A man convicted of stabbing another man during a dispute over the price of crack cocaine he was selling was granted parole this week by the Massachusetts Parole Board in a unanimous decision .

Christopher Vinton appeared before the board for the first time on April 9, after a recent Supreme Judicial Court decision made him eligible for parole. The state’s high court ruled last January that sentences of life without the possibility of parole for “emerging adults” — those between 18 and 20 — were unconstitutional. Vinton, who was 20 at the time of the killing, has spent nearly three decades behind bars.

Vinton was convicted of first-degree murder in Worcester Superior Court on May 1, 1997 — less than a year after he killed 36-year-old Norman Poulin.

On Aug. 3, 1996, Vinton went to an ap

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