Albert Woodfox, last of Louisiana’s ‘Angola 3’ Prisoners, walks free

The last of Louisiana’s “Angola Three” inmates, who served some four decades in solitary confinement, was to be released on Friday after pleading no contest to manslaughter in a prison guard’s 1972 death, U.S. media has reported.

A press release from the office of attorney George Kendall, who represented Woodfox in federal court, said the firm will continue its constitutional challenge of the practice of “indefinite solitary confinement” byway of a civil lawsuit filed in 2000. The third member of the Angola 3, Robert King Wilkerson, who like Mr. Wallace and Mr. Woodfox had been active in the Black Panther Party, but whose placement in solitary had nothing to do with Mr. Miller’s killing, was freed in 2001 after his conviction was overturned.

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. Such a plea is not an admission of guilt. As we witness this remarkable development, we remember that each year in the United States, thousands of people are released directly from prolonged solitary confinement to our communities with no means of grappling with the psychological, social and physical trauma this immoral treatment has caused.

Albert Woodfox, the last incarcerated member of the so-called “Angola 3”, was released from a prison in Louisiana on Friday, his attorneys announced.

“After four decades of isolation, Albert Woodfox’s release is long overdue and undeniably just”, Jasmine Heiss, the senior campaigner at Amnesty International USA’s Individuals and Risk Campaign. He died several days later. On 8 June 2015, Federal Judge James Brady granted Woodfox unconditional release and barred the state from retrying him.

When asked how he feels, Woodfox said, “I really haven’t decided yet”.

The men were dubbed the “Angola Three” and their cases drew global condemnation.

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”. The three also worked to form a chapter of the Black Panther Party within the prison walls, and helped to teach other inmates how to read, write, get their high school degrees and prepare legal documents. It’s unclear at this time where Woodfox, a New Orleans native, will settle after he’s freed, Sothern said.

“Albert survived the extreme and cruel punishment of 40 plus years in solitary confinement only because of his extraordinary strength and character”, Kendall said in a statement.

In a statement, Landry thanked the Miller family and said “their support has been instrumental in today’s very hard decision”.

“Although they might not agree, I believe what was done today was in their best interests too”, he said.

At the time of Miller’s killing, Woodfox was serving time for armed robbery and assault.

Woodfox and Herman Wallace were convicted of murder in Miller’s stabbing and placed in isolation, along with Robert King, who had been convicted of another crime. “Additionally, he waived his rights to appeal this sentence”.