The Second Amendment Prohibited Citizens Under The Age Of...

In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled the Eighth Amendment prohibited citizens under the age of eighteen from being sentenced to life in prison without consideration of extenuating circumstances. In 1963, not even two weeks after his seventeenth birthday, Henry Montgomery murdered Charles Hurt and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Montgomery, now sixty-nine years old, is challenging the state of Louisiana’s authority to keep him behind bars. Should he, along with many others in the same situation, be given the chance to prove himself as an upstanding citizen of the United States of America? Montgomery’s and other prisoner’s freedom hangs in the balance as the nine justices of the Supreme Court debate whether or not they should be granted collateral review. In November of 1963, eleven days after his seventeenth birthday, Henry Montgomery, an African American boy, was playing hooky in a park just outside of Baton Rouge when he murdered Louisiana deputy, Ch arles Hurt. Hurt was assigned the job of rounding up the truants that day, and while he was searching Montgomery after catching him skipping school, Montgomery panicked and pulled out the small pistol he had tucked into his jacket pocket. Montgomery’s lawyers argued that he had developmental issues and an IQ in the seventies, therefore, he did not completely comprehend his actions. However, a now twenty year old Henry Montgomery was sentenced to die. 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