Recently inmates housed at Louisiana Penitentiary’s RC CCR (closed cell restrictions or solitary confinement) units have been denied normal contact visits and privileges. Even after contact visits have been approved and some visitors have travelled across the country at considerable expenses. This is primarily due to the actions of security officer Lt. Gail Smothers. In multiple instances, stretching back to 2009, Lt Smothers has denied visitors contact by creating rules which are not a part of the CCR contact visiting policy.
Inmates at LA State Prison are allowed ten (10) people at any time on their Approved visiting list. This list constitutes those individuals who have completed the prison’s necessary paperwork and who have submitted to a comprehensive police background check. Upon acceptance the applicant is listed on the inmate’s approved visiting list and may then visit up to 2 times a month.
Contact visiting is the normal policy for inmates at Angola. Only those inmates assigned to punitive housing units are restricted to non-contact visits. While CCR is a non-punitive housing unit, CCR inmates are allowed only 2 contact visits a month. All other visits received in a month by CCR inmates are held in CCR’s non-contact visiting booths (small, closet like spaces with inmates and visitor separated by a thick mesh screen). The reason given for this policy is the lack of visiting space for large numbers of contact visits on the RC CCR unit. As opposed to the main prison compound with its large visiting room capable of accomodating over 100 inmates and their visitors at a time with inmates run food concessions, CCR’s far smaller contact visiting room may only accommodate 30-40 people. Consequently, only 5 contacts may be scheduled each visiting day for the roughly 90 inmates housed in CCR.
Given such limited space for contact visits at CCR the units policy requires inmates to submit requests for approval often months in advance to reserve an available date. When a CCR inmate submits a request for contact visitation he is merely reserving a date. On that date any visitor from his visiting list who arrives – up to a total of 5 – may enjoy a visit under normal contact visiting procedures. This requirement is merely to insure that no more then 5 contact visits are scheduled for any visiting day. CCR inmates are NOT required to also seek approval for those visitors, since they are already on the Approved visiting list.
This is the point of contention between inmates, visitors and Lt. Smothers. Visitors, upon arriving at Louisiana State Prison are being allowed into the prison – but upon arrival at the CCR unit – being denied a contact visit and forced into non contact visiting booths. Lt. Smothers has repeatedly denied contact visits by claiming only visitors whose names are submitted in advance for a contact visit may then visit contact. CCR inmates are not required to submit the names of their visitors when requesting a visitation date.
To re- approve a visitor as a visitor is a rule only Lt. Smothers has decided to create and enforce. A rule she has no authority to impose as she is not involved in any manner with approving visitors or scheduling visits. Those procedures are the responsibility of the institutes Investigative Service Dept. and CCR’s Assistant Warden.
The difficulties this has created for visitors in wasted money, time and travel has already been addressed by verbal complaints to Lt. Smothers’ superiors up to the unit’s Assistant Warden and by submitting grievances through the institutions Administrative Remedy Procedure (A.R.P.). A grievance procedure available for inmates to seek relieve for wrongs within the institution.
In April 2010, RC CCR col. Menzia resolved a grievance filed by verbally informing Lt. Smothers of the proper contact visiting policy and ordering how to stop denying inmates and their visitors approved contact visits.
Approximately 1 week later, Col. Menzia was transferred to another unit as a new Assistant Warden. Immediately afterwards Lt. Smothers returned to her previous practices. Over the weekend of April 24th and 25th Lt. Smothers denied at least 2 inmates their pre-approved contact visits without proper authority, with one visitor having travelled from California. When incidents like this occur inmates and their visitors are left without recourse as over the weekend Lt. Smothers may be the highest ranking officer on duty at CCR. No appeal can be made to any superior at that time.
This presents an identifiable hardship as many family members and friends must plan months in advance to schedule their contact visits – as they come from long distances and may only visit a few times a year they specifically plan for contact visits, which entails the costs of flight tickets, rental cars, hotels reservations and often time taken off from work.
Inmates with elderly or infirm family members schedule contact visits for the extra room and ease provided versus the cramped and difficult conditions of the non-contact visiting booths.
When Lt. Smothers then denies approved contact visits without authority, inmates are not recredited with a contact visit for that month, nor are visitors reimbursed their expenses.
Those concerned can help stop Lt. Smothers by calling warden Burl Cain’s office at (001) 225-655-4411 or Secretary of Corrections James LeBlanc. Letters of concern may be faxed to (001) 225 655-2319.
YOUR ACTIONS AS CONCERNED CITIZENS HAVE AN IMPACT!!
On behalf of all my fellow inmates, Kenny Zulu Whitmore.
5/12/2010
The Angola Three - 38 Years in Prison Hell
From:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
The Angola Three: 38 Years in Prison Hell - by Stephen Lendman
On March 30, 2010, an Amnesty International (AI) Public Statement read:
"USA: Amnesty International calls for immediate end to nearly 73 years of solitary confinement endured by Louisiana prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox."
Both men are at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (called Angola and The Farm) - in terms of acreage, America's largest prison, a maximum security one with over 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members on 18,000 acres. Once a slave plantation, it's the same now as then, and it's legal under the 13th Amendment stating:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Except for brief intervals, Wallace has been there for 38 years, Woodfox for nearly 35 - confined for 23 hours a day in 2 x 3 meter cells with little natural light, and "allowed outdoor exercise in a small cage, for one hour, three days a week, contrary to (what's) specified in the United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Restrictions are imposed on their personal property, reading materials, access to legal resources, work and visits." Their cages are unprotected from rain or oppressive heat. Overall, they're treated like animals, not human beings.
