Court temporarily blocks release of "Angola 3" inmate

 

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked the release of Albert Woodfox, the last of the Louisiana inmates dubbed the Angola 3 by supporters protesting their long stints in solitary confinement. Tuesday’s order came a day after a U.S. district judge said Woodfox should be released immediately  and that the state cannot try him again for the killing of a prison guard.

His two previous convictions were overturned. Woodfox has long maintained his innocence in that death in 1972, when inmates were protesting conditions inside the Louisiana State Penitentiary.


Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell is appealing the judge’s order, saying Woodfox is a killer who should remain locked up.

The appeals court order blocks the release of Woodfox until at least Friday.

Woodfox and Herman Wallace were accused in the 1972 killing of guard Brent Miller at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. A third inmate, Robert King, was linked to Miller’s death but never charged.

The group became known as the “Angola 3,” and the case has been a cause celebre for years, with activists arguing there is no evidence tying the three men to the crime and decrying the decades they each spent in solitary confinement.

Woodfox — who was originally imprisoned on an armed robbery conviction has said he had tried to point out injustices at the prison, including instances of segregation, corruption and rape, and was targeted and wrongfully accused because of his activism as a Black Panther.

King was freed after his conviction in the killing of a fellow inmate was overturned in 2001.

The same went for Herman Wallace, who was released in 2013 after a judge vacated his murder conviction and sentence. He only experienced a few days of freedom; he was suffering from terminal liver cancer and died just days later.

A federal appeals court overturned Woodfox’s conviction last year. But he has remained behind bars and is awaiting a third trial.

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Court temporarily blocks release of "Angola 3" inmate

Albert Woodfox to be released after 43 years in solitary confinement

A US judge has ordered the unconditional release of Albert Woodfox, the country’s longest-serving solitary confinement prisoner, who has spent 43 years in isolation behind bars in a Louisiana jail.

Woodfox, 68, (pictured above) was placed in solitary confinement after he was accused of taking part in a riot that led to the death of a prison guard in 1972. He has always maintained his innocence, saying he was framed for the murder because of his membership of the Black Panther Party.

Yesterday Monday June 8th, US judge James Brady ordered he be released from custody and not subjected to a third trial over the murder. Woodfox has been tried twice in the guard’s death, but both convictions were overturned. The state is seeking to bring him to trial a third time. But Judge Brady said a third trial could not be fair.

The court order said several factors had combined to contribute to his release.

“Mr. Woodfox’s age and poor health, his limited ability to present a defense at a third trial in light of the unavailability of witnesses, this Court’s lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done onto Mr. Woodfox by spending over forty-years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr. Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial for a crime that occurred over forty years ago,” the order reads.

Human rights experts have said that the amount of time he has spent in solitary amounts to torture.

Woodfox was an inmate at the Angola prison in 1972 where he was serving time for armed robbery.

Woodfox and two other state prisoners became known as the Angola Three due to their long stretches in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.

Source: Reuters/Telegraph

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Albert Woodfox to be released after 43 years in solitary confinement