Shingular Sensation Warren Caswell Has Mandatory Life Sentence Declared Unconstitutional and Reverses Conviction Based Solely on Hearsay
Back in January, I created the Shingular Sensations series, intended to spotlight a significant victory or accomplishment by a solo. Shingular Sensation posts are not vanity pieces, but rather, interviews that I carefully design to glean lessons to help other lawyers.
This installment of the Shingular Sensation series belongs to Georgia solo, Warren Caswell. Just five years out of law school and a solo for his entire career, Caswell received what at the time must have seemed like an impossible case: post-conviction representation of an indigent defendant found guilty by a jury of his second failure to register as a sex offender. Based largely on hearsay, the jury concluded that the defendant had moved to a new residence when in fact, he was simply visiting his mother in the next county. And as if Caswell wasn't under enough pressure to reverse a jury verdict, the stakes were raised even further by draconian sentencing laws that resulted in a mandatory life sentence because of a failure to fill out necessary paperwork!
After reviewing the transcript, Caswell initially intended to attack the verdict as insufficient due to admission of hearsay. But an interesting conversation with jurors post-verdict lead Caswell to consider a constitutional argument that the duration of the sentence was so utterly shocking and contrary to societal notions of proportionality that it violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. In the end, both the hearsay and the constitutional arguments carried the day.
Read this interview to learn what it was like for Caswell to represent a criminal defendant in his most desperate hour and to see the amazing process that lead to the development of the constitutional argument.
