regularly scoops more traditional news outlets, and many of us use him as a major source of our news consumption, but this is a blog, and therefore it isn't inappropriate for it to carry his editorial voice. I find that he generally keeps that editorializing to the headlines (often to entertaining effect!) and tries to be more objective in the body of his postings, which is something that cannot actually be said about some prominent *coughFoxNewscough* news outlets.
It's a different beast, but still an interesting and helpful one.
Justice?
The guy killed before. He should've been in prison.
Same crime
He committed the same crime 30 years before and they paroled him.....disgraceful.
Blame the 1970s
This guy was part of a generation that terrorized the US with a giant crime wave.
Note that even Charles Manson comes up for parole from time to time - that was the way sentences were structured then. Life without parole was a rare sentence, and sometimes "life" meant "25 years" or "30 years".
There are those who go to
There are those who go to prison, even for things as awful as murder, and come out reformed. Part of the point of prison is to rehabilitate people, not just to punish them or take them out of society forever where they can do no harm.
The problem is, there is no good sure fire way to tell the difference between those who can be rehabilitated, and those who cannot. And too much of our prison system focuses just on punishment and keeping people apart from society, and not on rehabilitating them.
It is sad that he was in prison for so long, and then went back and killed again. I am not upset that he is going away for life this time. But rather than focusing on this case, and deciding that we should be more hasty to lock people up and throw away the key, I would prefer if prison were to focus more on rehabilitation, reintegration with society, and the like.
For example, in Norway, the maximum prison sentence is 21 years. You cannot be convicted for more than that. That means that the prison system must focus on rehabilitation, rather than just assuming that they'll lock you up forever or kill you and stop you from committing further crime that way (they do have the ability to continue to imprison after the sentence if you are deemed to still be a threat to society, but cannot impose longer sentences at the start of incarceration). With these shorter sentences, limited maximums, and lack of death penalty, Norway has a recidivism rate far lower than that in the US.
Would a Norwegian system work as well in the US? I don't know. We have fairly different cultures; we have a more diverse culture, greater levels of income equality, fewer government provided social services, and the like, their model may not work as well for us. But the fact that they are having success does indicate that the response to things like this should not necessarily be "we should have kept him locked up forever the first time", but maybe something like "why did we waste 30 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in prison just to have him go back on welfare, run out of money, and feel like he needed to try violence to solve that problem again"?
Who knows why Corliss killed again while out on Parole?
Whatever the reason, there was certainly no excuse for him killing somebody in cold blood. Since Corliss was out on parole from a prison sentence regarding someone he'd murdered before, the book had to be thrown at him, and Corliss had to be locked up.
But we do know why
It came up at his arraignment and trial: He was running low on cash.
Explains the robbery....
... but not the murder.
Reoffenders
There exists one perspective yet to be seriously considered; Corliss wanted to be reincacerated, this time for life. Ironic as it may be some criminals who have served lengthy sentences then released into a society they know nothing of decades after conviction for even murder will reoffend to return to what is now considered "home" the penal system. I remember this case because I worked there years prior (the night shift) and being a female it was no cake walk. Respects and condolensces to the Dangol family.
Hopefully time will catch up to him
Life without parole for this guy, on average, should be about 10 years. However, he's still going to be clothed and fed and given free health care on our dime.
I'd rather give that 10 years worth of money to his wife and daughter so they could at least begin to build another life.