[Ppnews] Life in Solitary Confinement: 12,775 Days Alone

Tue Apr 17 08:40:20 EDT 2007

Life in Solitary Confinement: 12,775 Days Alone

By Brooke Shelby Biggs, AlterNet
Posted on April 17, 2007, Printed on April 17, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/50663/

Around midday today, Central Time, two men in 
Angola Prison in Louisiana will quietly mark the 
moment, 35 years ago exactly, when the bars of 
solitary confinement cells closed behind them. 
They will likely spend the moment in their 6 by 9 
concrete cells reading, or writing letters to 
their hundreds of supporters around the world. 
And most of America and the rest of the world 
will still have never heard of them, or that in 
the United States of America, it is still 
possible to spend a life sentence in solitary 
confinement without interruption and without any 
real means of appeal. Americans shamefully 
imagine such things happen offshore in places 
like Guantanamo, or in totalitarian countries 
half a world away. Not here, though. Certainly not here.

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox are those men, 
who along with Robert King, are known as the 
Angola Three. (King established his innocence and 
was released in 2001 after almost 30 years in 
solitary.) Collectively, the three of them have 
spent 100 years in solitary confinement. Wallace 
asked this week, "Where is the justice?"

It was also on this day in 1972, that Brent 
Miller, a young, white, newlywed prison guard, 
was discovered in a pool of his own blood, 
stabbed 32 times. Brent Miller was a popular, 
athletic, handsome local boy who dreamed of 
leaving Angola with his young wife as soon as he 
could get a job in the nearby paper mill or up in 
Oklahoma. He never got a chance.

And based on long-lost evidence uncovered by a 
new team of attorneys and investigators over the 
past year and a half, it is clear Miller hasn't 
received justice, either. Woodfox and Wallace 
were placed in solitary and under suspicion of 
the murder the day it happened, and were later 
convicted of Miller's murder following trials 
highlighted by key testimony by inmate witnesses 
who were promised items such as cigarettes and 
the warden's recommendation of a pardon for their 
testimony. One of the state's inmate eyewitness 
was a legally blind certified sociopath. Another 
inmate repeatedly confessed to the murder to his 
fellow inmates and assured them that the prison 
administration knew he was guilty, but wanted to 
make examples of Woodfox and Wallace, known activists and Black Panthers.

But this anniversary, unlike the 34 preceding it, 
has a tinge of hope to it. Wallace and Woodfox, 
convicted separately of Miller's murder by 
all-white juries, have finally begun to attract some measurable attention.

Two very important legal cases are wending their 
way through the courts on this anniversary. The 
criminal case addresses the now publicly 
documented payoffs of the state's key witness in 
the murder trials. The other tackles a legal 
issue that could reverberate across the country 
-- is indefinite solitary confinement a violation 
of the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment?

By what few and murky laws exist, prisoners 
assigned to solitary should receive access to due 
process by which they can appeal their placement 
in solitary. For the Angola Three, the biweekly 
"hearings," during which they may use their clean 
records of good behavior to argue for their 
release back into the general population, long 
ago devolved into farce. Wallace reports that for 
decades now, he has been led into the room for 
his hearings, has not not permitted to present 
his arguments, and has been simply handed a piece 
of paper, already filled out, stating that the 
prison administration has denied his appeal and 
that he will stay in solitary because of the 
"nature of the original offense." The appeals 
boards do not pretend anymore that there is 
anything meaningful in the charade. The same 
fiction plays out for Woodfox and did for King 
during his years on the solitary block.

At least once, according to Wallace, current 
warden Burl Cain offered to release Woodfox and 
Wallace back into the general population if they 
renounced their political views and accepted 
Jesus Christ as their savior. (The megalomaniacal 
Cain is to media attention what a lobotomized 
moth is to an incandescent bulb; he wrote a book 
and has done hundreds of interviews about his 
"reformist" approach to penology, which involves 
converting prisoners to Christianity and holding 
the hands of those being executed so that his 
face would be the last they'd see before Christ's.)

