The last of three black inmates who spent decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison was released on Friday after pleading no contest to manslaughter in the 1972 death of a prison guard.
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Albert Woodfox, the last incarcerated member of the so-called “Angola 3”, was released from a prison in Louisiana on Friday, his attorneys announced.
Prior to his release Friday, Albert Woodfox retroactively pleaded no contest to charges of manslaughter and aggravated burglary in connection with the death of a prison guard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary – also known as Angola – in 1972.
Woodfox maintained his innocence throughout the years, claiming he and fellow accused inmate, Herman Wallace, had been unfairly targeted for organizing a Black Panther chapter in prison.
Mr Woodfox was then released on time served for those charges, and left the prison by auto shortly before 2pm local time.
He was awaiting a third trial in the case.
A fellow inmate also charged with the murder, Herman Wallace, was released in 2013 because he was suffering from liver cancer.
Woodfox was the last of a group known as the “Angola Three” for their decades-long stays in isolation.
The front entrance of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, La. Eve says the Angola Three have long maintained “they were framed for the prison guard’s murder as retaliation for involvement in the Black Panther movement”. “I hope the events of today will bring closure to many”, he said.
“After four decades of isolation, Albert Woodfox’s release is long overdue and undeniably just”, Amnesty International, which had gone to bat for the Angola 3, said in a statement. In June, a federal judge agreed, ordering that Mr. Woodfox be unconditionally released and barring the state from taking him to trial for a third time on the same charge.
King had been placed in solitary confinement for a crime unrelated to Miller’s killing.
He was being held at the West Feliciana Parish Detention Center in St. Francisville, about 30 miles north of Baton Rouge.
Wallace, a dying member of Louisiana’s “Angola Three” inmates who spent 41 years in solitary confinement for a killing he says he didn’t commit, was freed on October 1, 2013 after a federal judge ruled that he did not get a fair trial in 1974.
Woodfox was twice convicted of killing Miller, but both cases – in 1973 and in 1998 -were overturned after judges determined there were problems with how the selection of the grand juries.
“There’s nobody else who’s been through what he’s been through”, Kendall said.
King, the third of the Angola Three, was freed in 2001 after 29 years in solitary confinement.
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“As it stands today – our team of prosecutors believes this plea is in the best interest of justice”, he said. UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Juan Mendez decried the indefinite solitary confinement imposed on Woodfox, saying that it “clearly amounts to torture and it should be lifted immediately”. Woodfox’s lawyers argued the lack of witnesses would render such a retrial a legal mockery.
