Angola 3 News: A3 Newsletter: Exciting Weekend in Louisiana; Robert King's book tour; and more‏

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A3 Newsletter: Exciting Weekend in Louisiana; Robert King's book tour; and more‏

Below is the complete newsletter just released by the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Please help spread the word!

Live In Louisiana - This Weekend

In a recent email planning meals around this weekend's activities, longtime Angola 3 supporter and House That Herman Built creator, artist, Jackie Sumell wrote:

"Erica, our neighbor/7th Ward mom is doing a fish fry on friday- and cooking all the food here at our house- I would propose also to make that a venue, and spend $6 a plate for homegrown happiness? IT'S SO NICE TO BE HERE RIGHT NOW, ISN'T IT?"

We couldn't agree more - here's to our fabulous supporters in New Orleans!!!!!

-International Coalition to Free the Angola 3

New Play "Angola 3" Will Premier Friday at Loyola University

As announced on Loyola University's website, the Loyola University New Orleans College of Law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild presents the play "Angola 3" this Friday and Saturday, Sept. 18 and 19, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Sept. 20, at 2 p.m., in Monroe Hall's Nunemaker Auditorium on Loyola's main campus. A reception will be held on Friday at 7:15 p.m. before the performance.

Please help by supporting the play. Playwright Parnell Herbert was recently interviewed on You Tube and Blog Talk Radio. Read more at angola3news.com.

A3 Event at Southeastern Louisiana University on Thursday, September 17

Featuring former BPP members Billy X Jennings and Malik Rahim; Jackie Sumell of "The House That Herman Built"; Robert King, a member of the Angola 3 who was released in 2001; and a screening of the movie "The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation."

* * * * FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE * * * *

Campus Organization Seeks the Release of the Angola 3

Contact Person:
Rebecca Hensley (Phone 985-201-4393)

Featuring former BPP members Billy X Jennings, Malik Rahim; Jackie Sumell of "The House That Herman Built"; Robert King, a member of the Angola 3 who released in 2001; and a screening of the movie "The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave Plantation. The Southeastern Louisiana University Student Union complex will be the location of a major regional event on Thursday, September 17th, when the Southeastern Sociological Association student organization hosts an event supporting the release of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, the two remaining incarcerated members of the Angola 3. Originally targeted as Black Panther Party members for successfully organizing the prisoners at the infamous Angola Prison in the early 1970's to stop prisoner-to-prisoner violence, Woodfox and Wallace were framed for the murder of a White guard in 1972 and placed in 6' X 9' single cells for 23 hours per day ever since.

A visit from U.S. Representative John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, in 2008 garnered the two men several months in a specially designed dorm, but they have since been returned to their earlier conditions. Human rights organization Amnesty International has reported that the two may have now been held in solitary confinement longer than anyone of whom they are aware in any country ever.

"Even after a State Judicial Commissioner recommended the reversal of Wallace's conviction because of prosecutorial misconduct and despite Woodfox' conviction being overturned twice now, both men remain in solitary confinement yet," said Rebecca Hensley, S.S.A. advisor and sociology instructor at the University.

The event will feature award-winning documentaries and internationally-recognized speakers, including author and activist Robert King, who as the third member of the Angola 3, was released in 2001 after himself spending 29 years in solitary confinement. Besides calling for the immediate release of Woodfox and Wallace as a long overdue act of simple justice, however, the students will also use the event to celebrate the survival of the two activists by serving jambalaya and dancing to the music of a reggae band. Formal presentations will occur in the Student Union and other activities will occur in the area of the Union from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m.

A related event is the world premier of "Angola 3," a new play by award-winning playwright Parnell Herbert, opening at Loyola University Nunemaker Hall at 8:00 p.m. on Friday, September 18th, and showing on Saturday, September 19th, at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, September 20th, at 2:00 p.m.

Robert King's East Coast Book Tour and Interview on KBOO Radio

http://3blackpanthers.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/kingfree_bw1.jpg?w=173&h=158

(PHOTO: The day of Robert King's release from Angola in 2001)

--Listen to the September 10, KBOO Radio show here.

Sept. 23, Wednesday:
At Busboys and Poets, 14th st, 6:30 pm, Washington DC

Sept. 24, Thursday:
At George Mason University, 4:30 pm, Fairfax VA

Sept. 25, Friday:
At Baltimore Bookfair, 6 pm (co-sponsored by Jericho)

Robert Hillary King's new book From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Robert Hillary King is available for purchase from PM Press. King's autobiography won the 2008 PASS Award, and has been reviewed by SF Bay View, Black Commentator, Hour, Alternet, Political Media Review, La Presse, Albany Times Union, and The Times-Picayune

In 1970, a jury convicted Robert Hillary King of a crime he did not commit and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He became a member of the Black Panther Party while in Angola State Penitentiary, successfully organizing prisoners to improve conditions. In return, prison authorities beat him, starved him, and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a six by nine foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free. This is his story.

It begins at the beginning: born black, born poor, born in Louisiana in1942, King journeyed to Chicago as a hobo at the age of 15. He married and had a child, and briefly pursued a semi-pro boxing career to help provide for his family. Just a teenager when he entered the Louisiana penal system for the first time, King tells of his attempts to break out of this system, and his persistent pursuit of justice where there is none.

