A now 75-year-old Louisiana man who has spent about 58 years of his life in prison for the shooting death of an East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy when he was 17 was granted parole today by the Louisiana Parole Board. Kerry Myers, Deputy Director of the Louisiana Parole Project, says the release of Henry Montgomery, follows a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that mandatory life sentencing without parole for juveniles was cruel and unusual punishment since the brain isn’t fully developed until your 26 or 27 years old. “That was the rationale for the Supreme Court’s ruling, and Mr. Montgomery now has the chance to come home and live out the rest of his life,” said Myers.
Montgomery had originally been sentenced to death for the murder of Deputy Charles Hurt. Myers says Montgomery’s case opened the door for many other such cases involving juveniles to be reviewed. He says, “it committed the opportunity for more than 3,000 who committed offenses while they were children to be given a second look, not an automatic release.”
The Louisiana Parole Board had reviewed and declined Montgomery’s parole request two times previously before granting it today.
Myers says the paroling of Montgomery is similar to thousands that have occurred nationwide and dozens in Louisiana. “Ninety in Louisiana alone have been released because of that hearing and Mr. Montgomery was an agent of change and up to today he’s never been able to be a beneficiary of that change,” said Myers.
Montgomery’s death sentence for killing Deputy Charles Hunt was tossed on fair trial challenges, his retrial ending in a sentence of life without parole that was eventually deemed cruel and unusual punishment because he was 17 at the time of the crime.
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