A year after denial, Henry Montgomery (of Montgomery v. Louisiana) to get parole reconsideration by parole board
In every area of criminal law, as many are seeing in real time with the FIRST STEP Act, the implementation of any legal changes can be almost as important as the legal changes themselves. The high-profile case of 72-year-old Henry Montgomery, who won in the Supreme Court with his claim that the landmark Eighth Amendment decision in Miller v. Alabama must be applied retroactively, continues to demonstrate this fact. Though granted a chance at parole after serving more than 50 years on a murder charge as a teenager in the early 1960s, Montgomery was denied parole in February 2018 as detailed in this prior post.
But now I see this local news piece reporting on the interesting next chapter in this remarkable case under the headline "Louisiana parole board to rehear case of man central to Supreme Court ruling on juvenile lifers." Here are the details:
The Louisiana parole board in April will rehear the case of the 72-year-old Baton Rouge man central to the 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision on juveniles sentenced to life without parole, granting him a new hearing less than a year after the board first denied his release from prison.
Henry Montgomery, who is serving a life sentence for the 1963 killing of East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Deputy Charles Hurt, will again go before a three-person panel of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole after it accepted his request for reconsideration, the board's appeal-like process to reconsider previous decisions given certain circumstances, like a mistake, misconduct or new evidence. Montgomery's reconsideration hearing has been set for April 11....
"Henry Montgomery has been in prison for over 55 years, longer than any other juvenile lifer in Louisiana," said Andrew Hundley, the executive director of the Louisiana Parole Project, a nonprofit that represents juvenile lifers in their parole hearings and helps them readjust to free society. "We feel strongly that he is a deserving candidate for a second chance and would be a productive member of society, if given the opportunity."
In Louisiana, there were about 300 so-called juvenile lifers in prison, like Montgomery, amounting to the nation's third highest such population. Since the decision in 2016, about 35 juvenile lifers have been released on parole, according to the nonprofit Louisiana Parole Project, all having met certain parameters set out by state law, including having served at least 25 years and completed educational and rehabilitative classes, and having received a unanimous vote from the parole board.
Montgomery, however, has remained in the minority of such cases that have come up for a parole hearing, denied his shot at freedom by the parole board last February, with two of the three board members voting no. The two members cited the small number of classes Montgomery had completed during his decades at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
Typically, prisoners have to wait two years after a denial to apply for a new parole hearing, but a decision reconsideration can be granted if an offender alleges, and the board substantiates, misconduct by a board member, a procedural error or significant new evidence that was not previously available, according to the parole board's policy on reconsideration. While Montgomery's lawyer, Keith Nordyke, filed their initial motion for reconsideration under seal, he said their argument focused on how the board misapplied the law relative to juvenile lifers when deciding Montgomery's case. A seasoned parole board attorney, Nordyke said he only files for reconsideration if he believes a major mistake had been made.
"It's a big deal," Nordyke said of the board's decision to grant Montgomery a new hearing, but noted that he does not believe the decision has any larger implications for other juvenile lifers' cases. "I really believe that all these cases are taken one-on-one, on their merit," Nordyke said.
Francis Abbott, the executive director of the Louisiana Board on Pardons and Parole, said the Montgomery reconsideration decision was made by looking at board policy, but Abbott declined to answer specific questions about the decision. The board policy, updated in 2017, outlines specific considerations for parole committee members when hearing the case of a youthful offender, saying that members "shall give great weight to the fact that youth are less responsible than adults for their actions."
This article from a few months ago from the same news source highlights how Louisiana trails other states like Michigan and Pennsylvania with large juvenile LWOP populations in the number of juve offenders who have secured parole since there Supreme Court determined that Miller had to be applied retroactively.
Comments
Post a Comment