Ten years after a crucial victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, Latham & Watkins partner Gregory Garre and an associate-led team recently won federal sentencing relief for an Alabama death row inmate whose original lawyers abandoned him to what one justice called “a veritable storm of misfortune.”

Their pro bono victory before U.S. District Judge Karon Bowdre followed a five-day evidentiary hearing on the inmate’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel at his sentencing. Latham associates engaged in a huge on-the-ground effort in Alabama to discover witnesses to a crime that occurred two decades ago, and to find people with knowledge of the character and behavior of the Alabama inmate during that time.