Parole Hearing for Inmate Convicted in 1963 Slaying of Louisiana Sheriff's Deputy Delayed

A man convicted in the 1963 slaying of a Louisiana law enforcement officer was slated to get his first chance at parole on Thursday, but his hearing was delayed up to two months.

Henry Montgomery, who shot and killed East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Deputy Charles Hurt when he was 17, was set to appear before a parole board after the Supreme Court ruled in his favor last year, according to The Associated Press.

The January 2016 ruling for the now-71-year-old inmate by the nation's highest court opened the door for roughly 2,000 other juvenile offenders to argue for their release after receiving mandatory life-without-parole sentences.

While a state judge who resentenced Montgomery to life with the possibility of parole called him a "model prisoner," a grandson of the slain sheriff's deputy plans to urge the parole board to keep the killer in prison.

Jean Paul deGravelles said that at 17, Montgomery was old enough to know right from wrong when he shot Hurt.

"This man went to trial twice, both times found guilty," deGravelles said. "What's so different now than when he killed (Hurt) 50 years ago? The situation hasn't changed."

Montgomery initially was sentenced to death after a jury convicted him of fatally shooting Hurt, but after the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled he didn't get a fair trial and threw out his murder conviction in 1966, he was was retried and found "guilty without capital punishment" and automatically sentenced to life without parole.