[2 articles]
37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola three
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/10/erwin-james-angola-three
In 1972, three men in a Louisiana prison were placed in solitary
confinement after a prison guard was murdered. Two of them are still
there even though many believe they are innocent
Erwin James
10 March 2010
Angola prison, the state penitentiary of Louisiana, is the biggest
prison in America. Built on the site of a former slave plantation,
the 1,800-acre penal complex is home to more than 5,000 prisoners,
the majority of whom will never walk the streets again as free men.
Also known as the Farm, Angola took its name from the homeland of the
slaves who used to work its fields, and in many ways still resembles
a slave plantation today. Eighty per cent of the prisoners are
African-Americans and, under the watchful eye of armed guards on
horseback, they still work fields of sugar cane, cotton and corn, for
up to 16 hours a day. "You've got to keep the inmates working all day
so they're tired at night," says Warden Burl Cain, a committed
evangelist who believes that the rehabilitation of convicts is only
possible through Christian redemption.
Undoubtedly there is less violence and abuse among the prisoners
under his wardenship than there was under his predecessors. But
Angola is still a long way from being a "positive environment that
promotes responsibility, goodness, and humanity", as he proclaims in
the prison's mission statement. In fact at the heart of Cain's prison
regime is an inhumanity that would make Jesus weep.
For more than 37 years, two prisoners, Herman Wallace and Albert
Woodfox, have been locked down in Angola's maximum security Closed
Cell Restricted (CCR) block the longest period of solitary
confinement in American prison history.
Having experienced the isolation of "23-hour bang-up" during my own
20 years of imprisonment, for offences of which I was guilty, I can
attest to the mental impact that such conditions inflict. My first
year was spent on a high-security landing where the cell doors were
opened only briefly for meals and emptying of toilet buckets. If
decent-minded prison officers were on duty we were allowed to walk
the yard for 30 minutes a day. The rest of the time we were alone.
The cells were 10ft x 5ft, with a chair, a table and a bed. You could
walk up and down, run on the spot, stand still, or do push-ups and
sit-ups but sooner or later you had to just stop, and think.
As the days, weeks and months blur into one, without realising it you
start to live completely inside your head. You dream about the past,
in vivid detail and fantasise about the future, for fantasies are
all you have. You panic but it's no good "getting on the bell"
unless you're dying and, even then, don't hope for a speedy
response. I had a lot to think about. When the man in the cell above
mine hanged himself I thought about that, a lot. I still do. You look
at the bars on the high window and think how easy it would be to be
free of all the thinking.
Such thoughts must have crossed the minds of Wallace and Woodfox more
than once during their isolation. They are fed through the barred
gates of their 9ft x 6ft cells and allowed only one hour of exercise
every other day alone in a small caged yard. Their capacity for
psychological endurance alone is noteworthy.
Wallace and Woodfox were confined to solitary after being convicted
of murdering Angola prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. But the
circumstances of their trial was so suspect that there are no doubts
among their supporters that these men are innocent. Even Brent
Miller's widow, Teenie Verret, has her reservations. "If they did not
do this," she says, "and I believe that they didn't, they have been
living a nightmare."
One man who understands the nightmare that Wallace and Woodfox are
living more than anyone else is Robert King. King was also convicted
of a murder in Angola in 1973, and was held in solitary alongside
Wallace and Woodfox for 29 years, until his conviction was overturned
in 2001 and he was freed. Together, King, Wallace and Woodfox have
become known as the "Angola three".
The case of the Angola three first came to international attention
following the campaigning efforts of the Body Shop founder and
humanitarian Anita Roddick. Roddick heard about their plight from a
young lawyer named Scott Fleming. Fleming was working as a prisoner
advocate in the 1990s when he received a letter from Wallace asking
for help. The human tragedy Fleming uncovered had the most profound
effect on him. When he qualified as a lawyer, their case became his
first. "I was born in 1973," he says. "I often think that for my
entire life they have been in solitary."
