They Finally #FreeTheGuys :Last of Louisiana's 'Angola 3' inmates released after 43yrs in solitary

loyola llothta

loyola llothta

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Albert Woodfox on the right


Albert Woodfox, the last remaining member of the Angola 3, was released from state custody on Friday (Feb. 19) after more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana prisons. He was freed after pleading no contest in state court in West Feliciana Parish to lesser charges than the murder for which he was indicted last year for the third time, according to Woodfox's attorney, George Kendall.

He said Woodfox, of New Orleans, has earned enough credit for time already served to prompt his immediate release.

Woodfox is believed to have served the longest period of time in solitary confinement of any inmate in the United States -- about 44 years, with a few months spent in general population over a scattered period. His imprisonment is the result of two convictions, both of which were overturned, for the 1972 murder of prison guard Brent Miller, who was stabbed to death at age 23 while working at Louisiana State Penitentiary, in Angola.

Woodfox has always maintained his innocence, and his attorneys and supporters say the crime was pinned on him and another prisoner, the late Herman Wallace, in part to silence their activism as organizing members of an official Blank Panther Party chapter inside the prison in the early 1970s.


The release of Woodfox comes after a West Feliciana Parish grand jury indicted him Feb. 12, 2015, for a third time in the decades-old murder. His attorneys and prosecutors from the Louisiana Attorney General's office had been preparing for a trial. Kendall, through an a.ssistant, said Woodfox pleaded "no contest" to two lesser charges: manslaughter and aggravated burglary. A no contest plea is not an admission of guilt.

"It means simply that (Woodfox) does not contest that the State would present evidence at a new trial from witnesses who said he committed this crime. Mr. Woodfox continues, as he always has, to maintain his innocence," said Kendall.

Woodfox plea comes on his 69th birthday.

In a statement released through his attorney, Woodfox thanked his brother, who has visited him on a monthly basis despite living in Texas, and his fellow Angola 3 members, including the late Herman Wallace, who supported him "all these years." He said while he was looking forward to proving his innocence at trial, health concerns prompted him to resolve the case with the no contest plea.

"I hope the events of today will bring closure to many," Woodfox said.

The designation of the Angola 3 refers to three inmates -- Woodfox, Wallace and Robert King -- whose supporters believe were wrongly convicted of prison murders in retaliation for their political activism inside Angola. The group led hunger strikes and other demonstrations opposing inhumane prison conditions, which in the early 1970s, included continued racial segregation, corruption and "systematic prison r*pe," according to the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3.

Wallace, a fellow Angola 3 member, was released in October of 2013, two days before his death from complications of liver cancer.

King, the third member of the Angola 3 who was convicted of k!lling a fellow inmate, was exonerated and released from prison in 2001 after 29 years in solitary. King remains active in the campaign to release Woodfox from prison and end the practice of solitary confinement.

A press release from Kendall, who represented Woodfox in federal court, said his firm will continue its constitutional challenge of the practice of "indefinite solitary confinement" by way of a civil lawsuit filed in 2000. Woodfox and his fellow Angola 3 members, King and Wallace, are plaintiffs in the case.

"I can now direct all my efforts to ending the barbarous use of solitary confinement and will continue my work on that issue here in the free world," Woodfox said in the statement.

Teenie Rogers, the widow of the slain guard, years ago called for the release of Wallace and Woodfox, saying she did not believe they k!lled her husband. She released a statement this past June reaffirming her doubt in Woodfox's guilt.

"I think it's time the state stop acting like there is any evidence that Albert Woodfox k!lled Brent," she said in that statement. "After a lot of years looking at the evidence and soul-searching and praying, I realized I could no longer just believe what I was told to believe by a state that did not take care of Brent when he was working at Angola and did not take care of me when he was k!lled."

However, Miller's brother, Stan Miller, said last year he believed Woodfox was guilty and that Rogers did not represent the Miller family.

