Key inmate in juvenile life debate up for parole
NEW ORLEANS » In recent years, hundreds of people once destined to spend the rest of their lives in prison after being convicted of crimes as juveniles have gone free after Supreme Court decisions ruling that young people are capable of change and should be given a second chance.
But so far the man whose case has been central to this change — 75-year-old Henry Montgomery — is still behind bars nearly six decades after his 1963 arrest. That may change Wednesday when a Louisiana parole board votes for the third time whether to grant Montgomery parole.
“The state has gotten about fifty-eight years of Henry Montgomery’s life. He doesn’t have much left. What’s the value in making him spend a couple more years there? I, for one, cannot see it,” said Andrew Hundley who runs the Louisiana Parole Project that will provide a home and support for Montgomery should he be released.
Montgomery was arrested after fatally shooting Charles Hurt, an East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputy, who caught him skipping school. Montgomery was 17 at the time. He was initially sentenced to death but the state’s Supreme Court threw out his conviction in 1966, saying he didn’t get a fair trial. The case was retried, Montgomery convicted again but this time sentenced to life in prison.
When Montgomery went to prison, and for decades afterward, the “lock-’em-upand-throw-away-the-key” attitude dominated law enforcement and society — especially in Louisiana where the incarceration rate has consistently been the highest in the country. Juvenile offenders, often portrayed as irredeemable “super-predators,” were no exception.
But recent Supreme Court rulings have begun to chip away at these lifetime juvenile sentences as the country has begun to rethink “tough-on-crime” approaches.
In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the court ruled that mandatory sentencing of life without parole for juvenile offenders was “cruel and unusual” punishment. The court’s decision was based on the idea that children’s minds and impulse controls are still developing, and they often act recklessly. The court found that juveniles are capable of growth and change and, except in the most severe cases, should be given the opportunity to get out of prison.
In 2016, the Supreme Court took up Montgomery’s case and made their earlier decision retroactive, giving hundreds of juvenile lifers a shot at freedom.
Since the court’s Montgomery decision, about 800 people who had been sentenced to life without parole as juveniles have been released, according to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. About 656 people are serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children — down from 2,800 about five years ago — the organization said.
Advocates also point to the sweeping changes that have happened in the neardecade since Miller was decided. Twenty-four states and the District of Columbia have completely banned the use of life without parole for juveniles offenders — compared to five states in 2012. In another six states, the sentence still exists but no juveniles are serving life without parole.
In Louisiana, about 96 out of roughly 300 former juvenile lifers incarcerated at the time of the Montgomery decision have been freed, according to data compiled by the Parole Project and the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, which represents kids going through the justice system. But Louisiana has not done away with the life without parole sentence for juveniles, and advocates at the LCCR say just as many children are being sentenced to life without parole in the years after the Supreme Court’s pivotal 2012 ruling as after it — usually children of color.
When Montgomery started serving his time at Angola it was a violent place, where attacks on inmates and guards were commonplace. There was little in the way of rehabilitative programs, especially not for prisoners who were never expected to experience freedom again.