The Angola 3:
Black Panther Political Prisoners in the US
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1672/1/
by Angola 3 News
09 September 2009
We are excited to announce the launching of the www.angola3news.com
network of websites. This is an official project of the International
Coalition to Free the Angola 3, working to publicize news and
information about political prisoners Robert King, Albert Woodfox,
and Herman Wallace. We have created new websites at You Tube, Live
Journal, Care2, Twitter, Facebook, and My Space, where we are
compiling a variety of media projects about the Angola 3.
Notably, the story of the Angola 3 has recently been spotlighted by
NBC Nightly News, Huffington Post, Alternet, Mother Jones, and a
Peabody Award-winning series by National Public Radio.
Several new art projects and exhibits focusing on the Angola 3 have
also been in the news. The New York Times, Newsweek, and others have
reported on The House That Herman Built. The new exhibit The Deeper
They Bury Me, The Louder My Voice Becomes is currently featured at
The New Museum in New York City. The new play titled Angola 3 will
premier at Loyola University on September 18. A few days later, Sept.
23-25, Robert King will be touring Maryland, Virginia, and Washington
DC with his new autobiography From the Bottom of the Heap: The
Autobiography of Robert Hillary King.
The Case of the Angola 3
Thirty seven years ago, 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 first black
elected legislators and local media in the early 1970s. State
legislative leaders, along with the administration of a
newly-elected, reform-minded governor, called for investigations into
a host of unconstitutional practices and the extraordinarily cruel
and unusual treatment commonplace in the prison. In 1972 and 1973
prison officials, determined to put an end to outside scrutiny,
charged Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King with murders
they did not commit and threw them into 6x9 foot cells in solitary
confinement, for over 36 years. Robert was freed in 2001, but Herman
and Albert remain behind bars.
In July 2008 a Federal Judge overturned Albert Woodfox's conviction
after a Federal Judicial Magistrate found his trial was unfair due to
inadequate representation, prosecutorial misconduct, suppression of
exculpatory evidence, and racial discrimination in the grand jury
selection process. Sadly, despite this powerful recommendation,
Louisiana prosecutors maintain that Albert should remain in Angola
for the rest of his life. Attorney General Buddy Caldwell responded
by appealing to the US Fifth Circuit. In December, the Fifth Circuit
granted Caldwell's request to deny Woodfox bail, but indicated
sympathy for the overturning of the conviction, writing: "We are not
now convinced that the State has established a likelihood of success
on the merits." On March 3, 2009, oral arguments were heard by
appellate Judges Carolyn Dineen King, Carl E. Steart and Leslie H.
Southwick, and a decision from them is now expected any month. If the
three judge panel affirms the overturning of Woodfox's conviction,
the state will have 120 days to either accept the ruling or to retry
Woodfox. The state has already vowed to retry him if necessary. If
the Fifth Circuit rules for the state, Woodfox's conviction will be
reinstated.
Similarly, in November 2006, a State Judicial Commissioner took the
rare step of issuing a 27-page report recommending the reversal of
Herman Wallace's conviction because of new, compelling evidence
exposing prosecutorial misconduct. After stalling for nearly a year,
the local District Court issued a curt, two-sentence ruling rejecting
the Commissioner's recommendation. In May 2008 the appellate court
continued to ignore justice by refusing to hear the case in a 2-1
decision without any explanation. The one judge who dissented found
the verdict should be overturned because Herman's constitutional
rights were violated. The case is currently on appeal to the
Louisiana Supreme Court and a ruling is expected in coming months. If
the appellate court agrees with the Commissioner's findings and
reverses the conviction, and if the District Attorney of Baton Rouge
can be convinced not to file new charges, Herman will, at long last,
be a free man.
Despite a number of reforms achieved in the mid 70s in response to
condemnations of the State of Louisiana's criminal justice system
from all three branches of state government, many court officials
have repeatedly refused to take a serious look at these cases,
stubbornly sided with local prosecutors despite evidence of
misconduct, and ignored constitutional safeguards requiring prison
officials to hold meaningful, mandatory 90-day reviews to justify
keeping inmates in solitary confinement for any extended period of
time. Any month, a federal civil rights lawsuit goes to trial,
detailing the decades of unconstitutionally cruel and unusual
punishment endured by these innocent men.
Angola 3 in the News
During the last few years there have been many important stories
about the Angola 3, and our new network of websites will be working
to publicize these stories.
