A man serving a life sentence for killing another man in Springfield when he was 18 years old wasn’t supposed to get a second chance.

And though the laws in Massachusetts have changed, the parole board still isn’t ready to grant his freedom.

John Carter, 52, has been incarcerated for the past 33 years after killing a 22-year-old man named Jerry Hughes in 1991.

At the time of the killing, Carter was associated with a known narcotics dealer who wanted Hughes dead. That dealer had a gun delivered to Carter in the days before the killing and at 6:30 p.m. on March 3, 1991, Carter drove to the Rainville Hotel in Springfield.

Carter was with his co-defendant, Donald Vanhook, who dropped Carter off at a street corner near the hotel and waited. Carter was armed with the gun and went into the hotel, then came out with Hughes.

The two exchanged words briefly and Carter stepped back, pulled the gun from his jacket and shot Hughes dead at point-blank range.

Carter later admitted to killing Hughes and was convicted of first-degree murder in 1992, sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

However, in January 2024, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled in Commonwealth v. Mattis that sentencing people, ages 18 through 20 at the time of their offense, to life without the possibility of parole was unconstitutional and amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Massachusetts was the first state in the country to transform the law, experts said.

“Essentially, the brains of what we are calling ‘late adolescents’ or ‘emerging adults’ function very much like juveniles,” Northampton attorney Paul Rudof, one of the lawyers who successfully challenged life sentences for individuals aged 18 to 20, told The Republican last year.

There were 210 cases that fell into the Mattis decision across Massachusetts, including Carter’s.

But the board called Carter’s initial term of incarceration “troubling,” as he accrued disciplinary reports for violence and weapons. He also spent a 10-year-term in the Disciplinary Unit for an organized, violent assault of a corrections officer.

The board is also “concerned with Carter’s honesty,” it wrote in its decision, because he filed a fraudulent affidavit in a 2020 motion for a new trial and claimed he did not kill Hughes.

Carter has spent time in rehabilitative programming since Mattis and the board encouraged him to continue, adding it “appreciates that he earned his Hi-Set [high school equivalency test] in 2023.”

However, parole board members concluded Carter hadn’t demonstrated a level of rehabilitation that “would make his release compatible with the welfare of society” and denied his parole. They’d also heard public testimony for those who spoke in support of parole and from assistant district attorney Lee Baker, who spoke in opposition.

The court’s Mattis decision has often been devastating for the families of those killed as they are forced to relive the trauma, often going in front of the parole board and the incarcerated individual to make their own case.

Families have described the process as a “nightmare,” stating they feel betrayed and that the system is treating murderers as victims while their own pain is ignored. One family member during a previous hearing walked out, feeling as if his side wasn’t being fairly heard after the incarcerated individual was told they did a good job.

The parole board has so far granted freedom to more than 25 people, which is a significant majority of those who have had hearings and decisions released.