Until March 2009, both were at Angola. Wallace was then transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel and remains in solitary confinement. They and Robert King are the "Angola 3," convicts since 1972, for the murder of white prison guard Brent Miller that year. No physical evidence linked them to the crime, their convictions based solely (as later documentation revealed) on bribed inmate testimony in return for leniency. Another witness later recanted.
Although not at Angola at the time, King was blamed but never charged. In 1973, he was bogusly accused of murdering another prisoner, freed only in 2001 after pleading guilty to "conspiracy to commit murder" as a condition for release on time served.
The three men have a civil suit pending against the state of Louisiana, one the US Supreme Court ruled has merit based on claims that their Eight Amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" rights were violated. It will be heard in the US Middle District Court in Baton Rouge, but don't look for any more justice this time than earlier, especially for poor and disadvantaged blacks.
King's autobiography was published in 2008 titled, "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of a Black Panther." He's a member of the Common Ground Collective, a decentralized NGO network formed post-Katrina to help New Orleans residents. He's also an international speaker at colleges and community centers in America and before parliaments in the Netherlands, South Africa and Portugal.
Still in isolation, Wallace and Woodfox are reported to be in poor health, the result of decades of mistreatment. AI says Wallace's "osteoarthritis is aggravated by inadequate exercise, functional impairment, memory loss and insomnia."
Woodfox suffers from "claustrophobia, hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia."
Both men are victims of racism, retribution for their activism, prosecutorial injustice, and a state prison system the Louisiana ACLU calls "the most abhorrent in terms of violence and horrible living conditions."
Louisiana has the highest per capita incarceration in the world, the ACLU getting over 80 complaints a month about guard beatings, overcrowding, poor medical care or its denial, mistreatment of mentally ill prisoners, squalid living conditions, and denial of access to lawyers.
The Bill of Rights grants constitutional protections to everyone, including persons in custody, regardless of their crime. Especially abhorrent are rigged trials, judicial complicity, wrongful convictions, and appellate unfairness to keep innocent victims incarcerated.
Angola's Horrific History
Angola has always been hellish, especially in the 1970s when it wreaked of corruption and abuse. It was segregated with horrific rampant rage, frequent murders, and sexual bondage - inmates sold to each other as sex slaves or in exchange for favors. No wonder it was called America's worst prison, a distinction as true today, including chain of command encouragement of widespread, systematic violence, including guard beatings, sexual assaults, other abuses amounting to torture, and use of solitary confinement as punishment for activism or any other reason arbitrarily.
Today, Angola prisoners are 75% black under a compulsory 40 hour or longer workweeks (eight hours or longer a day, five days a week) plus weekends for bad disciplinary reports, often fabricated for more labor.
They till fields for 4 cents an hour, under constant watch as virtual slaves. In the 1970s, it was 96 hours (16 hours a day, six days a week) for 2 cents an hour at what was called the "Bloodiest Prison in the South" because of endemic guard-inflicted and prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
The Angola 3 fought conditions with nonviolent hunger and work strikes. Prison authorities retaliated by framing them for murders they didn't commit, Woodfox and Wallace for Miller's death, King for another prisoner.
Today Angola's mission statement says:
"The philosophy of Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) is to provide services in a professional manner so as to protect the safety of the public, staff, and inmate population. Consistent with this, it is LSP's responsibility to provide meaningful opportunities to enhance, through a variety of education, work, social service and medical programs, the individual's desire to become a productive member of society, while providing a safe, stable work environment for employees."
Inmates see it otherwise, calling reforms "cosmetic." Former prisoner and now Executive Secretary of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana calls Angola a "sophisticated plantation (where) cotton is king" and inmates near slaves - "given enough food, clothing and shelter to be a financial asset to the owner," but little else.
Louisiana's entire prison system is no different, Angola the preeminent example, a de facto slave plantation, preventing its inmates from ever "becom(ing) a productive member of society" because long sentences without parole deny it - the idea being once incarcerated, free them only for burial on Angola's expansive acreage after extracting a lifetime of forced labor.
"The Case of the Angola 3"
For more information, visit Angola3.org.
In the late 1960s, Wallace and Woodfox were incarcerated for unrelated robberies, founded a Black Panther party chapter to improve prison conditions, and were targeted for their activism.
In 2008, a federal judge overturned Woodfox's conviction after a state judicial magistrate found damning evidence, including:
-- "inadequate representation;
-- prosecutorial misconduct;
-- suppression of exculpatory evidence; and
-- racial discrimination in the grand jury selection process."
Nonetheless, he's still in solitary because Louisiana officials want him held for life.
In 2006, a state judicial commissioner recommended reversing Wallace's conviction, again because of compelling prosecutorial misconduct. No matter. He's also in isolated confinement after a district court denied him, upheld by appellate level refusal to review without explanation.
A habeas petition is now pending in federal court that may prove as constitutionally futile, given their extremist right wing judges, showing little sympathy for oppressed minorities or the poor, and a reluctance to reverse local authorities.