According to Sam Spital, one of the attorneys 
from Hollland & Knight, which represents the 
Angola Three in the civil suit, the lawsuit also 
challenges that there is "no legitimate 
penological reason for keeping our clients in 
CCR, and (2) there is persuasive evidence that, 
in light of the duration of their confinement and 
their advancing age, our clients are at risk of 
and/or have already suffered serious physical and 
psychological harm -- it is cruel and unusual 
punishment to keep our clients in CCR, which 
violates the Eighth Amendment." Should the suit 
go to trial as expected within the next few 
months and should a verdict be rendered in the 
three men's favor, the face of (and regulations 
surrounding) solitary confinement in America 
could change drastically for good. The case could 
serve as a precedent, forcing accountability by 
prison administrators to reserve solitary as a 
last-ditch and temporary measure with sharply 
defined restrictions. In an age of Supermax 
prisons where huge populations of prisoners 
spends months and years in solitary, the ramifications could be enormous.

For the Angola Three, it could mean monetary 
damages, and release from solitary into the general population at Angola.

George Kendall, lead attorney on the case says, 
"We are moving to trial and we are quite hopeful to win."

Among the evidence are reports made by leading 
psychologists noting the terrible toll of 
solitary over long periods. King has spent the 
six years since his release campaigning for the 
release of his friends, and helping expose the 
abuses inside Angola Prison. Of his 29 years he 
said, "Being in solitary was terrible. It was a 
nightmare. My soul still cries from all that I 
witnessed and endured. It does more than cry -- 
it mourns, continuously. I saw men so desperate 
that they ripped prison doors apart, starved and 
mutilated themselves. It takes every scrap of 
humanity to stay focused and sane in this 
environment. The pain and suffering are 
everywhere, constantly with you. But, it's was 
also so much more than that. I had dreams and 
they were beautiful dreams. I used to look 
forward to the nights when I could sleep and 
dream. There's no describing the day-to-day 
assault on your body and your mind and the 
feelings of hopelessness and despair. By any 
logical and apparent reasons, I should be 
anything but what I am today, but sometimes the 
spirit is stronger than the circumstances." King 
now runs a small candy business making pralines, 
which he calls "Freelines," from a recipe he had 
used to make the candy in a tin can in his solitary cell.

In 2003, when the ACLU was handling the civil 
case, a Louisiana magistrate was shocked by the 
filings she read: "The present matter, of course, 
involves confinements of 28 to nearly 33 years, 
durations so far beyond the pale that this court 
has not found anything even remotely comparable 
in the annals of American jurisprudence."

Late last year, the criminal case for Herman 
Wallace took a great step forward when evidence 
was presented at a hearing held inside Angola's 
prison walls, proving that a prison snitch who 
served as the state's main witness was paid for 
his testimony against Wallace with a carton of 
cigarettes a week for life, living quarters in a 
house on a hill with his own room and a TV, no 
work duty, and privileges unheard of by other 
inmates. It was further shown that the 
administration and many of the guards lobbied on 
behalf of the inmate for a pardon, which he eventually got.

The commissioner who presided over the hearing 
recommended that Wallace's conviction immediately 
be overturned. The judge in that case granted two 
extensions to the state to prepare a response, 
and both parties now await a decision on when and 
if Herman Wallace may see his day in court again. 
Ever hopeful and almost never bitter, Wallace 
said from his cell this week, "Albert and I have 
been in solitary confinement for 12,775 days. 
We're two men who are innocent of a crime we 
never committed. The state just won't let go."

Meanwhile, Woodfox, who was tried separately 
albeit on essentially the same evidence and 
testimony, has filed his last-ditch habeas corpus 
appeal in the hope that new evidence and 
developments in the other cases might provide him one last shot at freedom.

Said Scott Fleming, one of the criminal defense 
attorneys representing the Woodfox and Wallace, 
"I've been representing Albert and Herman for 
nearly a decade. Even so, they were placed in 
solitary confinement before I was born. Their 
cases are getting more serious consideration from 
the courts than they ever have, and we are all 
hoping this nightmare is nearing an end."

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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