Angola 3 News: March 2011

Sunday, March 27, 2011

Congressional Briefing About Solitary Confinement and Other A3 Events

(View Media Coverage: The Guardian UK, Free Speech Radio News)

After years of legislative advocacy that resulted in significant support of the plight of the Angola 3 in DC, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA), and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) have joined together to jointly sponsor a Congressional Briefing on "The Abuses of Solitary Confinement in the Criminal Justice System" scheduled for Wednesday, April 6th at 3:30pm in the Rayburn House Office Building Room 2226, followed by a screening of the A3 documentary "In the Land of the Free," which features both Rep. Conyers and Rep. Richmond (download the event flyer here).

The Briefing panel will include experts on solitary from all over the country, including A3's own Robert King, and a second panel discussion following the film will include Rep. Richmond, Robert King, and Carine Williams, a member of both the criminal and civil A3 Legal teams. The event will be moderated by Tory Pegram, Campaign Coordinator for the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, and is open to the public.

We encourage you to both consider attending and contacting your Congressional Members and urging their official involvement in the event to help end abuses of solitary confinement in the US.

In addition to speaking out about the injustices in the case for years, Rep. John Conyers and then Chair of the Louisiana Judiciary Committee, now Congressional Rep. Cedric Richmond, led a Congressional delegation to visit Herman and Albert in Angola in 2008. Their visit resulted in an unprecedented 8 month move of both men from solitary to a dorm. Although both Herman and Albert were unceremoniously transferred back to solitary only 8 months later without explanation or reason, both officials have remained involved in efforts to expose the Constitutional abuses rampant in their cases.

SAN FRANCISCO

"In the Land of the Free" continues to be prominently featured at the many Human Rights Watch film festivals around the world. In San Francisco, on March 31, the 4 PM screening is at the Presentation Theater, 2350 Turk Boulevard. The 7:30 PM screening is at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission Street (buy tickets here). Robert King, will be speaking at both events, and at the 4 PM event he will be joined by Richard Brown and William Crossman. Read more about the March 31 screenings here.

NEW ORLEANS

We'd like to invite you to be our special guest at the New Orleans debut of "In the Land of the Free," at Warren Easton High School Auditorium at 7pm on Thursday, April 14th as a part of Patois: The New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival. Robert King and Emily Maw, the Director of the New Orleans Innocence Project will lead a Q&A following the event.

Get your free tickets now! Just send your name and email to landfree@patoisfilmfest.org and we will be happy to put your name on the will call list at the door. If you have any guests you'd like to bring, just send their names along too and we'll do our best to accommodate them.

On April 17-18 please join us at the RAE Building to mark the 39th year anniversary of Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox’s unjust isolation in solitary confinement. 39 people will spend one hour each in a 6x9 ft replica cell. Our program of events over the weekend will also include:

- Screenings of documentaries In the Land of the Free and The Farm, followed by panels of former Black Panthers, artists and legal experts.
- A display of arts & crafts from Angola inmates, and The House That Herman Built by Jackie Sumell and Herman Wallace
- Undoing Racism workshop, round-table discussions, educational workshops with local high school students and a teach-in.
- Theatrical excerpts from Angola 3, The Play written by Parnell Herbert, and Voices performances by Louisiana exonerees.
- Press conference and vigil at dusk.
- A book-signing by Robert King.
- Musical entertainment by local performers.

For more info about the events in New Orleans, click here or visit: www.angola3action.org

Friday, March 11, 2011

Dancing With Dynamite --An interview with Ben Dangl

Dancing With Dynamite

--An interview with Ben Dangl

By Angola 3 News

Benjamin Dangl, author of the new book Dancing With Dynamite (AK Press), was video-interviewed by Angola 3 News this week while visiting the San Francisco Bay Area, on tour with his book, which has been positively reviewed by a range of publications and writers, including Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, who proclaimed that “Ben Dangl breaks the sound barrier, exploding many myths about Latin America that are all-too-often amplified by the corporate media in the United States.”

Dangl has previously written The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007), and contributed to Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Latin American Issues (McGraw-Hill, 2006). He has written about politics and social issues in Latin America for The Guardian Unlimited, The Nation Magazine, The Progressive, Utne Reader, CounterPunch, Alternet, Common Dreams, Z Magazine, La Estrella de Panama and more. While currently teaching Latin American history and politics and globalization at Burlington College in Vermont, he also works as editor of the news websites: Upside Down World, focusing on politics and social movements in Latin America (founded by Dangl), and Toward Freedom, a progressive perspective on world events.

War, Prisons, and Torture in the US & UK --An interview with Richard Haley

War, Prisons, and Torture in the US & UK
--An interview with Richard Haley

By Angola 3 News

Richard Haley is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has been active in Britain's anti-war movement since 2003. He is a member of the Stop the War Coalition and is currently Chair of Scotland Against Criminalising Communities.

Last December, on Human Rights Day, Scotland Against Criminalising Communities initiated a “Stop Isolation” campaign with an online statement arguing that solitary confinement is a form of torture that must be abolished. The petition states that “We call upon the countries of the world to enact legislation that prohibits long-term prisoner isolation, and prohibits the transfer of prisoners to countries where they would be at risk of such treatment. Dungeons should not be tolerated in the 21st century.”

Angola 3 News: Can you please tell us about your organization Scotland Against Criminalising Communities (SACC)? In Scotland, which communities are being criminalized?

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.