Yet this remains a story of inspiration and courage, and the triumph of the human spirit. The conditions in Angola almost defy description, yet King never gave up his humanity, or the work towards justice for all prisoners that he continues to do today. From the Bottom of the Heap, so simply and humbly told, strips bare the economic and social injustices inherent in our society, while continuing to be a powerful literary testimony to our own strength and capacity to overcome.

Albert & Herman

Herman Wallace
#76759
Elayn Hunt Correctional Center
Unit 5, D-Tier
PO Box 174
St Gabriel, LA 70776

Albert Woodfox
#72148
CCR, Lower A5, # 13
Louisiana State Penitentiary
Angola, LA 70712

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Angola 3 Basics

(Download a flyer version of this fact sheet here.)

In 1972, deep in rural Louisiana, three young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000 acre former slave plantation called Angola.

Peaceful, non-violent protest in the form of hunger and work strikes organized by inmates caught the attention of Louisiana’s elected leaders and local media in the early 1970s. They soon called for investigations into a host of unconstitutional and extraordinarily inhumane practices commonplace in what was then the “bloodiest prison in the South.” Eager to put an end to outside scrutiny, prison officials began punishing inmates they saw as troublemakers.

At the height of this unprecedented institutional chaos, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown into 6x9 foot solitary cells where they remained for decades.

Their struggle for justice continued until Robert was released in 2001, Herman in 2013, and Albert in 2016.

Despite a number of reforms achieved in the mid-70s, many officials repeatedly ignored both evidence of misconduct, and of innocence.

The State’s case was riddled with inconsistencies, obfuscations, and missteps. A bloody print at the murder scene did not match Herman, Albert or anyone charged with the crime and was never compared with the limited number of other prisoners who had access to the dormitory on the day of the murder. In 2008, NPR asked Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell why the state refused to test the print. "A fingerprint can come from anywhere," Caldwell explained. "We're not going to be fooled by that."

Potentially exculpatory DNA evidence was “lost” by prison officials—including fingernail scrapings from the victim and barely visible “specks” of blood on clothing alleged to have been worn by Albert.

Both Herman and Albert had multiple alibi witnesses with nothing to gain who testified they were far away from the scene when the murder occurred.

In contrast, several State witnesses lied under oath about rewards for their testimony. The prosecution’s star witness Hezekiah Brown told the jury: “Nobody promised me nothing.” But new evidence showed Hezekiah, a convicted serial rapist serving life, agreed to testify only in exchange for a pardon, a weekly carton of cigarettes, TV, birthday cakes, and other luxuries.

“Hezekiah was one you could put words in his mouth,” the Warden reminisced chillingly in an interview about the case years later.

Notably, Teenie Rogers, the widow of the victim, prison guard Brent Miller, after reviewing the evidence believed Herman and Albert’s trials were unfair, expressed grave doubts about their guilt, and called upon officials to find the real killer. "“Each time I look at the evidence in this case, I remember there is no proof that the men charged with Brent’s death are the ones who actually killed him. It’s easy to get caught up in vengeance and anger, but when I look at the facts, they just do not add up,” said Rogers in 2013.

Herman’s conviction was finally overturned in October 2013 by a Federal Judge. Although his trial was riddled with evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and other constitutional violations, it was the systematic exclusion of women from his jury in violation of the 14th Amendment that freed him. Unfortunately he was released in the late stages of advanced liver cancer and only experienced 3 days of freedom. Sadly for Herman, justice delayed was justice denied.

Albert’s conviction was overturned three times by judges citing racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense, and suppression of exculpatory evidence. While the case worked its way through endless appeals, Louisiana officials refused to release Albert from solitary, even when no longer convicted of the crime, because “there’s been no rehabilitation” from “practicing Black Pantherism.”4

In June 2015, a Federal Judge courageously ordered Albert's immediate release and barred a retrial stressing the “Court's lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial." This extraordinary remedy was also frozen pending yet another series of appeals.

Finally, Albert was released in February of 2016, 43 years and 10 months after first being put in isolation for a crime he didn’t commit.

Louisiana today has the highest incarceration rate in the US—thus the highest in the world.

Three-fourths of the 5,000+ prisoners at Angola are African American. And due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the nation, 97% will die there.

Reminiscent of a bygone era, inmates still harvest cotton, corn and wheat for 4 to 20 cents an hour under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback.

We believe that only by openly examining the failures and inequities of the criminal justice system in America can we restore integrity to that system.

We must not wait.

We can make a difference.

As the A3 did years before, now is the time to challenge injustice and demand that the innocent and wrongfully incarcerated be freed.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

In 2000, Herman, Albert and Robert filed a civil lawsuit challenging the inhumane and increasingly pervasive practice of long-term solitary confinement. Magistrate Judge Dalby described their decades of isolation as “so far beyond the pale” she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” Over the course of 16 years, this seminal case detailed unconstitutionally cruel and unusual treatment and systematic due process violations at the hands of Louisiana officials and inspired worldwide action to end long term solitary.