A disciplinary committee at the state Department of Correction recommended holding Daniel T. Tavares Jr. for an additional two years, but a bureaucratic foul-up allowed the convicted killer to leave prison early, department administrators said yesterday.
Had prison officials processed the committee's finding in the allotted 60 days required by state regulations, Tavares would have still been in a Massachusetts prison in November, when he allegedly killed Brian and Beverly Mauck in Graham, Wash., said Department of Correction Commissioner Harold W. Clarke.
"We were not quick; we were slow to act," Clarke said in a telephone interview yesterday. "We are very disappointed about the situation with Tavares, but we're confident that we can turn this around."
He said the department has asked the Criminal Justice Institute, a Connecticut consulting firm, to review its disciplinary system and what went wrong with the Tavares case. He also ordered his staff to audit the cases of hundreds of other prisoners to make sure similar errors are not made, he said.
Clarke said a review of the case found a series of administrative errors from 1993 to 2005; Tavares should have been kept behind bars another 780 days after his release from MCI-Cedar Junction in July.
The review found that Tavares, who had been sentenced in 1992 to between 17 and 20 years for manslaughter, had 123 disciplinary reports in his record for abusing and threatening behavior and failing to follow instructions. The Bristol County district attorney's office allowed Tavares to plead guilty to manslaughter for the 1991 slaying of his mother rather than face possible life in prison without parole for a murder conviction.
Because he had been convicted before the sentencing laws changed in 1994 - under the old laws, maximum sentences were automatically reduced by up to 40 percent - Tavares was eligible to be released eight years early for good behavior. The discipline left him with less than four years of eligibility for an early release.
The review found six of the disciplinary reports recommended that he lose an additional 780 days of eligibility for early release, but prison officials never docked him for that behavior.
In one case in 2003, Clarke said the superintendent of MCI-Cedar Junction failed to act on a judgment from a department disciplinary committee that he be docked 300 days. In the other five cases, he said no records exist to explain why officials did not delay his release.
"This review indicates that the DOC did not have in place at that time an adequate method of processing and tracking [Statutory Good Time or early release] cases," according to a document department officials released yesterday. "The review also revealed flaws in the manner by which the DOC documented routine administrative decisions."
Clarke said he has ordered his staff to audit all cases of 800 of the department's 11,000 prisoners who were sentenced before 1994.
"We want to make sure that we calculated their sentences appropriately," he said. "Beginning with the offenders closest to their release dates, we are going to go back to see if they had any disciplinary reports, to see if they lost any statutory good time, and if the records had been adjusted accordingly."
Tavares remains in Washington, accused of kicking in the front door of the Maucks' home, shooting Brian Mauck in the face, then shooting him two more times as he lay on the floor. Tavares allegedly shot Beverly Mauck in the head as she tried to run away.
