Joshua Carter

Joshua Carter spent 49 years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, one of the nation’s most dangerous prisons, for a non-homicide offense he allegedly committed as a teenager.

EJI took his case after the United States Supreme Court in Graham v. Florida banned life imprisonment without parole sentences for children convicted of nonhomicide offenses and required that states provide a “meaningful possibility of release.”

In December 2010, Mr. Carter became the first person released under Graham.

Blind from untreated cataracts at age 66, Mr. Carter walked out of prison in time to spend Christmas with his seven brothers and sisters and 90-year-old mother.