Angola 3 News: (A3 Newsletter) The Waiting Game: 43 Years of Innocence; Still Incarcerated; Still Isolated

Friday, April 17, 2015

(A3 Newsletter) The Waiting Game: 43 Years of Innocence; Still Incarcerated; Still Isolated

(PHOTO: Albert Woodfox in 1998)

Today marks 43 years since Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were first placed in solitary confinement for a crime they didn't commit. We now await a decision from Federal Judge James Brady regarding Albert's request for bail, expected any week.

Featured below are messages from both Albert and Robert King. New artwork by longtime A3 supporter Rigo 23 is displayed alongside a poem written by Albert back in 1998 entitled I Wait. Who could have imagined that 17 years later, in 2015, he would still be in solitary confinement, still waiting for justice?

If you have not yet done so, please sign the Amnesty USA petition calling on Louisiana authorities to not oppose bail for Albert!

New artwork by longtime A3 supporter Rigo 23

A Message from Albert

Greetings. I'd imagine that friends and supporters are concerned with what is happening to me since being transferred from the Louisiana Department of Corrections to West Feliciana Parish custody. I'm ok--still in isolation as we come upon the 43rd anniversary of my first days in solitary confinement. I remain strong and dedicated to the people's struggle.

Stay Strong,
Albert

Robert King on Albert's 43 Years in Hell

(PHOTO: Robert King released in 2001)

Albert sits in a cell in a parish detention center in West St. Francisville Parish, where he is "still waiting." He waits for the State of Louisiana's next move in their game of infinitely obstructing justice. We, all of Albert's supporters, wait with him.

No evidence connects Albert to the murder. The case is rife with prosecutorial misconduct as well as manufactured and purchased testimony. Yet, 43 years later, despite a third overturned conviction, the State continues hell-bent in its determination to not just incarcerate Albert, but to also keep him isolated in solitary confinement.

Waiting for justice is a tortuously slow process in this "land of the free."

Local Media Coverage of Baton Rouge Prayer Vigil for Albert

The April 12 prayer vigil with Michael Mable, brother of Albert Woodfox (shown in photo above), led by Reverend Dr. Patricia T. Bates and sponsored by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture was reported on by The Advocate:

A small group gathered at the Wesley United Methodist Church in Baton Rouge Sunday afternoon to pray for Albert Woodfox, the last of the Angola 3 still in prison, and his brother, Michael Mable, said he hopes that he will see his brother as a free man within both their lifetimes.

"I do believe he's innocent," Mable said. "I just want him to have his freedom."

Mable said he has visited his brother every month without fail since his brother's incarceration in the early 1970s. Mable still makes the drive even after leaving New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and settling in Houston. He works as a chef on an offshore drilling platform.

Mable recalled how his older brother, then in his early 20s, also essentially raised him and his four other siblings on his own - from walking them to school to making sure they fell asleep.

"I just want justice," Mable said Sunday. "I just feel that all these years, they've never proved that Albert did this. ... My struggle is to make sure that he gets free one day."

I Wait
By Albert Woodfox
(1998)

6x8 cell and I wait
I wait for revolution , and I wait
For Unity and I wait for Peace
I wait while people shoot up dope
And while people smoke down grass!
Yes, I wait, am i a fool?
I wait, I wait and I wait!
People party down and I wait
I wait while people do the boogey
Robot, Bus stop and hustle
Our Lives away!
Education, agitation, organization
I'm still waiting
Justice! I'm waiting.

Write Albert:

Albert Woodfox #72148
West Feliciana Parish Detention Center
PO Box 2727
St. Francisville, LA 70775

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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.