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constitutionally acceptable sentence. Because Mr. Carter and Mr. Caston had both been in
prison for nearly fifty years, we wanted their immediate release.
A couple of weeks before Christmas, I was back in court for the fourth time trying to win
the release of the two men. There were two different judges and courtrooms involved, but we
felt if we won release for one it might then become easier to win release for the other. We
were working with the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, and their lawyer Carol Kolinchak
had agreed to be our local counsel in all of the Louisiana cases. At this fourth hearing, Carol
and I were busily trying to process papers and resolve the endless issues that had emerged to
keep Mr. Carter and Mr. Caston incarcerated.
Mr. Carter had a large family that had maintained a close relationship with him despite the
passage of time. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many family members had fled New
Orleans and were now living hundreds of miles away. But a dozen or so family members
would dutifully show up at each hearing, some traveling from as far away as California. Mr.
Carter’s mother was nearly a hundred years old. She had vowed to Mr. Carter for decades that
she wouldn’t die until he came home from prison.
Finally, it seemed like we were close to success. We got things resolved so that the Court
could grant our motion and resentence Mr. Caston so that he would immediately be released
from prison. The State usually wouldn’t bring inmates from Angola to New Orleans for
hearings but instead had them view proceedings on a video hookup at the prison. After I
made our arguments in the noisy, frenetic courtroom, the judge granted our motion. She
recited the facts about the date of Mr. Caston’s conviction, and then something quite
unexpected happened. As the judge spoke about Mr. Caston’s decades in prison, the
courtroom, for the first time in my multiple trips there, became completely silent. The
lawyers stopped conferring, the prosecutors awaiting other cases paid attention, and family
members ceased their chatter. Even the handcuffed inmates awaiting their cases had stopped
talking and were listening intently. The judge detailed Mr. Caston’s forty-five years at Angola
for a non-homicide crime when he was sixteen. She noted that Caston had been sent to
Angola in the 1960 s. Then the judge pronounced a new sentence that meant Mr. Caston
would immediately be released from prison.
I looked at Carol and smiled. Then the people in the silent courtroom did something I’d
never seen before: They erupted in applause. The defense lawyers, prosecutors, family
members, and deputy sheriffs applauded. Even the inmates applauded in their handcuffs.
Carol was wiping tears from her eyes. Even the judge, who usually tolerated no disruptions,
seemed to embrace the drama of the moment. A number of my former students now worked
with the public defender’s office in New Orleans, and they, too, had come to court and were
cheering. I had to speak with Mr. Caston by phone and explain what had happened, since he
couldn’t see everything from the video monitor. He was overjoyed. He became the first
person to be released as a result of the Supreme Court’s ban on death-in-prison sentences for
juvenile lifers.
We went down the hall to Mr. Carter’s courtroom and had another success, winning a new
sentence that meant that he, too, would be released immediately. Mr. Carter’s family was
ecstatic. There were hugs and promises of home-cooked meals for me and the staff of EJI.
Carol and I busily began making arrangements for Mr. Caston’s and Mr. Carter’s releases,
which would take place that evening. The protocol at Angola was to release prisoners at