On March 10, The London Guardian's Erwin James' article headlined, "37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola three," saying:
"....at (Angola's) heart....is an inhumanity that would make Jesus weep," two of the Angola 3 enduring "the longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history."
Having spent 20 years imprisoned himself, James:
"attest(s) to the mental impact that (isolation) inflict(s). My first year was spent on a high-security landing where the cell doors were opened only briefly for meals and emptying of toilet buckets. If decent-minded prison officers were on duty we were allowed to walk the yard for 30 minutes a day. The rest of the time we were alone....
As the days, weeks and months blur into one, without realising it you start to live completely inside your head. You dream about the past, in vivid detail - and fantasise about the future, for fantasies are all you have. You panic but it's no good 'getting on the bell' - unless you're dying - and, even then, don't hope for a speedy response. I had a lot to think about. When the man in the cell above mine hanged himself I thought about that a lot. I still do. You look at the bars on the high window and think how easy it would be to be free of all the thinking."
The film, "Land of the Free" tells their story, three men growing up poor in New Orleans. They feared police, "who would regularly 'clear the books' of crimes in the area," King explaining that they'd pin them on disaffected black youths.
"If I saw the police, I used to run," said King, admitting he committed petty crimes, but "nothing vicious." Eventually he was bogusly arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 35 years.
Woodfox also bogusly got 50 years for armed robbery, escaped from the courthouse, returned to Harlem, and got involved with the Black Panthers. After being caught, he was taken to New York's Tombs, was called "militant," and returned to New Orleans "where he joined King on the parish block, known - due to the high concentration of Panther activists - as 'the Panther tier.' There (he) became a member of the Black Panther party."
Woodfox and Wallace extended it, "establishing classes in political ideology and exposing injustices." They worked to improve prison conditions, but their activism made them targets. At the time, guard Miller was killed. Two days later, four "black militants" were accused, including Wallace and Woodfox. One of the four was a plant. Charges against him were dropped. "Another, Chester Jackson, admitted to holding Miller while the guard was stabbed to death," Jackson turning state's evidence to cop a plea for a lighter sentence. Wallace and Woodfox were convicted by an all-white jury, sentenced to life without parole, and taken to Angola's CCR (Closed Cell Restricted) block - solitary confinement.
"King was brought to Angola from the parish prison two weeks after Miller's killing, as part of a roundup of black radicals. He never met Miller and was in a prison 150 miles away" when it happened. Yet he was identified as a "conspirator" before being held in CCR with Woodfox and Wallace.
The next year, a prisoner named August Kelly was murdered on the tier. Prisoner Grady Brewer admitted sole guilt, saying it was in self-defense. He and King were tried together, the only evidence against King "came from flawed prisoner testimony." He and Brewer had little counsel consultations before trial. After protesting, the judge ordered their hands shacked behind their backs and mouths gagged with duct tape during trial. They were convicted and got life without parole, King later released on appeal as explained above.
New lawyers later discovered "obfuscation after obfuscation" during trial, the state using a number of jailhouse informants who gave contradictory accounts of what happened. "One was registered blind. The key witness" was Hezikiah Brown who testified he saw the murder. He initially said he saw nothing.
"Three days later, when he was taken from his bunk at midnight by prison officials and promised his freedom if he testified, he agreed to say that he saw Wallace and Woodfox kill Miller." At the time, he was serving life without parole for multiple rapes.
Wallace and Woodfox persisted. In 1993, Woodfox won an appeal for a new trial that was just as bogus as the first one - an all white jury, a local author (Anne Butler) convinced of his guilt its chairperson, no witnesses called, evidence concealed or not properly investigated, so as expected he was again convicted.
It took King 26 years for his successful appeal after earlier witnesses recanted, and a federal court ordered the district one to reconsider. A deal followed, King pleading guilty to conspiracy for a crime he didn't commit, his price for freedom as explained above.
Then in 2008, Woodfox's conviction was overturned after a federal court ruled his constitutional rights were violated at trial. Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell contested. As a result, he, like Wallace, remains isolated in confinement, victimized by prosecutorial injustice under a system giving disadvantaged blacks none. Decisions are seldom reversed by higher courts, the fate Woodfox and Wallace still contest after decades of prison hell.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/
The Angola Three: 38 Years in Prison Hell - by Stephen Lendman
On March 30, 2010, an Amnesty International (AI) Public Statement read:
"USA: Amnesty International calls for immediate end to nearly 73 years of solitary confinement endured by Louisiana prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox."
Both men are at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (called Angola and The Farm) - in terms of acreage, America's largest prison, a maximum security one with over 5,000 inmates and 1,800 staff members on 18,000 acres. Once a slave plantation, it's the same now as then, and it's legal under the 13th Amendment stating:
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
Except for brief intervals, Wallace has been there for 38 years, Woodfox for nearly 35 - confined for 23 hours a day in 2 x 3 meter cells with little natural light, and "allowed outdoor exercise in a small cage, for one hour, three days a week, contrary to (what's) specified in the United Nations Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Restrictions are imposed on their personal property, reading materials, access to legal resources, work and visits." Their cages are unprotected from rain or oppressive heat. Overall, they're treated like animals, not human beings.
Until March 2009, both were at Angola. Wallace was then transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel and remains in solitary confinement. They and Robert King are the "Angola 3," convicts since 1972, for the murder of white prison guard Brent Miller that year. No physical evidence linked them to the crime, their convictions based solely (as later documentation revealed) on bribed inmate testimony in return for leniency. Another witness later recanted.
