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W e d n e s d ay, Au g u s t 5, 2026
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Jan Risher LONG STORY SHORT
Listening for the sound of somewhere else
STAFF PHOTOS BY JAVIER GALLEGOS
Re-entry coordinator Riana Leverett, left, helps client Gabriel Logan with an issue on his phone during a technology literacy class at the Louisiana Parole Project office in June.
‘WE BELIEVE IN REDEMPTION’
Louisiana Parole Project paves a path from prison release BY JOY HOLDEN Staff writer
On June 9, 2016, Andrew Hundley was packing his things to leave the Louisiana State Penitentiary after 19 years. Other men serving life sentences gathered to tell him goodbye. He was 34. They were in their 50s, 60s and 70s. Hundley apologized for leaving them. Tw o m e n walked him to the door. He said they told him, “We know that you’re going Hundley to set an example, and you’re going to make it easier for the rest of us.” Hundley took those words to heart. “I couldn’t turn back the hands of time and undo the harm that I’d done in my youth,” Hundley said, “but I could better myself and better the lives of the people that I was living with in my prison community.” Hundley was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1997 slaying of 14-year-old Terri Elizabeth Pitre when he was 15 years old. “The parole boards saw that I wasn’t the same person almost two decades before,” Hundley said, “and they thought I was worthy of a second chance.” On his ride home, his sister asked him what was next. “I told her, ‘I have to figure out a way to help the people I’ve left behind,’ ” Hundley said. Two months later he started Louisiana Parole Project with two LSU law professors. In 10 years, the organization has helped 703 parolees come home and adjust to life on the outside.
Client Gabriel Logan, center, helps Shawn Foster during a lesson in a technology literacy class at the Louisiana Parole Project office in June.
Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where juvenile lifers lived in close proximity. “Henry is such a part of my life,” Hundley said. “I told myself, ‘I’m gonna work here until I get Henry Montgomery out,’ — and now it’s a career because of Henry.” The Supreme Court’s 2012 Miller v. Alabama decision found mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders unconstitutional — opening the door for juveniles to seek parole if they could prove they had changed. With Montgomery’s case, Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court upheld and solidified the decision by ruling it retroactive on Jan. 25, 2016. Hundley was the first person in Louisiana sentenced to a life sentence as a juvenile to be granted parole. Montgomery wasn’t paroled until Nov. 17, 2021, at the age of 75. Hundley said 70 juvenile lifers were released from First but not the last prison before Montgomery, Hundley, credits Henry who had been sentenced to Montgomery for setting him life at the age of 17 in 1963. Hundreds of other men and on the road to freedom and a post-incarceration life dedi- women were serving life sencated to helping others. The tences for crimes committed two served time together in when they were children in
I had heard about the hot chocolate at the Prague Main Train Station before I went. A neighbor, a locally famous half-Romani woman in the Slovak village where I lived, told me I could find the best hot chocolate in the world there. It’s been decades since I went and had it, but I still remember its rich flavor — I’ve never tasted anything like it before or since. The closest I’ve come was adding cocoa powder and melted good chocolate to sweetened condensed milk, then carefully heating it A dab will do ya. As good as that hot chocolate was, it was not the best thing about the Prague Main Train Station. The best thing was the destination sign — the one that told where the next trains were headed and from which platform to board. I’ve never seen another sign like it. I understand they replaced it with an electronic version a few years ago. But for decades, they used what was called a split-flap display, a sensory marvel of digital electromechanics. At various intervals, the whole sign would begin to change, line by line, and all these little cards would half-flip — showing, for the briefest of moments, an array of European destinations before landing on one. Brno on platform 7. Paríž on platform 11. Víden on 2. Budapešt on 5. Mnichov on 3, and Berlin on 14. I would stand and watch it, sipping hot chocolate, dreaming of Paris, Berlin and everywhere in between and beyond. It performed an incredible alphabetical dance, but even better than watching it was listening to it. The clitter-clatter of Brno to Budapešt was the most mesmerizing sound I’ve ever heard. It was that near whisper of sound an old clock radio made, going from 10:59 to 11:00 on steroids. It wasn’t loud, but it felt like “sound travel,” inviting me to imagine where I might go next. Lately, I’ve had a similar feeling playing a game on my phone called MapTap — a few moments to consider places I know and places I don’t and try to find them on a map. For more than a hundred days, I’ve played it each morning with
ä See RISHER, page 2G
PROVIDED PHOTO
Andrew Hundley, founder and CEO of the Louisiana Parole Project, greets Henry Montgomery, who had been incarcerated since 1963, after his parole release from Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in November 2021. Louisiana when he was granted parole in 2016. “I was not the one who had served the most time in prison,” Hundley said. “I wouldn’t say I was the most deserving. I was just the one that had the path of least resistance to get the first parole hearing.”
Project’s beginnings Hundley didn’t know where
to begin his new mission, so he reached out to his lawyer, LSU law professor Keith Nordyke, and another law professor, Robert Lancaster, for help on creating a nonprofit to help worthy prisoners win parole. He wanted the organization to give pro-bono legal representation to juvenile lifers
ä See PROJECT, page 1G
PROVIDED PHOTO
MapTap is a geography game that allows viewers to pinpoint places on a map and share the game experience with friends.