allaboutwomen

Middlesex top prosecutor Gerard Leone — who was never notified by the Parole Board before it sprang a triple-lifer who allegedly went on to kill a Woburn cop — is urging state officials to reconsider their policy of allowing panelists to vote anonymously before unleashing violent thugs.

“I’m a proponent of transparency in government, especially when decisions are made that compromise the public’s safety,” Leone told the Herald yesterday. “You can’t take on a responsibility in government and say, ‘I don’t want to be held accountable for my part.’ ”

In the ill-fated case of 2009 parolee Dominic Cinelli, 57, six board members voted unanimously to release the career con in spite of his shocking criminal record of attempted murder and armed robbery charges and two prison escapes.

Cinelli allegedly gunned down patrolman and father-of-three John “Jack” Maguire during a botched Dec. 26 jewelry heist.

Everything about Cinelli embodied “a leopard that’s not going to change its spots,” Leone said. “Anybody with the profile that Cinelli had presents a predictability quotient, which is so high that they shouldn’t be given the opportunity to be released to hurt somebody else. And Cinelli, specifically, was not parole-worthy.’’

Leone has heard from numerous law-enforcement officials who are “distraught, offended and upset” that Cinelli was set free. The convict also died during the gun battle.

This month, Leone expects to submit — for the third time — “Melissa’s Bill” to, among other things, abolish parole eligibility for violent habitual offenders. The long-ignored legislation honors a Jamaica Plain substitute teacher, Melissa Gosule, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1999 when her car broke down on Cape Cod and she accepted a lift from a man with 27 criminal convictions who’d served only two years in jail.

The Parole Board convenes for lifer hearings today for the first time since Maguire’s murder.

First up: Brett Christianson, 51, who, during a 1996 robbery, choked, stabbed and suffocated 85-year-old Nordella Newson, a popular Fenway anti-crime crusader who had once befriended him. He then torched her apartment to cover his tracks.

Board records show just 17 percent of convicts had their parole rescinded in 2009 for violations and that 78 percent of parolees successfully completed their post-release community supervision.

But there have been several recent cases in which parolees were back behind bars accused of horrific new offenses, including:

• In November 2009, twice-convicted killer Gerald Hill was charged with armed robbery for holding up a Boston cab garage two months after he was paroled from a life sentence for the execution of a home heating oil deliveryman during the Blizzard of 1978.

• In Wareham last September, police arrested paroled convicted child rapist Lance Porter on charges he attacked a woman in a Walmart parking lot.