Although not at Angola at the time, King was blamed but never charged. In 1973, he was bogusly accused of murdering another prisoner, freed only in 2001 after pleading guilty to "conspiracy to commit murder" as a condition for release on time served.
The three men have a civil suit pending against the state of Louisiana, one the US Supreme Court ruled has merit based on claims that their Eight Amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" rights were violated. It will be heard in the US Middle District Court in Baton Rouge, but don't look for any more justice this time than earlier, especially for poor and disadvantaged blacks.
King's autobiography was published in 2008 titled, "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of a Black Panther." He's a member of the Common Ground Collective, a decentralized NGO network formed post-Katrina to help New Orleans residents. He's also an international speaker at colleges and community centers in America and before parliaments in the Netherlands, South Africa and Portugal.
Still in isolation, Wallace and Woodfox are reported to be in poor health, the result of decades of mistreatment. AI says Wallace's "osteoarthritis is aggravated by inadequate exercise, functional impairment, memory loss and insomnia."
Woodfox suffers from "claustrophobia, hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia."
Both men are victims of racism, retribution for their activism, prosecutorial injustice, and a state prison system the Louisiana ACLU calls "the most abhorrent in terms of violence and horrible living conditions."
Louisiana has the highest per capita incarceration in the world, the ACLU getting over 80 complaints a month about guard beatings, overcrowding, poor medical care or its denial, mistreatment of mentally ill prisoners, squalid living conditions, and denial of access to lawyers.
The Bill of Rights grants constitutional protections to everyone, including persons in custody, regardless of their crime. Especially abhorrent are rigged trials, judicial complicity, wrongful convictions, and appellate unfairness to keep innocent victims incarcerated.
Angola's Horrific History
Angola has always been hellish, especially in the 1970s when it wreaked of corruption and abuse. It was segregated with horrific rampant rage, frequent murders, and sexual bondage - inmates sold to each other as sex slaves or in exchange for favors. No wonder it was called America's worst prison, a distinction as true today, including chain of command encouragement of widespread, systematic violence, including guard beatings, sexual assaults, other abuses amounting to torture, and use of solitary confinement as punishment for activism or any other reason arbitrarily.
Today, Angola prisoners are 75% black under a compulsory 40 hour or longer workweeks (eight hours or longer a day, five days a week) plus weekends for bad disciplinary reports, often fabricated for more labor.
They till fields for 4 cents an hour, under constant watch as virtual slaves. In the 1970s, it was 96 hours (16 hours a day, six days a week) for 2 cents an hour at what was called the "Bloodiest Prison in the South" because of endemic guard-inflicted and prisoner-on-prisoner violence.
The Angola 3 fought conditions with nonviolent hunger and work strikes. Prison authorities retaliated by framing them for murders they didn't commit, Woodfox and Wallace for Miller's death, King for another prisoner.
Today Angola's mission statement says:
"The philosophy of Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) is to provide services in a professional manner so as to protect the safety of the public, staff, and inmate population. Consistent with this, it is LSP's responsibility to provide meaningful opportunities to enhance, through a variety of education, work, social service and medical programs, the individual's desire to become a productive member of society, while providing a safe, stable work environment for employees."
Inmates see it otherwise, calling reforms "cosmetic." Former prisoner and now Executive Secretary of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana calls Angola a "sophisticated plantation (where) cotton is king" and inmates near slaves - "given enough food, clothing and shelter to be a financial asset to the owner," but little else.
Louisiana's entire prison system is no different, Angola the preeminent example, a de facto slave plantation, preventing its inmates from ever "becom(ing) a productive member of society" because long sentences without parole deny it - the idea being once incarcerated, free them only for burial on Angola's expansive acreage after extracting a lifetime of forced labor.
"The Case of the Angola 3"
For more information, visit Angola3.org.
In the late 1960s, Wallace and Woodfox were incarcerated for unrelated robberies, founded a Black Panther party chapter to improve prison conditions, and were targeted for their activism.
In 2008, a federal judge overturned Woodfox's conviction after a state judicial magistrate found damning evidence, including:
-- "inadequate representation;
-- prosecutorial misconduct;
-- suppression of exculpatory evidence; and
-- racial discrimination in the grand jury selection process."
Nonetheless, he's still in solitary because Louisiana officials want him held for life.
In 2006, a state judicial commissioner recommended reversing Wallace's conviction, again because of compelling prosecutorial misconduct. No matter. He's also in isolated confinement after a district court denied him, upheld by appellate level refusal to review without explanation.
A habeas petition is now pending in federal court that may prove as constitutionally futile, given their extremist right wing judges, showing little sympathy for oppressed minorities or the poor, and a reluctance to reverse local authorities.
On March 10, The London Guardian's Erwin James' article headlined, "37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola three," saying:
"....at (Angola's) heart....is an inhumanity that would make Jesus weep," two of the Angola 3 enduring "the longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history."
Having spent 20 years imprisoned himself, James:
"attest(s) to the mental impact that (isolation) inflict(s). My first year was spent on a high-security landing where the cell doors were opened only briefly for meals and emptying of toilet buckets. If decent-minded prison officers were on duty we were allowed to walk the yard for 30 minutes a day. The rest of the time we were alone....