Through Fleming, Roddick met King and then Woodfox in Angola. Their
story, she said later, "made my blood run cold in my veins". Until
her death in 2007 Roddick was a committed and passionate supporter of
their cause. At her memorial service King played two taped messages
from Wallace and Woodfox. In the congregation was film-maker Vadim
Jean who had become good friends with Roddick and her husband Gordon
during an earlier film project. "Anita's big thing was, 'Just do
something,'" says Jean. "No matter how small an act of kindness.
Listening to Herman and Albert's voices at her memorial was like
having Anita's finger pointing at me and saying, 'Just do
something'." And so he decided to make In the Land of the Free, a
searing documentary, released later this month.
The story Jean's film tells is one that has resonance on many levels.
All three men were from poor black neighbourhoods In New Orleans.
They grew up fearing the police, who would regularly "clear the
books" of crimes in the area, according to King, by pinning then on
disaffected young black men. "If I saw the police, I used to run,"
King says. He admits to being involved in petty crime in his early
years, but "nothing vicious". Eventually King was arrested for an
armed robbery he says he did not commit and was sentenced to 35
years, which he began in New Orleans parish prison and there he met
Albert Woodfox.
Woodfox had also been sentenced for armed robbery and given 50
years. On the day he was sentenced he escaped from the courthouse. He
made his way to Harlem in New York, where he encountered the Black
Panthers, the revolutionary African-American political movement. He
witnessed the Panthers engaging with the community in a positive,
constructive way, educating and informing people of their rights. He
says it was the first time in his life that he had seen
African-Americans exhibiting real pride, pride that emanated from the
young activists, he says, "like a shimmering heatwave".
Two days later Woodfox was caught and taken to New York's Tombs
prison where he saw first-hand the militant tactics of imprisoned
Panthers who resisted their guards with organised protests. In Tombs,
Woodfox was labelled "militant" and sent back to New Orleans where he
joined King on the parish prison block, known due to the high
concentration of Panther activists as "the Panther tier". There
Woodfox became a member of the Black Panther party.
Outside, confrontations between the Panthers described by FBI
director J Edgar Hoover as "the greatest threat to the internal
security of the country" and the police were escalating. In an
attempt to undermine the influence of the Panthers in New Orleans
parish prison, officials tried to shoehorn men they termed "Black
Gangsters" on to the tier men like Wallace, also serving decades
for armed robbery. One day Wallace was suffering from the pain of
ill-fitting shoes. One of the Panthers, on his way to a court
appearance, took his shoes off and handed them to Wallace. "Right
then I knew that that was what I needed to be a part of," he says. In
the summer of 1971 Wallace and Woodfox were shipped to Angola.
The civil rights bill had been signed in 1964, but seven years later
Angola was still operating a segregated regime. Prisoner guards
carried guns and were also responsible, according to well-documented
sources, for organising systematic sexual abuse of vulnerable
prisoners, which flourished in the prison's mostly dormitory
accommodation. And violence between prisoners had reached such levels
that Angola was known as "the bloodiest prison in America".
Woodfox and Wallace quickly extended the New Orleans chapter of the
Black Panthers into Angola, establishing classes in political
ideology and exposing injustices. They organised work stoppages,
demonstrating to fellow prisoners the liberating power of acting with
a "unity of purpose" and worked to eradicate the prevalent sexual
abuses. But their political activities made them targets for the
administrators. By the spring of 1972, tensions in the prison were
dangerously high.
These were the conditions in which Brent Miller met his untimely
death. That April, a prisoner work strike drew the attention of the
guards who were called from normal duties to deal with the
disturbance. Miller, a strong, athletic young man of 23, stayed
behind alone. He entered a dormitory holding 90 prisoners and sat on
an elderly prisoner's bed, drinking coffee and chatting. Moments
later he was attacked and stabbed 32 times.
