Louisiana delays parole hearing for 71-year-old inmate
BATON ROUGE, La. — In 1963, Henry Montgomery killed a sheriff’s deputy less than two weeks after his 17th birthday. A half-century later and nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in his favour, he’s still waiting for his first chance at freedom.
Louisiana’s parole board postponed Thursday’s scheduled hearing for the 71-year-old inmate, whose case enabled roughly 2,000 other inmates to argue for their release after receiving mandatory life-without-parole sentences as juveniles.
The delay surprised Montgomery’s legal team and relatives of Charles Hurt, the slain East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s deputy. Becky Wilson, one of Hurt’s three children, said she had driven from Arkansas to Baton Rouge on Wednesday to speak at the hearing. Wilson and her son declined to comment on the board’s move.
Jim Wise, vice chairman of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, said a legal opinion from Louisiana’s attorney general is needed to resolve an apparent conflict between two laws governing parole hearings: One says a three-member panel must decide parole for juvenile offenders, while another says anyone convicted of a violent crime against a law enforcement officer must face a panel of at least five members.