As the days, weeks and months blur into one, without realising it you start to live completely inside your head. You dream about the past, in vivid detail - and fantasise about the future, for fantasies are all you have. You panic but it's no good 'getting on the bell' - unless you're dying - and, even then, don't hope for a speedy response. I had a lot to think about. When the man in the cell above mine hanged himself I thought about that a lot. I still do. You look at the bars on the high window and think how easy it would be to be free of all the thinking."
The film, "Land of the Free" tells their story, three men growing up poor in New Orleans. They feared police, "who would regularly 'clear the books' of crimes in the area," King explaining that they'd pin them on disaffected black youths.
"If I saw the police, I used to run," said King, admitting he committed petty crimes, but "nothing vicious." Eventually he was bogusly arrested for armed robbery and sentenced to 35 years.
Woodfox also bogusly got 50 years for armed robbery, escaped from the courthouse, returned to Harlem, and got involved with the Black Panthers. After being caught, he was taken to New York's Tombs, was called "militant," and returned to New Orleans "where he joined King on the parish block, known - due to the high concentration of Panther activists - as 'the Panther tier.' There (he) became a member of the Black Panther party."
Woodfox and Wallace extended it, "establishing classes in political ideology and exposing injustices." They worked to improve prison conditions, but their activism made them targets. At the time, guard Miller was killed. Two days later, four "black militants" were accused, including Wallace and Woodfox. One of the four was a plant. Charges against him were dropped. "Another, Chester Jackson, admitted to holding Miller while the guard was stabbed to death," Jackson turning state's evidence to cop a plea for a lighter sentence. Wallace and Woodfox were convicted by an all-white jury, sentenced to life without parole, and taken to Angola's CCR (Closed Cell Restricted) block - solitary confinement.
"King was brought to Angola from the parish prison two weeks after Miller's killing, as part of a roundup of black radicals. He never met Miller and was in a prison 150 miles away" when it happened. Yet he was identified as a "conspirator" before being held in CCR with Woodfox and Wallace.
The next year, a prisoner named August Kelly was murdered on the tier. Prisoner Grady Brewer admitted sole guilt, saying it was in self-defense. He and King were tried together, the only evidence against King "came from flawed prisoner testimony." He and Brewer had little counsel consultations before trial. After protesting, the judge ordered their hands shacked behind their backs and mouths gagged with duct tape during trial. They were convicted and got life without parole, King later released on appeal as explained above.
New lawyers later discovered "obfuscation after obfuscation" during trial, the state using a number of jailhouse informants who gave contradictory accounts of what happened. "One was registered blind. The key witness" was Hezikiah Brown who testified he saw the murder. He initially said he saw nothing.
"Three days later, when he was taken from his bunk at midnight by prison officials and promised his freedom if he testified, he agreed to say that he saw Wallace and Woodfox kill Miller." At the time, he was serving life without parole for multiple rapes.
Wallace and Woodfox persisted. In 1993, Woodfox won an appeal for a new trial that was just as bogus as the first one - an all white jury, a local author (Anne Butler) convinced of his guilt its chairperson, no witnesses called, evidence concealed or not properly investigated, so as expected he was again convicted.
It took King 26 years for his successful appeal after earlier witnesses recanted, and a federal court ordered the district one to reconsider. A deal followed, King pleading guilty to conspiracy for a crime he didn't commit, his price for freedom as explained above.
Then in 2008, Woodfox's conviction was overturned after a federal court ruled his constitutional rights were violated at trial. Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell contested. As a result, he, like Wallace, remains isolated in confinement, victimized by prosecutorial injustice under a system giving disadvantaged blacks none. Decisions are seldom reversed by higher courts, the fate Woodfox and Wallace still contest after decades of prison hell.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
3/11/2010
37 years of solitary confinement: the Angola Three
(Photo: Zulu and Albert Woodfox)
From the Guardian , in the UK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/10/erwin-james-angola-three
Erwin James
In 1972, three men in a Louisiana prison were placed in solitary confinement after a prison guard was murdered. Two of them are still there – even though many believe they are innocent.
Angola prison, the state penitentiary of Louisiana, is the biggest prison in America. Built on the site of a former slave plantation, the 1,800-acre penal complex is home to more than 5,000 prisoners, the majority of whom will never walk the streets again as free men. Also known as the Farm, Angola took its name from the homeland of the slaves who used to work its fields, and in many ways still resembles a slave plantation today. Eighty per cent of the prisoners are African-Americans and, under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback, they still work fields of sugar cane, cotton and corn, for up to 16 hours a day. "You've got to keep the inmates working all day so they're tired at night," says Warden Burl Cain, a committed evangelist who believes that the rehabilitation of convicts is only possible through Christian redemption.
Undoubtedly there is less violence and abuse among the prisoners under his wardenship than there was under his predecessors. But Angola is still a long way from being a "positive environment that promotes responsibility, goodness, and humanity", as he proclaims in the prison's mission statement. In fact at the heart of Cain's prison regime is an inhumanity that would make Jesus weep.
For more than 37 years, two prisoners, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have been locked down in Angola's maximum security Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) block – the longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history.
