Inmate in juvenile sentencing case loses latest parole bid

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A Louisiana inmate whose case led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling extending the hope of freedom to juvenile offenders sentenced to life without the possibility of parole was again denied that freedom on Thursday after more than five decades in prison.

A three-member board voted 2-1 in Henry Montgomery's favor, but parole decisions must be unanimous in Louisiana.

"It's a tough, tough decision," said board member Brennan Kelsey. He was the last member to vote and the only one to vote against Montgomery's release. "Unfortunately, Mr. Montgomery, I am going to vote to deny your parole," he said.

Keith Nordyke, a lawyer for Montgomery, said he will continue to seek parole. He said Montgomery told him: "I'm not giving up."

Montgomery, now 72, was convicted in the 1963 killing of an East Baton Rouge sheriff's deputy named Charles Hurt; Montgomery was 17 at the time when he killed the officer, who caught him skipping school.

He was initially convicted and sentenced to death. Then the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled he didn't get a fair trial and threw out his murder conviction in 1966. He was retried, convicted, and sentenced to life without parole and spent decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

Then the Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that mandatory sentencing of life without parole for juvenile offenders was "cruel and unusual" punishment. But it didn't settle the question of whether that decision applied retroactively or only to cases going forward.

In 2016, the Supreme Court settled the matter by taking up Montgomery's case, and deciding to extend their decision on such sentences to people already in prison.

But so far that decision has not translated into freedom for Montgomery. A board voted in 2018 to deny him parole.

Montgomery...