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<h1><font size=4><b>What's Next for Albert Woodfox of the Angola
3?</b></font></h1><font size=3>A federal appeals court just delivered a
crushing blow to prisoners' rights.<br><br>
By <a href="http://motherjones.com/authors/james-ridgeway">James
Ridgeway</a> and
<a href="http://motherjones.com/authors/jean-casella">Jean Casella</a> |
Tue Jun. 22, 2010 1:00 AM PDT<br>
<a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/albert-woodfox-angola-3" eudora="autourl">
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/albert-woodfox-angola-3<br>
</a><hr>
Albert Woodfox has spent nearly all of the last 38 years in solitary
confinement at the Louisiana State Penitientiary at Angola. His case has
brought protests from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, who
argue that Woodfox’s decades in lockdown constitute torture, and from a
growing band of supporters, who believe that he was denied a fair trial.
For more than ten years, he has been fighting for his release in the
courts. But yesterday,
<a href="http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=theadvertiser&sParam=33855807.story">
a ruling by a federal appeals court</a> [1] ensured that for the
forseeable future, Albert Woodfox will remain right where he has been for
the last three decades: in a 6 x 9 cell in the heart of America’s largest
and most notorious prison.<br><br>
It’s been nearly two years since a federal district court judge in Baton
Rouge
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5339513&page=1">
overturned Woodfox’s conviction</a> [2] for the 1972 murder of a guard at
Louisiana’s Angola prison. Judge James Brady’s 2008 ruling, which ordered
the state to retry Woodfox or release him, brought new hope to the
63-year-old Woodfox, who has been in Angola–originally for armed
robbery–since he was 24. A member of the group known as the Angola 3,
Woodfox has always contended that he was effectively framed for the
guard’s murder–and then thrown into permament lockdown–because of his
involvement with the Black Panther Party, which was organizing against
conditions in what was then known as the "bloodiest prison in the
South."<br><br>
Without drawing any conclusions about Woodfox’s guilt or innocence, Judge
Brady of the Federal District Court, Middle District of Louisiana,
concluded that Woodfox had not received due process at his 1998 trial
(which was intself a replacement for a faulty 1973 trial). The main
grounds for overturning Woodfox’s conviction were ineffective assistance
of counsel, which allowed questionable evidence and irregular practices
to stand without challenge. Woodfox had argued that better lawyers could
have shown that his conviction was quite literally bought by the state,
which based its case on jailhouse informants who were rewarded for their
testimony. (Woodfox’s case was described in full in
<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/36-years-solitude">this
2009 article for
</a><a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/36-years-solitude">
<i>Mother Jones</a></i> [3].)<br><br>
Judge Brady agreed, and in July 2008 he granted Woodfox’s Petition for
Writ of Habeas Corpus, ordering that his conviction and life sentence be
"reversed and vacated." But some of the most powerful figures
in the Lousiana justice system were committed to keeping Woodfox in
prison and in lockdown. After his conviction was overturned, Attorney
General James "Buddy" Caldwell
<a href="http://a.abcnews.com/Blotter/Story?id=5894181&page=1">
declared</a> [4], "We will appeal this decision to the 5th Circuit
[Court of Appeals]. If the ruling is upheld there I will not stop and we
will take this case as high as we have to. I will retry this case
myself…I oppose letting him out with every fiber of my being because this
is a very dangerous man."<br><br>
Caldwell put his case before the federal Fifth Circuit in March 2009–and
in yesterday's decision, he prevailed. In a 2-1 decision, a panel of
three federal appellate judges ruled that Judge Brady had erred in
overturning Wallace’s conviction. Their decision is not only a crushing
blow for Woodfox, but also a manifestation of how far the rights of the
accused have fallen in recent decades.<br><br>
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/issue/may-3-2004">once had a
reputation</a> [5] as one of the finest appellate courts in the land. In
the 1960s, a small group of Fifth Circuit judgesmostly Southern-bred
moderate Republicanswas known for advancing civil rights and especially
school desegregation. But today the Fifth Circuit, which covers
Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, is seen as among the most
ideologically conservative of the federal appeals courts. It is notable
for its overburdened docket and for its hostility to appeals from
defendants in capital cases, including claims based on faulty prosecution
and suppressed evidence. The court has even been reprimanded by the US
Supreme Court, itself is no friend to death row inmates: In June 2004,
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the Fifth Circuit was "paying
lip service to principles" of appellate law in handing down death
penalty rulings.<br><br>
In addition, the decision in Woodfox’s case shows the crippling effects
on prisoners’ rights of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act (AEDPA) which was passed under Bill Clinton in the wake of
the Oklahoma City bombings. That legislation has become the bane of
anti-death penalty lawyers and activists, and of thousands of other
prisoners seeking to challenge their convictions–a pursuit which AEDPA
now renders nearly impossible.<br><br>
As the Fifth Circuit noted in its ruling, "The AEDPA requires that
federal courts "defer to a state court’s adjudication of a
claim" unless the state court decision ran "contrary to…clearly
established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court," or was
"based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the
evidence presented in the State court proceeding." And as the judges
pointed out, "An unreasonable application of federal law is
different from an incorrect or erroneous application of the
law."<br><br>
In other words, the state courts could be wrong, they just couldn't be so
far out as to be undeniably "unreasonable." And in the end, the
Fifth Circuit judges agreed with the State’s argument that "the
district court failed to apply the AEDPA's heightened deferential
standard of review to Woodfox's ineffective assistance claims." For
Woodfox, this means that his time in prison stretches before him with no
foreseeable end in sight. His lawyers have promised to return to his case
with new evidence, but that could take years, and the outcome might still
be the same. In the meantime, Woodfox and fellow Angola 3 members Herman
Wallace and Robert King have mounted a
<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown">
constitutional challenge to their solitary confinement</a> [6], which may
come to trial before the end of this year. That case, too, will
eventually go before the Fifth Circuit–and even a win would mean only a
release from permanent lockdown, not from Angola.<br><br>
<i>This post also appears at James Ridgeway's personal blog,
<a href="http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/">Solitary Watch</a></i>
[7]<i>.<br>
<hr>
</i><b>Source URL:</b>
<a href="http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/albert-woodfox-angola-3">
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/06/albert-woodfox-angola-3</a><br><br>
<b>Links:<br>
</b>[1]
<a href="http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=theadvertiser&sParam=33855807.story" eudora="autourl">
http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=theadvertiser&sParam=33855807.story<br>
</a>[2]
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5339513&page=1" eudora="autourl">
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5339513&page=1<br>
</a>[3]
<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/36-years-solitude" eudora="autourl">
http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/36-years-solitude<br>
</a>[4]
<a href="http://a.abcnews.com/Blotter/Story?id=5894181&page=1" eudora="autourl">
http://a.abcnews.com/Blotter/Story?id=5894181&page=1<br>
</a>[5]
<a href="http://www.thenation.com/issue/may-3-2004" eudora="autourl">
http://www.thenation.com/issue/may-3-2004<br>
</a>[6]
<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown" eudora="autourl">
http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown<br>
</a>[7]
<a href="http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/" eudora="autourl">
http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/<br><br>
<br><br>
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