Having experienced the isolation of "23-hour bang-up" during my own 20 years of imprisonment, for offences of which I was guilty, I can attest to the mental impact that such conditions inflict. My first year was spent on a high-security landing where the cell doors were opened only briefly for meals and emptying of toilet buckets. If decent-minded prison officers were on duty we were allowed to walk the yard for 30 minutes a day. The rest of the time we were alone. The cells were 10ft x 5ft, with a chair, a table and a bed. You could walk up and down, run on the spot, stand still, or do push-ups and sit-ups – but sooner or later you had to just stop, and think.
As the days, weeks and months blur into one, without realising it you start to live completely inside your head. You dream about the past, in vivid detail – and fantasise about the future, for fantasies are all you have. You panic but it's no good "getting on the bell" – unless you're dying – and, even then, don't hope for a speedy response. I had a lot to think about. When the man in the cell above mine hanged himself I thought about that, a lot. I still do. You look at the bars on the high window and think how easy it would be to be free of all the thinking.
Such thoughts must have crossed the minds of Wallace and Woodfox more than once during their isolation. They are fed through the barred gates of their 9ft x 6ft cells and allowed only one hour of exercise every other day alone in a small caged yard. Their capacity for psychological endurance alone is noteworthy.
Wallace and Woodfox were confined to solitary after being convicted of murdering Angola prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. But the circumstances of their trial was so suspect that there are no doubts among their supporters that these men are innocent. Even Brent Miller's widow, Teenie Verret, has her reservations. "If they did not do this," she says, "and I believe that they didn't, they have been living a nightmare."
One man who understands the nightmare that Wallace and Woodfox are living more than anyone else is Robert King. King was also convicted of a murder in Angola in 1973, and was held in solitary alongside Wallace and Woodfox for 29 years, until his conviction was overturned in 2001 and he was freed. Together, King, Wallace and Woodfox have become known as the "Angola three".
The case of the Angola three first came to international attention following the campaigning efforts of the Body Shop founder and humanitarian Anita Roddick. Roddick heard about their plight from a young lawyer named Scott Fleming. Fleming was working as a prisoner advocate in the 1990s when he received a letter from Wallace asking for help. The human tragedy Fleming uncovered had the most profound effect on him. When he qualified as a lawyer, their case became his first. "I was born in 1973," he says. "I often think that for my entire life they have been in solitary."
Through Fleming, Roddick met King and then Woodfox in Angola. Their story, she said later, "made my blood run cold in my veins". Until her death in 2007 Roddick was a committed and passionate supporter of their cause. At her memorial service King played two taped messages from Wallace and Woodfox. In the congregation was film-maker Vadim Jean who had become good friends with Roddick and her husband Gordon during an earlier film project. "Anita's big thing was, 'Just do something,'" says Jean. "No matter how small an act of kindness. Listening to Herman and Albert's voices at her memorial was like having Anita's finger pointing at me and saying, 'Just do something'." And so he decided to make In the Land of the Free, a searing documentary, released later this month.
The story Jean's film tells is one that has resonance on many levels. All three men were from poor black neighbourhoods In New Orleans. They grew up fearing the police, who would regularly "clear the books" of crimes in the area, according to King, by pinning then on disaffected young black men. "If I saw the police, I used to run," King says. He admits to being involved in petty crime in his early years, but "nothing vicious". Eventually King was arrested for an armed robbery he says he did not commit and was sentenced to 35 years, which he began in New Orleans parish prison – and there he met Albert Woodfox.
Woodfox had also been sentenced for armed robbery – and given 50 years. On the day he was sentenced he escaped from the courthouse. He made his way to Harlem in New York, where he encountered the Black Panthers, the revolutionary African-American political movement. He witnessed the Panthers engaging with the community in a positive, constructive way, educating and informing people of their rights. He says it was the first time in his life that he had seen African-Americans exhibiting real pride, pride that emanated from the young activists, he says, "like a shimmering heatwave".
Two days later Woodfox was caught and taken to New York's Tombs prison where he saw first-hand the militant tactics of imprisoned Panthers who resisted their guards with organised protests. In Tombs, Woodfox was labelled "militant" and sent back to New Orleans where he joined King on the parish prison block, known – due to the high concentration of Panther activists – as "the Panther tier". There Woodfox became a member of the Black Panther party.
Outside, confrontations between the Panthers – described by FBI director J Edgar Hoover as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country" – and the police were escalating. In an attempt to undermine the influence of the Panthers in New Orleans parish prison, officials tried to shoehorn men they termed "Black Gangsters" on to the tier – men like Wallace, also serving decades for armed robbery. One day Wallace was suffering from the pain of ill-fitting shoes. One of the Panthers, on his way to a court appearance, took his shoes off and handed them to Wallace. "Right then I knew that that was what I needed to be a part of," he says. In the summer of 1971 Wallace and Woodfox were shipped to Angola.
The civil rights bill had been signed in 1964, but seven years later Angola was still operating a segregated regime. Prisoner guards carried guns and were also responsible, according to well-documented sources, for organising systematic sexual abuse of vulnerable prisoners, which flourished in the prison's mostly dormitory accommodation. And violence between prisoners had reached such levels that Angola was known as "the bloodiest prison in America".
Woodfox and Wallace quickly extended the New Orleans chapter of the Black Panthers into Angola, establishing classes in political ideology and exposing injustices. They organised work stoppages, demonstrating to fellow prisoners the liberating power of acting with a "unity of purpose" and worked to eradicate the prevalent sexual abuses. But their political activities made them targets for the administrators. By the spring of 1972, tensions in the prison were dangerously high.
