Joshua Carter’s resentencing and release

Joshua Carter’s resentencing and release brought an end to nearly fifty years of imprisonment that began with a coerced confession and a death sentence imposed when he was sixteen. Blind by then and in his sixties, he won a new sentence that meant he could leave prison immediately—a legal victory made concrete by his family’s welcome and the effort to spare him a midnight bus journey home.

Childhood Case and Decades in Prison

In 1963, when Carter was sixteen, he was accused of rape in New Orleans and quickly sentenced to death. Police officers beat him brutally to obtain a confession. In 1965, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned his conviction, but Carter was resentenced to life imprisonment without parole and sent to Angola Prison. The reversal did not return his youth or freedom; it changed the sentence while leaving him behind bars.

Over the decades, Carter struggled, then became a model prisoner and trustee. In the 1990s, he developed glaucoma and did not receive the medical care he needed. He soon lost his sight in both eyes. By the time his case became a priority for resentencing, he was in his sixties, blind, and had spent nearly fifty years in prison.

The Resentencing Campaign

The Equal Justice Initiative chose Carter and Robert Caston as its first two Louisiana cases to litigate for resentencing among the old-timers: juvenile lifers who had been imprisoned for decades. The effort sought to persuade New Orleans prosecutors that Carter should be released after nearly half a century in custody, taking account of both his age and blindness.

Carter’s resentencing followed Caston’s courtroom victory. The lawyers went down the hall to Carter’s courtroom and won a new sentence that meant he, too, would be released immediately. His family was ecstatic; they embraced the lawyers and promised them home-cooked meals. The movement from one courtroom to the next turned the day’s first success into a second, and made the prospect of release real for Carter and his family.

Release from Angola

Carter and Caston were due to be released that evening. Angola’s usual protocol was to release prisoners at midnight and give them bus fare to New Orleans or another city in Louisiana. Rather than leave the two men to make that journey alone in the middle of the night, the Equal Justice Initiative sent staff several hours away to meet them when they were released.

For Carter, the arrangements marked the practical end of a punishment that had persisted after the conviction supporting his original death sentence was overturned. His case links the immediate injustice of a confession beaten out of a child to the long consequences of sentencing that same child to die in prison. The release did not undo the lost decades or the loss of his sight; it changed what could happen next, allowing Carter to leave Angola and return to his family.