In March, 2008, NBC Nightly News interviewed Robert King about his
time spent in continuous solitary confinement, and also featured an
interview with the widow of slain prison guard, who now questions the
convictions of Woodfox and Wallace, and told NBC that she supports a
new investigation into the case: "What I want is justice. If these
two men did not do this, I think they need to be out."
In October, 2008, a Peabody Award-wining National Public Radio (NPR)
series on the case reported directly from Angola. NPR reporter Laura
Sullivan observed that "a hundred black men are in the field, bent
over picking tomatoes. A single white officer on a horse sits above
them, a shotgun in his lap…It's the same as it looked 40 years ago,
and 100 years ago." NPR documents how there is no physical evidence
linking Woodfox or Wallace to the murder. A bloody fingerprint was
found at the scene but it matches neither prisoner's prints. Prison
officials have always refused to test that fingerprint against their
own inmate fingerprint database. Caldwell vows to continue this
policy, telling NPR: "A fingerprint can come from anywhere…We're not
going to be fooled by that."
In December, 2008, The Huffington Post featured two articles about
the Angola 3. One was by James Rucker, whose organization
ColorOfChange.org initiated a 25,000 signature petition calling for
an investigation into Woodfox and Wallace's convictions and solitary
confinement. Earlier in 2008, the petition was hand-delivered to
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal's office by the head of the State
Legislature's Judiciary Committee, Cedric Richmond (watch video here).
The second Huffington Post article was written by Ira Glasser, who is
the former Executive Director of the ACLU. Glasser criticized the
behavior of Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, writing that
following the October 2008 announcement that Woodfox's niece had
agreed to take him in if granted bail, Caldwell "embarked upon a
public scare campaign reminiscent of the kind of inflammatory
hysteria that once was used to provoke lynch mobs. He called Woodfox
a violent rapist, even though he had never been charged, let alone
convicted, of rape; he sent emails to [Woodfox's niece's] neighbors
calling Woodfox a convicted murderer and violent rapist; and
neighbors were urged to sign petitions opposing his release. In the
end, his niece and family were sufficiently frightened and threatened
that Woodfox rejected the plan to live with them while on bail."
In March, 2009, Mother Jones published a long article by James
Ridgeway, which was part of an entire Mother Jones series about the
Angola 3. Ridgeway writes about Warden Burl Cain's courtroom
testimony advocating continued solitary confinement for Albert
Woodfox and opposing his release on bail. Cain testified that even if
Woodfox was not guilty of killing Miller, he should still be kept in
solitary confinement. "I would still keep him in CCR [solitary
confinement]," he said. "I still know that he is still trying to
practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking
around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I
would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I
would have the blacks chasing after them [Woodfox and Wallace]…He has
to stay in a cell while he is at Angola."
In early May, 2009, Alternet released an article titled The Angola
Three: Torture in Our Own Backyard (translated into Spanish here),
providing an overview of the case, as well as reviews of the new book
From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Robert Hillary
King, and the new DVD The Angola 3: Black Panthers and the Last Slave
Plantation. Later that month, a new interview with Robert King was
also featured.
This month, the Why Am I Not Surprised? blog published an essay
titled Black August and the Angola 3. One excerpt reads, "I've been
talking with some VERY bright and VERY committed individuals
connected to the campaign to free the last two members of the Angola
3, Albert 'Shaka' 'Cinque' Woodfox and Herman "Hooks" Wallace, who
have now been held in solitary confinement here in Louisiana for more
than 37 years -- for being Black Panthers. And I've begun to have
phone conversations with Woodfox himself on a regular basis, as well."
Please Help Spread The Word!
Three court cases are now pending: the federal civil rights lawsuit
at the US Middle District Court, Albert Woodfox's appeal at the US
Fifth Circuit, and Herman Wallace's appeal at the State Supreme
Court. At this pivotal time, the National Coalition to Free the
Angola 3 needs your help in publicizing our new project at
www.angola3news.com.
We are utilizing the resources of the internet to publicize the case
of the Angola 3 and the broader issues of prisoners' human rights,
solitary confinement as torture, political repression, racism, and
more. Through the www.angola3news.com network of websites, we want to
link up with other individuals and groups that are organizing around
these same issues.
We need your help to spread the word. Please consider joining the
networks we are now building at You Tube, Live Journal, Care2,
Twitter, Facebook, and My Space. If you have advice about other
websites we should consider networking at, or can help in any other
way, please write us at angola3news@gmail.comThis email address is
being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it.
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