Two days later, four men identified as "black militants", including
Wallace and Woodfox, were accused of the murder. It was quickly
ascertained that one of the four had been inserted into the case by
the prison administration. Charges against him were dropped. Another,
Chester Jackson, admitted to holding Miller while the guard was
stabbed to death. Jackson turned state's evidence in return for a
plea to manslaughter. The case was tried in a town called St
Francisville, the closest courthouse to Angola. The jury had been
picked from the local populace, many of whom earned their living from
the prison or had families and friends that worked there; all were
white. Wallace and Woodfox were found guilty of Miller's murder,
sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and taken from the
court straight to Angola's CCR block to begin their life in isolation.
Robert King was brought to Angola from the parish prison two weeks
after Miller's killing, as part of a roundup of black radicals. King
had never met Miller and was in a prison 150 miles away when the
murder took place. Yet he was investigated for the crime and
identified as a "conspirator" before being transferred to lockdown on
CCR alongside Wallace and Woodcock.
The following year a prisoner named August Kelly was murdered on
King's CCR tier. A man named Grady Brewer admitted that he alone was
responsible for the killing, which he said he carried out in
self-defence. But King was also charged. The two men faced trial
together in the same St Francisville courthouse where Wallace and
Woodfox had been convicted the year before. The sole evidence against
King came from flawed prisoner testimony. He and Brewer had not been
allowed to speak to their attorneys for any length of time before
their trial. When they protested, the judge ordered their hands to be
shackled behind their backs and their mouths gagged with duct tape
for the duration of their trial. The men were convicted and sentenced
to life without parole. King later won an appeal; the federal court
ruled that he had not been sufficiently unruly in the dock to warrant
the shackling and gagging. He went back to trial in 1975, was
re-convicted and immediately sent back to CCR.
When, after Scott Fleming's intervention in the case of Wallace and
Woodfox in the 1990s, new lawyers reviewed the original trial of both
men, discovering "obfuscation after obfuscation". The state had used
a number of jailhouse informants against them, many of whom gave
contradictory accounts of what they saw. One was registered blind.
The key witness in the case was a man called Hezikiah Brown who
testified he witnessed the murder. In his initial statement to
investigators however, Brown said he had not seen anything. Three
days later, when he was taken from his bunk at midnight by prison
officials and promised his freedom if he testified, he agreed to say
that he saw Wallace and Woodfox kill Miller. At the time Brown was
serving life without parole for multiple rapes. Immediately after he
agreed to testify he was given his own minimum security private house
in the prison grounds and a weekly cigarette ration.
Wallace and Woodfox did not give up. They fought their convictions
from their cells and in 1993 Woodfox was granted an appeal, forcing a
new trial. The case was sent back to the same courthouse to be tried
in front of a new grand jury. A local author, Anne Butler, who had
published a book in which she detailed the case and was convinced
that the right people had been convicted, acted as jury chairperson.
No witnesses were called. Instead Butler was called upon to explain
the case. Once again, the jury was composed of people who worked in
Angola or were related to people who worked there. Butler's husband
and co-author was Murray Henderson, who had been the warden of Angola
when Brent Miller was murdered. It is worth noting that Henderson was
a key member of the original investigation team and that, during that
investigation, a bloody fingerprint was found close to Brent Miller's
body. It was determined that it did not belong to Woodfox nor to
Wallace, but despite the prison holding all the fingerprints of all
the prisoners, no attempt was made to find out whose it was. The
bloody print was also ignored at Woodfox's retrial. He was
reconvicted and sent back to isolation in Angola's CCR.
It was 26 years before King won the right to another appeal. In 2001
the Federal court found that the jury in King's original trial had
systematically excluded African-Americans and women and agreed that
the case should be reheard. This time around the prisoner witnesses
recanted and the federal court sent the case back to the district
court for review. The state negotiated a deal with King. Reluctantly,
and with his left hand raised instead of his right, he pleaded guilty
to conspiracy; an hour and a half later he was freed.