These were the conditions in which Brent Miller met his untimely death. That April, a prisoner work strike drew the attention of the guards who were called from normal duties to deal with the disturbance. Miller, a strong, athletic young man of 23, stayed behind alone. He entered a dormitory holding 90 prisoners and sat on an elderly prisoner's bed, drinking coffee and chatting. Moments later he was attacked and stabbed 32 times.
Two days later, four men identified as "black militants", including Wallace and Woodfox, were accused of the murder. It was quickly ascertained that one of the four had been inserted into the case by the prison administration. Charges against him were dropped. Another, Chester Jackson, admitted to holding Miller while the guard was stabbed to death. Jackson turned state's evidence in return for a plea to manslaughter. The case was tried in a town called St Francisville, the closest courthouse to Angola. The jury had been picked from the local populace, many of whom earned their living from the prison or had families and friends that worked there; all were white. Wallace and Woodfox were found guilty of Miller's murder, sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and taken from the court straight to Angola's CCR block to begin their life in isolation.
Robert King was brought to Angola from the parish prison two weeks after Miller's killing, as part of a roundup of black radicals. King had never met Miller and was in a prison 150 miles away when the murder took place. Yet he was investigated for the crime and identified as a "conspirator" before being transferred to lockdown on CCR alongside Wallace and Woodcock.
The following year a prisoner named August Kelly was murdered on King's CCR tier. A man named Grady Brewer admitted that he alone was responsible for the killing, which he said he carried out in self-defence. But King was also charged. The two men faced trial together in the same St Francisville courthouse where Wallace and Woodfox had been convicted the year before. The sole evidence against King came from flawed prisoner testimony. He and Brewer had not been allowed to speak to their attorneys for any length of time before their trial. When they protested, the judge ordered their hands to be shackled behind their backs and their mouths gagged with duct tape for the duration of their trial. The men were convicted and sentenced to life without parole. King later won an appeal; the federal court ruled that he had not been sufficiently unruly in the dock to warrant the shackling and gagging. He went back to trial in 1975, was re-convicted and immediately sent back to CCR.
When, after Scott Fleming's intervention in the case of Wallace and Woodfox in the 1990s, new lawyers reviewed the original trial of both men, discovering "obfuscation after obfuscation". The state had used a number of jailhouse informants against them, many of whom gave contradictory accounts of what they saw. One was registered blind. The key witness in the case was a man called Hezikiah Brown who testified he witnessed the murder. In his initial statement to investigators however, Brown said he had not seen anything. Three days later, when he was taken from his bunk at midnight by prison officials and promised his freedom if he testified, he agreed to say that he saw Wallace and Woodfox kill Miller. At the time Brown was serving life without parole for multiple rapes. Immediately after he agreed to testify he was given his own minimum security private house in the prison grounds and a weekly cigarette ration.
Wallace and Woodfox did not give up. They fought their convictions from their cells and in 1993 Woodfox was granted an appeal, forcing a new trial. The case was sent back to the same courthouse to be tried in front of a new grand jury. A local author, Anne Butler, who had published a book in which she detailed the case and was convinced that the right people had been convicted, acted as jury chairperson. No witnesses were called. Instead Butler was called upon to explain the case. Once again, the jury was composed of people who worked in Angola or were related to people who worked there. Butler's husband and co-author was Murray Henderson, who had been the warden of Angola when Brent Miller was murdered. It is worth noting that Henderson was a key member of the original investigation team and that, during that investigation, a bloody fingerprint was found close to Brent Miller's body. It was determined that it did not belong to Woodfox nor to Wallace, but despite the prison holding all the fingerprints of all the prisoners, no attempt was made to find out whose it was. The bloody print was also ignored at Woodfox's retrial. He was reconvicted and sent back to isolation in Angola's CCR.
It was 26 years before King won the right to another appeal. In 2001 the Federal court found that the jury in King's original trial had systematically excluded African-Americans and women and agreed that the case should be reheard. This time around the prisoner witnesses recanted and the federal court sent the case back to the district court for review. The state negotiated a deal with King. Reluctantly, and with his left hand raised instead of his right, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy; an hour and a half later he was freed.
In September 2008, Woodfox's conviction was overturned; the federal court ruled that his core constitutional rights had been violated at his original trial. Louisiana attorney general Buddy Caldwell could have set Woodfox free immediately. Instead he decided to contest the federal decision and Woodfox, now 64, was returned to Angola's CCR, where he remains. Herman Wallace, now 68, was moved to another Louisiana prison last year, where he too continues to be held in solitary confinement.
Today King, now 67, is still campaigning for justice for his friends. Albert Woodfox: "Our primary objective is that front gate. That is what we are struggling for and we are actually fighting for our freedom. We are fighting for people to understand that we were framed for a murder that we are totally, completely and actually innocent of." Robert King says he is free of Angola, but until his friends are free, "Angola will never be free of me."
Jean hopes his film will make a difference. "These men need help," he says. "Louisiana needs to be shamed into doing the right thing."
Further information: angola3.org. If you wish to help highlight the plight of the Angola 3, you can write to the Governor of Louisiana at the Office of the Governor, PO Box 94004, Baton Rouge, LA 70804, US.
