BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - A proposal to give people convicted of murder as teenagers a chance at parole after 30 years is closer to reaching the Louisiana governor’s desk.
The House voted 82-3 Tuesday in favor of Sen. Dan Claitor’s bill banning juvenile life-without-parole sentences in all cases except when a judge deems a first-degree murderer among “the worst of the worst.”
The Senate, which already passed an earlier version of the bill, must approve the House’s changes. Those amendments include changing parole eligibility from 25 to 30 years, as well as letting prosecutors convince a judge that an offender is irredeemable.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2012 struck down automatic no-parole life sentences for juveniles.
About 300 inmates are serving life-without-parole sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles before 2012.
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Senate Bill 16: www.legis.la.gov
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