Robert Caston’s resentencing and release

Robert Caston’s resentencing and release marked the first time a person was freed as a result of the Supreme Court’s ban on life-without-parole sentences for children convicted of non-homicides. After forty-five years at Angola for a crime committed when he was sixteen, Caston received a new sentence that permitted his immediate release. The decision moved the promise of a constitutional ruling from the courtroom into the work of bringing a person home.

Background and Stakes

A couple of weeks before Christmas, Bryan Stevenson returned to court for the fourth time seeking release for Caston and Robert Caston’s fellow prisoner, Joshua Carter. The cases were heard before different judges, but the legal team hoped that success for one man might make success for the other more attainable. Carol Kolinchak, an attorney with the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, served as local counsel. She and Stevenson were still sorting through paperwork and the many issues keeping the men imprisoned.

Caston’s case concerned the long aftermath of a sentence imposed on a child. He had been sent to Angola in the 1960s and had spent forty-five years there for a non-homicide crime committed at sixteen. Angola was a particularly harsh place to serve time: accounts of conditions there describe violence, forced manual labor, and disciplinary punishments that could include solitary confinement. The resentencing hearings also carried the burden of those disciplinary records, which state lawyers could use to argue against more favorable sentences. Caston’s release therefore depended not only on recognition of the constitutional problem but on overcoming the accumulated consequences of decades in prison.

The Resentencing Hearing

The state generally did not transport prisoners from Angola to New Orleans for hearings; instead, they watched proceedings through a video connection at the prison. After Stevenson made the defense arguments in a noisy, crowded courtroom, the judge granted the motion to resentence Caston. As she recited the date of his conviction and described his decades in prison, the room changed. Lawyers stopped conferring, prosecutors waiting for other cases turned their attention to the hearing, family members fell silent, and even handcuffed inmates awaiting their own cases listened.

The judge stated the central facts plainly: Caston had spent forty-five years at Angola for a non-homicide crime committed when he was sixteen. She then imposed a new sentence that meant he would be released immediately. The courtroom’s silence gave way to applause. Defense lawyers, prosecutors, family members, deputy sheriffs, and inmates in handcuffs joined in. Kolinchak wiped away tears, and the judge, who usually tolerated no disruptions, appeared to accept the moment’s emotion. Former students of Stevenson’s who worked in the New Orleans public defender’s office were also there, cheering.

News of Release and Immediate Consequences

Caston could not see everything unfolding from the prison video monitor, so Stevenson spoke with him by phone to explain the ruling. Caston was overjoyed. The decision made him the first person released as a result of the Supreme Court’s ban on sentences that condemned children convicted of non-homicides to die in prison. The legal victory was also a direct answer to the years in which the sentence had treated release as impossible.

The hearing for Joshua Carter followed in a separate courtroom. His family, which had continued to support him across the years, celebrated when he too received a new sentence allowing immediate release. The paired victories showed how one successful resentencing could encourage progress in another case, while each man’s release still depended on resolving his own legal barriers.

From Court Order to Homecoming

After the rulings, the legal team began arranging for Caston and Carter to leave prison that evening. Angola’s usual protocol was to release prisoners at midnight and provide bus fare to New Orleans or another city in Louisiana. Stevenson and his colleagues sent staff on the several-hour journey to meet the men at the prison, so they would not have to make the midnight bus trip alone. The practical details mattered: an order authorizing release had to become a safe passage out of the institution.

The case also illustrated why release required support beyond resentencing. The Equal Justice Initiative had developed a re-entry program for people who had spent many years in prison after being incarcerated as children, offering housing, job training, life skills, counseling, and other assistance. Its commitment to support clients returning to the community was part of what the lawyers could offer judges and parole boards. Caston’s hearing thus joined a judicial remedy to the difficult work of rebuilding a life after decades away.

Significance

The courtroom’s response made visible the human consequence of a sentence often discussed as doctrine: a man who had entered prison as a child could leave after the law recognized that he should not have been condemned to die there. The applause crossed institutional roles, including those of prosecutors and deputy sheriffs, without erasing the decades Caston had lost. His release was both an individual homecoming and a first implementation of the Supreme Court’s protection for children sentenced for non-homicide crimes.