A federal appeals court has approved a third trial for a man who has spent more than four decades in solitary confinement for a crime he insists he didn’t commit.
A lower court ruled that Albert Woodfox be released immediately because he could not get a fair trial after two previous convictions were tossed out. But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals blocked his freedom and allowed Louisiana to hold a third trial, according to Mother Jones magazine.
The state wants to try Woodfox for a third time for the killing of prison guard Brent Miller in 1972. Woodfox has spent 23 hours a day in a six-by-nine- foot cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) for the last 43 years.
Woodfox, Herman Wallace and Robert King were members of the so-called “Angola 3.” Wallace died three days after he was released in 2013. King’s conviction was overturned in 2001 after 29 years in solitary confinement.
Mother Jones reporter James Ridgeway wrote, “The men contend that they were targeted by prison authorities and convicted of murder not based on the actual evidence which was dubious at best – but because they were members of the Black Panther Party’s prison chapter, which was organizing against horrendous conditions at Angola.”
In a 2008 disposition, Angola Warden Burl Cain confirmed Woodfox’s political affiliation accounted for the seemingly permanent stay in solitary. Cain told Woodfox’s attorneys he would keep Woodfox in solitary even if he wasn’t guilty of Miller’s murder, stating, “Okay, I would still keep him in CCR (solitary)…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 (the Black Panthers)…He has to stay in a cell while he’s at Angola.”
Amnesty International reacted to the latest court ruling with dismay, stating Woodfox “remains trapped in a nightmare — both by conditions of solitary confinement and by a deeply flawed legal process that has spanned four decades.”
Jasmine Heiss of Amnesty International stated, “Woodfox should have walked free. But Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell continues to relentlessly pursue vengeance over justice.”
The magazine reported the victim’s widow opposes another trial, and all the purported witnesses have died, but the state proposes to retry the case by having stand-ins read from the transcripts of the dead witnesses’ prior testimonies.
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