The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a Louisiana man sentenced to life without parole some 50 years ago for a murder committed as a 17-year-old juvenile has a right to have his sentence reviewed.
In a 6-3 opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court said that its 2012 ruling that banned mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders applies retroactively, because it represents a new substantive rule.
Lawyers for both sides believe the ruling could affect at least 1,000 similarly situated inmates across the country.
The case was brought by Henry Montgomery, 69, who has been serving a life-without-parole sentence that he received in 1963 as a juvenile for the murder of Sheriff Deputy Charles Hurt in East Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He had asked the justices to take a case decided four years ago called Miller v. Alabama and apply it to his case, even though he committed his crime well before that ruling. In Miller, the court held that mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile homicide offenders violate the Constitution.
The court's ruling Monday does not overturn Montgomery's conviction, but it allows him either a new sentencing hearing or a new parole hearing.
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