Angola 3 News: September 2018

Sunday, September 30, 2018

A3 Newsletter: Important Hearing This Week for Angola Prisoner Vincent Simmons

A3 Newsletter: Important Hearing This Week for Angola Prisoner Vincent Simmons

After a relatively quiet Summer, now Fall is starting out with a bang. Last week, King and Albert made their first presentation of the new season in Montgomery, Alabama for a group of Norwegian lawmakers on a fact-finding mission about the U.S. criminal justice system.

As part of their trip to Montgomery, they visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, also known as the Lynching Memorial that Bryan Stevenson of Equal Justice Initiative conceived and spear-headed. They also visited the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church where Martin Luther King began his ministry and met with several of MLK's comrades.

They also had a chance to visit the offices of Equal Justice Initiative where Bryan Stevenson and his staff provide legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation, and others who may have been denied a fair trial in Alabama. It was a moving visit and an auspicious beginning to another season of sharing their experiences across the country and around the world.

In November, Albert will be traveling to Philadelphia where Mural Arts Philadelphia will be hosting "Portraits of Justice Symposium." Albert will be the keynote speaker for a day-long symposium that engages the public in reimagining the criminal justice system through the lens of art, advocacy, and policy reform.

Also in November, King will head off to San Diego to participate in a panel at the annual Society for Neuroscience's conference.

In December, they'll both be off to Amsterdam to help kick off Amnesty International's annual Write for Rights campaign that was so helpful in moving Albert's release forward in 2016.

In March of 2019 Albert's book will be released and he will start a multi-city book tour.

We'll keep everyone posted on these activities and more, but for this newsletter, we are hoping that supporters in Louisiana will make every effort to attend this new hearing for Vincent Simmons, an Angola prisoner who has struggled to have his case re-tried for decades.

More About Vincent Simmons' Court Date

Vincent Simmons' hearing is scheduled for October 2 at 1.15 pm in the Avoyelles Parish Courthouse in Marksville Louisiana. We are encouraging A3 supporters in the area to please attend the hearing and show support for Simmons. Providing further background on Simmons' upcoming court date, KALB in Louisiana reports:

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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.

Sunday, September 30, 2018

A3 Newsletter: Important Hearing This Week for Angola Prisoner Vincent Simmons

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