Angola 3 News: Robert King in Sweden with Amnesty International for the release of a new song and music video about Albert Woodfox by Meja

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Robert King in Sweden with Amnesty International for the release of a new song and music video about Albert Woodfox by Meja

Robert King of the Angola 3 is currently in Sweden supporting Amnesty International’s ongoing campaign to "Free Albert Woodfox" through the launch of a new song called Yellow Ribbon, written by the Swedish artist, Meja, with an accompanying music video featured above (view the press release here).

Meja's song Yellow Ribbon is helping to publicize Amnesty Sweden's online petition asking Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell to stop impeding justice for Albert.

The A3 Coalition is also asking that you please support Amnesty's new petition to US Secretary of State John Kerry calling for US super-maximum security prisons to be opened up for UN scrutiny. Amnesty has just released a new interview with Juan Mendez, Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Meja's website explains more about how this new project began:

Meja read about Albert Woodfox in an Amnesty International magazine and was touched by the profound injustice that he had been held in solitary confinement for over 42 years on a conviction so weak it had been overturned three times. Still held in isolation, Albert Woodfox is the only remaining incarcerated member of the Angola 3.

Last Christmas eve, Meja sat down to write him a letter. His reply inspired Meja to write the song ”Yellow Ribbon”. The stamps on the envelope of Albert’s letter to Meja read, ”Liberty Forever – Justice Forever”. These words became the opening line of the song.

”They encapsulate the hope” says Meja, ”that justice and freedom, for so long denied to Albert, will soon be his.” A November court ruling in his favour shows how close this time may be. As Meja was writing the song, the words ’Yellow Ribbon’ came to her. ”When I looked up their meaning, I understood why: families used to tie yellow ribbons in the trees to welcome released prisoners home”.

The song is being released in collaboration with Amnesty International who has been campaigning for justice for Albert Woodfox and against the cruel use of solitary confinement in the USA.

”I was deeply affected by Albert’s strength of mind in the face of the cruel injustice he continues to suffer. It is hard to believe in 2014 that an innocent man has been entombed in a cell for 23 hours a day for more than four decades. It´s tragic. I chose to leave the Christmas celebrations to sit in quiet solitude to write to Albert, acutely aware that the solitude I sought out has been his imposed daily reality for 42 years” Meja says.

In addition to asking people to join Amnesty International’s campaign for justice for Albert Woodfox, and to end the cruel use of solitary confinement in US prisons, Meja is donating 10% of her profits from the sales of ”Yellow Ribbon” to the organization.

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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.