Woodfox, the last inmate of a group known as the “Angola Three” has pleaded no contest to manslaughter and a lesser offense in the 1972 death of a prison guard and is expected to be released Friday after more than four decades in prison.
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Woodfox spent the better part of 44 years in solitary confinement, a period believed to be the longest of any United States inmate, and his attorney explained that Woodfox has earned enough credit for time served to be released.
His release on Friday came after the state dropped the threat of a third murder charge in exchange for Woodfox pleading no contest to lesser charges.
His brother picked him up on Friday from the West Feliciana Parish Jail.
Woodfox’s conviction for the 1972 murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller, has been overturned several times, yet he has remained in prison.
In this Feb 12, 2015 file image made from video and released by WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge, Albert Woodfox walks into a courthouse in Louisiana.
“Today’s plea brings closure to the family of Brent Miller, justice for the people of Louisiana, and finality to this decades-long prosecution”, Landry said in a statement.
Of the two other men known as the Angola 3, Wallace was released from prison in 2013 and died three days later.
For a more complete picture of Woodfox’s life, read our previous story, “How the Angola Three Became National Symbols of Injustice”.
Mr. Woodfox, who just turned 69, has been kept in solitary for longer than any other prisoner in the country, possibly longer than any in American history. He was twice convicted of murder in the guard’s death.
The plea bargain was negotiated with state prosecutors. The convictions only served to lengthen their sentences, since they were already inmates serving time for armed robbery when 23-year-old corrections officer Brent Miller was stabbed to death.
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. King’s conviction was overturned. Woodfox spent much of his decades in solitary confinement at the prison.
As Times staff writer Miguel Bustillo wrote in 2008: “The Louisiana State Penitentiary was infamous in the ’60s and ’70s as the bloodiest in the South, a place where guards routinely beat prisoners and inmates killed one another with crude knives”.
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Last month, President Barack Obama announced that he was banning solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prison. Last year, Louisiana announced it would put him through a third trial despite the fact that all the key witnesses to the killing have since died. Mr. Kendall emphasized that the plea was not an admission of guilt.
