The lawyer for an American inmate held for decades in solitary confinement says his client will be released after pleading no contest to manslaughter and a lesser offence in the 1972 death of a prison guard.
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Woodfox and two other inmates, Robert King and Herman Wallace, became known as the Angola 3 for their long stretches in isolation in Angola and other prisons.
It’s that same reason that prison officials used as a defense for putting the men into solitary confinement: they said “their Black Panther activism would otherwise rile up inmates at the maximum-security prison farm in Angola”, the Associated Press reports.
“I think it’s time the state stop acting like there is any evidence that Albert Woodfox killed Brent”, Miller’s wife, Teenie Rogers, said in a statement.
“I want to thank my brother Michel for sticking with me all these years, and Robert King, who wrongly spent almost 30 years in solitary”.
Burl Cain, the longtime warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary – known as Angola – insisted for years that Mr Woodfox was unsafe and should be kept in isolation, most of the time in a nine-by-six-foot cell. “Mr. Woodfox continues, as he always has, to maintain his innocence”, Kendall said, according to The Times-Picayune.
King was freed after his conviction in the killing of a fellow inmate was overturned in 2001. He died only three days after his release, however. Moving forward, Woodfox’s case must serve as a tragic reminder of the cruelty inflicted by the prison system at its most extreme. Wallace was released in 2013 when a judge granted him a new trial, then died just days later. Woodfox, and two others, know as the Angola Three, have brought attention to the psychological toll of solitary confinement, which typically means being locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day. It will be an extraordinary moment that will see the prisoner step away from a form of captivity that has widely been denounced as torture, and that has deprived him of all meaningful human contact for more than four decades. It’s unclear at this time where Woodfox, a New Orleans native, will settle after he’s freed, Sothern said.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, however, painted Friday’s plea and subsequent release as the result of a successful prosecution that holds Woodfox liable for the guard’s murder.
Woodfox was serving time at the facility for armed robbery and assault.
“I hope you understand that I’ve been through a bad ordeal and I need a little time to get my footing so I don’t make a fool of myself”, he said. Landry issued a statement saying the agreement was reached with the cooperation of Miller’s family.
He was asked whether he would do anything differently if he could go back to that day of the murder in April 1972.
George Kendall, one of Woodfox’s attorneys, said, “This brings much needed closure…”
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After carefully considering all of the facts and circumstances surrounding this case and its procedural history, as it stands today – our team of prosecutors believes this plea is in the best interest of justice.