Christmas meals in Angola
By Kenny ‘Zulu’ Whitmore
You might have read that inmates across the country are normally afforded all the trimmings on Christmas Day. Though in Angola prison we are usually given a traditional meal for each of the holidays, this past Christmas was a bleak affair – as if life on this southern plantation wasn’t grim enough.
We were denied the typical Christmas dinner since the warden, Burl Cain, was angry with the 200 inmates in the main prison compound who had filed an administrative complaint (ARP) due to food poisoning from spoiled dressing at the Thanksgiving meal (not the first time a complaint of food poisoning has been made).
The warden seems to have taken their move personally, though the complaint was against the food service; not him. Shortly afterwards, he gave a broadcast on the prison radio and TV station to tell the captive population that no more traditional meals would be served at the prison.
In a pique of pettiness, the prison authorities have overturned a 35-year tradition at Angola; missed an opportunity to take a potentially deadly illness seriously; and typically issued a blanket punishment for the action of one group of inmates.
So what should we expect on the menu in the coming year at Angola? Probably more beatings, gassings and chains served up with a side order of misguided and small-minded retaliation for legitimate complaints.
You might have read that inmates across the country are normally afforded all the trimmings on Christmas Day. Though in Angola prison we are usually given a traditional meal for each of the holidays, this past Christmas was a bleak affair – as if life on this southern plantation wasn’t grim enough.
We were denied the typical Christmas dinner since the warden, Burl Cain, was angry with the 200 inmates in the main prison compound who had filed an administrative complaint (ARP) due to food poisoning from spoiled dressing at the Thanksgiving meal (not the first time a complaint of food poisoning has been made).
The warden seems to have taken their move personally, though the complaint was against the food service; not him. Shortly afterwards, he gave a broadcast on the prison radio and TV station to tell the captive population that no more traditional meals would be served at the prison.
In a pique of pettiness, the prison authorities have overturned a 35-year tradition at Angola; missed an opportunity to take a potentially deadly illness seriously; and typically issued a blanket punishment for the action of one group of inmates.
So what should we expect on the menu in the coming year at Angola? Probably more beatings, gassings and chains served up with a side order of misguided and small-minded retaliation for legitimate complaints.
1/16/2010
Thank you my Friends/Supporters
From: Kenny Zulu Whitmore
To: my friends/supporters
My people: first I'd like to thank everyone who sent me an X-mas card, it was
a real joy to hear from so many of you! I hope everyone had a wonderful
holiday season spent with family and friends.
My holiday here on 'the plantation' were spent with 2 visits. My family and
I enjoyed time together with good food, laughter and good conversations,
remembering the last X-mas we spent with our dad before he passed on earlier
this year. We cried and laughed and talked than everyone else in the
visiting room. My sister Brunetta made a pledge to swing with one mighty
fist and knock down the doors of injustice that are holding me and my
brother Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox (A3) here. My struggle for
physical struggle will intensify in this coming year.
Albert And I also visited with friends: Tory Pergram, Helen Kinsella. and
Parnell Herbert - who wrote and produced the Angola3 play. The main goal
this year is to get a lawyer on board to argue my pending cases before the
court, so that I can soon meet some of the determined people who joined me
in my struggle for physical freedom.
My wish for all my friends/supporters in the coming year is that whatever
you wish for your selves will become reality. I hope everyone will remain
conscious that injustice somewhere is a threat to justice everywhere. As for
me, I am resilient in my faith that I will walk off this plantation into the
arms of family and friends. FAITH IS BEING SURE OF WHAT YOU HOPE FOR AND
CERTAIN OF WHAT WE DON'T SEE IS FAITH.
Peace, love and solidarity, Zulu.
12/19/2009
Photos of the visit from Herbert Parnell to Zulu and Albert
Zulu, Albert, Herbert
Albert, Herbert, Zulu
Zulu & Albert
Herbert Parnell, who produced the stage play about the Angola 3 - in which Zulu also plays a role - meets Albert and Zulu for the first time in Angola, LA on the 13th of December 2009 (click on photos to enlarge).
12/13/2009
Robert King & Terry Kupers: The Psychological Impact of Imprisonment
From: Angola3News
Robert Hillary King, a member of the Angola 3, was released from prison in 2001 after serving 29 years in solitary confinement, when his conviction was overturned after many years of legal battles....
Robert Hillary King, a member of the Angola 3, was released from prison in 2001 after serving 29 years in solitary confinement, when his conviction was overturned after many years of legal battles. The other two members of the Angola 3, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, both remain imprisoned today. In 2008, King released his autobiography, entitled From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Robert Hillary King. His autobiography won the 2008 PASS Award, and has been reviewed by SF Bay View, Black Commentator, Hour, Alternet, Political Media Review, La Presse, Albany Times Union, and The Times-Picayune
Dr. Terry Kupers, M.D., M.S.P. wrote the introduction to From the Bottom of the Heap and is Institute Professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. Dr. Kupers is a psychiatrist with a background in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, forensics and social and community psychiatry. His forensic psychiatry experience includes testimony in several large class action litigations concerning jail and prison conditions, sexual abuse, and the quality of mental health services inside correctional facilities. He is a consultant to Human Rights Watch, and author of the 1999 book entitled Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It.
King and Kupers were interviewed in Oakland, California in October, 2009, when King was in town for Black Panther History Month. This video is only part one, so please stay tuned for more!
Part 1:
Part 2:
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