Has Justice been served?
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/o...n-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0
Richard Nixon was president when Albert Woodfox landed in solitary confinement, along with another inmate, both convicted of the 1972 murder of a Louisiana prison guard named Brent Miller.
Mr. Woodfox is still there.
Now 67 years old, he has maintained his innocence of the murder from the start. He has been held in isolation longer than any prisoner in the United States, and perhaps in the nation’s history.
For 23 hours a day — 23 hours and 45 minutes on weekends — he sits by himself in a closet-size, windowless cell. He eats all his meals alone. He has no access to the prison’s educational or religious activities. His contact with visitors is extremely limited.
Over the past year, he has endured visual body cavity searches up to six times a day, even though he is under constant supervision and is shackled and accompanied by guards whenever he is removed.
Mr. Woodfox, who was serving a sentence for armed robbery at the time of the murder, would most likely have been released from solitary many years ago if he had pleaded guilty to the murder. But he has consistently denied any involvement, believing that he was targeted because of his political activism as a member of the Black Panther Party.
The facts of the case were on his side: There was no physical evidence linking him or his co-defendant, Herman Wallace, to the murder, and prosecutors did not reveal that their main witness had been bribed to testify against the men. Mr. Woodfox, by all accounts, has been a model prisoner, and under Louisiana prison policy this should have earned him his exit from solitary confinement years ago.
Finally, on Thursday, a federal appeals court panel in New Orleans unanimously voted to overturn Mr. Woodfox’s murder conviction because his 1998 retrial was tainted by racial bias in the grand jury selection process. (His original, 1973 conviction was overturned because of his lawyer’s ineffectiveness. In 2008, a federal judge overturned his second conviction on grounds of bad lawyering, but that ruling was reversed because of a federal law that dramatically restricts review of state court decisions.)
Mr. Woodfox is the last incarcerated member of what became known as the Angola 3 — three prisoners who each spent decades in solitary, mostly at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. Robert King, who was put into isolation also in 1972, was released in 2001. Mr. Wallace was released last year, and he died of liver cancer days later.
In 2005, a federal magistrate judge wrote in a report that the amount of time the men had spent in solitary was “so far beyond the pale” that she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” Yet in 2008, 36 years after the guard’s killing, the Louisiana attorney general was still calling Mr. Woodfox “the most dangerous person on the planet.”
State officials insist their case is solid and have already said they intend to retry him, though the prison guard’s widow believes he is innocent of the killing and most of the potential witnesses in the case are dead.
Even comparatively brief solitary confinement can cause severe mental and emotional trauma; a United Nations expert has said that more than 15 days may amount to torture. When it is imposed for more than 40 years, it is barbaric beyond measure.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/o...n-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0
Richard Nixon was president when Albert Woodfox landed in solitary confinement, along with another inmate, both convicted of the 1972 murder of a Louisiana prison guard named Brent Miller.
Mr. Woodfox is still there.
Now 67 years old, he has maintained his innocence of the murder from the start. He has been held in isolation longer than any prisoner in the United States, and perhaps in the nation’s history.
For 23 hours a day — 23 hours and 45 minutes on weekends — he sits by himself in a closet-size, windowless cell. He eats all his meals alone. He has no access to the prison’s educational or religious activities. His contact with visitors is extremely limited.
Over the past year, he has endured visual body cavity searches up to six times a day, even though he is under constant supervision and is shackled and accompanied by guards whenever he is removed.
Mr. Woodfox, who was serving a sentence for armed robbery at the time of the murder, would most likely have been released from solitary many years ago if he had pleaded guilty to the murder. But he has consistently denied any involvement, believing that he was targeted because of his political activism as a member of the Black Panther Party.
The facts of the case were on his side: There was no physical evidence linking him or his co-defendant, Herman Wallace, to the murder, and prosecutors did not reveal that their main witness had been bribed to testify against the men. Mr. Woodfox, by all accounts, has been a model prisoner, and under Louisiana prison policy this should have earned him his exit from solitary confinement years ago.
Finally, on Thursday, a federal appeals court panel in New Orleans unanimously voted to overturn Mr. Woodfox’s murder conviction because his 1998 retrial was tainted by racial bias in the grand jury selection process. (His original, 1973 conviction was overturned because of his lawyer’s ineffectiveness. In 2008, a federal judge overturned his second conviction on grounds of bad lawyering, but that ruling was reversed because of a federal law that dramatically restricts review of state court decisions.)
Mr. Woodfox is the last incarcerated member of what became known as the Angola 3 — three prisoners who each spent decades in solitary, mostly at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. Robert King, who was put into isolation also in 1972, was released in 2001. Mr. Wallace was released last year, and he died of liver cancer days later.
In 2005, a federal magistrate judge wrote in a report that the amount of time the men had spent in solitary was “so far beyond the pale” that she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” Yet in 2008, 36 years after the guard’s killing, the Louisiana attorney general was still calling Mr. Woodfox “the most dangerous person on the planet.”
State officials insist their case is solid and have already said they intend to retry him, though the prison guard’s widow believes he is innocent of the killing and most of the potential witnesses in the case are dead.
Even comparatively brief solitary confinement can cause severe mental and emotional trauma; a United Nations expert has said that more than 15 days may amount to torture. When it is imposed for more than 40 years, it is barbaric beyond measure.
