A Massachusetts man serving a life sentence for a fatal shooting at a Brockton graduation cookout has been denied parole after board members deadlocked 3-3 over whether to release him to an immigration detainer. Josener Dorisca, now 43, will have to wait until 2027 for another chance at freedom following the July 23 decision.
The tie vote, laid out in parole documents, means Dorisca was not granted release to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainer, resulting in a one-year delay before his next review. As MassLive reported, the split outcome followed Dorisca's initial parole hearing on March 12, where three of his family members testified in support of his release. Four members of victim Bensney Toussaint's family and a representative from the Plymouth County District Attorney's office spoke against it, according to Massachusetts Parole Board records.
Dorisca was convicted of second-degree murder in 2013 and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. Toussaint, 26 at the time, confronted Dorisca at the June 2008 cookout in Brockton, and the two got into a fight, according to parole documents. Per those same documents, Dorisca fired several shots while struggling with Toussaint and then fired additional shots while standing over him. First responders performed CPR at the scene and rushed Toussaint to Brockton Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
A Motive Rooted in a Personal Rivalry
Federal court records indicate the fatal confrontation stemmed from a personal relationship dispute — Toussaint was romantically involved at the time with a woman who had two children with Dorisca, according to filings reviewed by GovInfo. After the shooting, Dorisca fled Massachusetts for Florida and lived as a fugitive for two and a half years before he was arrested there on unrelated charges in 2011 and extradited back to face trial.
That manhunt had ripple effects well beyond Dorisca's own case. Law enforcement's search for him led to landmark cell-site tracking litigation in Massachusetts, with courts ultimately suppressing cell tower location data that police had gathered without a warrant while trying to track one of his associates, according to Criminal Legal News.
Appeals Exhausted Before Parole Bid
Dorisca's conviction has already survived multiple rounds of appellate review. The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the second-degree murder conviction in December 2015, finding that prosecutor statements during closing arguments and the use of deposition evidence did not amount to prejudicial error, according to court records cited by Justia Law. In October 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit went further, rejecting Dorisca's federal habeas corpus petition and ruling that using deposition testimony from a medical examiner who had given birth during his 2013 trial did not violate his constitutional right to confront witnesses.
Boston Police Department incident logs also show Dorisca had a prior arrest in August 2006, nearly two years before the Brockton shooting, when he was charged with assault and battery following a late-night fight in downtown Boston.
Rehabilitation Record Meets Lingering Doubts
Behind bars, Dorisca has built what parole records describe as a steady institutional record. He has worked in his facility's gym since 2021, has had no disciplinary infractions since 2022, has worked toward earning his High School Equivalency Test, and has completed Violence Reduction and Alternatives to Violence programming.
Yet that record wasn't enough to sway the full board. Members cited concerns about Dorisca's credibility, according to parole documents, tied in part to the fact that he continues to maintain his innocence in Toussaint's killing. Under Massachusetts law governing life sentence reviews, parole can only be granted if the board determines, after a risk assessment, that there is a reasonable probability the prisoner will live and remain at liberty without violating the law — a standard the board found it could not meet by consensus this time around.
Dorisca is now set to appear before the board again in 2027, when the same tension between his rehabilitation efforts and the unresolved objections from Toussaint's family and prosecutors will likely resurface.
