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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