In September 2008, Woodfox's conviction was overturned; the federal
court ruled that his core constitutional rights had been violated at
his original trial. Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell could
have set Woodfox free immediately. Instead he decided to contest the
federal decision and Woodfox, now 64, was returned to Angola's CCR,
where he remains. Herman Wallace, now 68, was moved to another
Louisiana prison last year, where he too continues to be held in
solitary confinement.
Today King, now 67, is still campaigning for justice for his friends.
Albert Woodfox: "Our primary objective is that front gate. That is
what we are struggling for and we are actually fighting for our
freedom. We are fighting for people to understand that we were framed
for a murder that we are totally, completely and actually innocent
of." Robert King says he is free of Angola, but until his friends are
free, "Angola will never be free of me."
Jean hopes his film will make a difference. "These men need help," he
says. "Louisiana needs to be shamed into doing the right thing."
--
Further information: angola3.org. If you wish to help highlight the
plight of the Angola 3, you can write to the Governor of Louisiana at
the Office of the Governor, PO Box 94004, Baton Rouge, LA 70804, US.
In the Land of the Free is released on 26 March
http://www.inthelandofthefreefilm.com/index.html
--------
cry freedom
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2010/03/angola-film-woodfox-wallace
by Ryan Gilbey
23 March 2010
From the Human Rights Watch film festival: the terrible fate of the Angola 3.
The 14th Human Rights Watch International Film Festival runs until
Friday, and there are tickets still available for the European
premiere this week of one of the festival's highlights. In the Land
of the Free... is a chastening documentary about Herman Wallace,
Albert Woodfox and Robert King, known collectively as the Angola 3
after the prison where they have spent, between them, almost a
century in solitary confinement for a murder that all evidence
suggests they did not commit.
The victim was a prison guard, Brent Miller, who in 1972 was stabbed
32 times inside Angola, the Louisiana state penitentiary. Wallace and
Woodfox were already in prison for other offences, and were placed at
the scene of the crime by an eyewitness who later turned out to be
not only legally blind and beset by mental problems, but to have been
promised by the authorities a weekly carton of cigarettes, as well as
early release, in exchange for testifying. The testimony of that
witness became the lynchpin of the prosecution case; for those
determined to prolong the men's incarceration, it still is.
But if Wallace and Woodfox did not kill Brent Miller, why were they
fingered for the crime? The probable answer lies in their allegiance
to a prison arm of the Black Panther Party established shortly before
the murder. So comprehensive was the campaign to crush the Panthers
that Miller's murder was declared a conspiracy. That's where Robert
King came in -- literally. Despite having been serving time in
another prison 150 miles away, King was brought to Angola and
consigned to solitary along with Wallace and Woodfox. Well, he was an
active member of the Black Panthers, and must therefore have been
instrumental in the conspiracy. During his first year at Angola, he
was falsely convicted of murdering another prisoner. At his trial,
where the jury was exclusively white and the witnesses wildly
unreliable, King's mouth was sealed with duct tape.
If there is a point at which a typical viewer of In the Land of the
Free... will cry out, "What next?" then that is probably it. The film
can only be watched in a state of horrified incredulity. King was
released in 2001, but Wallace and Woodfox are currently approaching
their 38th consecutive year of being held in solitary at Louisiana
state penitentiary. I say consecutive, but as the film points out,
there have been occasional interruptions in the prisoners' routine.
These breaks, which take place in an area of the prison known as "the
dungeon", tend to discredit the idea that a change is as good as a rest.
It's fortunate that Wallace and Woodfox have some effective
cheerleaders on their side. One was the late Anita Roddick, who
campaigned for the men's release; the film is dedicated to her.
Another is King, who has managed against the odds to hold on to his
sanity. The director Vadim Jean should now be included alongside the
campaigners. His film is blunt, lucid and angry. Celebrity narration
is present and correct -- in this case, Samuel L Jackson -- but the
most potent charge comes from two other men heard in voice only:
Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, speaking to us down an imperfect
prison phone-line.
--
"In the Land of the Free..." screens in the Human Rights Watch
International Film Festival on 24 and 25 March, followed by panel
discussions, before going on release on 26 March.
.
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