"This man (Woodfox) was convicted twice," Miller told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune in June. "My brother (doesn't) get to go home and rest in peace. He's under the ground and resting in peace."
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Case history

Woodfox was originally sentenced to prison at Angola on charges of armed robbery. That sentence would have expired decades ago. Woodfox was at Angola only a few years before he was implicated, along with Wallace, in Miller's murder.

Woodfox's 1974 murder conviction was first overturned in 1992 by a state court due to "systematic discrimination." He was then re-indicted in 1993 by a new grand jury and convicted again five years later.

But U.S. District Judge James Brady overturned this second conviction in 2008, ruling that Woodfox's defense counsel was ineffective. The state appealed, and the case made its way for the first time to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

That appeals court reversed Brady's ruling and determined that while Woodfox's trial "was not perfect," he couldn't prove there would have been a different outcome with a different attorney.


Woodfox's attorneys then focused in on the discrimination issue, arguing there were also problems with the 1993 indictment because black grand jury foremen were woefully underrepresented in West Feliciana Parish in the previous 13 years.

Brady again agreed, overturning Woodfox's conviction a second time in May 2012. The case was kicked up to the Fifth Circuit after the state appealed. The Fifth Circuit agreed, last November, that the conviction should be overturned. The same court then denied, in a Feb. 3 ruling, the state's request for a review of its decision by the Fifth Circuit's full panel of judges.

Since his most recent indictment, Woodfox has been held at the West Feliciana Parish Detention Center in St. Francisville, where his attorneys have said he remained in solitary confinement. He was released from the detention center around 2:30 p.m. Friday.
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Colonel Nyati Bolt in his cell at Angola Prison in 1973. A "Free the San Quentin Six" poster is on the wall behind him.

Angola 3 News is excited to release the third interview in our new video-series focusing on the Angola 3 and the many issues that are central to their story, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more.

This new interview features Colonel Nyati Bolt, who was an inmate at California's San Quentin Prison at the same time as George Jackson (Sept. 23, 1941 - Aug. 21, 1971), the legendary Black Panther Party Field Marshal, and author of two books written behind bars: Soledad Brother and Blood In My Eye. The story of George Jackson and his legacy today will be the focus of many of our upcoming videos.

Bolt remembers the day of Jackson's assassination in 1971, when Bolt was working in the medical unit. He explains that he was ordered to bring gurneys down before he'd heard any gunshots, leading him to believe that the guards' shooting of Jackson was planned. When Bolt arrived outside and began to approach Jackson's body to provide medical attention, he was shot at by guards, who forced him to retreat.

Please stay tuned for part two of our interview with Bolt, talking about his experience later at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. As Bolt recently told National Public Radio, he walked from his cell to the cafeteria with Albert Woodfox, of the Angola 3, and was in the cafeteria with him on April 17, 1972, when a prison guard was killed at another part of the prison. Woodfox and co-defendant Herman Wallace would both be wrongly convicted of murdering the prison guard, and have now spent over 36 years in solitary confinement.


Bolt was immediately put into Closed Cell Restriction (CCR) solitary confinement on April 11, 1972, officially because he was under suspicion for involvement in the prison guard's death. A few months later he was questioned by prison guards, where he told them that he'd been with Woodfox during the time period that the prison guard was killed. After questioning, Bolt was sent back to CCR, where he spent the next 20 years in continuous solitary confinement, until his release in 1992. Prison authorities officially justified continuing his CCR status on the original grounds that he was suspected of involvement in the prison guard's death. Bolt believes that the continuous CCR was actually in retaliation for his statement to prison authorities that provided an alibi for Woodfox, which he would later testify to at Woodfox's trial, and maintains to this day
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Sauanaffe Tustunnagee

Sauanaffe Tustunnagee

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good to see the brother coming home but the system know exactly what they doing letting him out at the twilight of his life despite knowing he was innocent all that time:aicmon:who ever gutted that pig was a hero though:yeshrug:it's nice to see the Black liberation movement extended into the deep South though
 
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