Angola 3 News: The Assassination of George Jackson -- an interview with Colonel Nyati Bolt

Friday, October 16, 2009

The Assassination of George Jackson -- an interview with Colonel Nyati Bolt

PHOTO: 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.

For more information about the Angola 3, please visit www.angola3news.com as well as our You Tube page for the latest in our new video series, including our two previous releases: an interview with author J. Patrick O’Connor about death-row prisoner Kevin Cooper and an interview with author Dan Berger about prison movements in the US. Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3.

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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.

Friday, October 16, 2009

The Assassination of George Jackson -- an interview with Colonel Nyati Bolt

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Enslavement, past and present--from the Middle Passage to US prisons today