Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 2 April 2009 — Page 34

Page 32 • The Muncie Times • April 2, 2009

continued from page 31 Amsterdam News. We lose the physical presence, but the spirit and instruction is clear, we must remain ever vigilant, defiant in the face of oppression or obstacles and committed to the truth and its honest communication. He joins the ancestors and we join his family in mourning Bill Tatum ... the man, the myth, the legend.” Black Panther members languish in La. Prison By James Ridgeway Angola prisoners march to work every day in the fields. One of the reasons for founding the Angola chapter, the first prison chapter of the Black Panther Party, was to press for a reduction of the then-16-hour workdays. What’s left of Albert Woodfox’s life now lies in the hands of a federal appeals court in New Orleans. By the time the court hears his case, the 62-year-old will have spent 36 years, 2 months and 24 days in a 6-by-9-foot cell at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. An 18,000-acre complex that still resembles the si ave plantation it once was, the notorious • , prison, -immortalized in

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the film “Dead Man Walking,” has long been considered one of the most brutal in America, a place where rape, abuse and violence have been commonplace. With the exception of a few brief months last year, Woodfox has served nearly all of his time there in solitary confinement, out of contact with other prisoners, and locked in his cell 23 hours a day. By most estimates, he and his codefendant, Herman Wallace, have spent more time in solitary than any other inmates in U.S. history. Woodfox and Wallace are members of a triad known as the Angola 3, three prisoners who spent decades in solitary confinement after being accused of prison murders and convicted on questionable evidence. Before they were isolated from other inmates, the trio, which included a prisoner named Robert King, had organized against conditions in what was considered “the bloodiest prison in America.” Their supporters believe that their activism, along with their ties to the Black Panther Party, motivated prison officials to scapegoat the inmates.* Over the years, human rights activists worldwide have rallied around the Angola 3, pointing to

them as victims of a flawed and corrupt justice system. Though King managed to win his release in 2001, after his conviction was overturned, Woodfox and Wallace haven’t been so lucky. Amnesty International has called their continued isolation “cruel, inhuman and degrading,” charging that thei r treatment has “breached international treaties which the USA has ratified, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention against Torture.” Rep. John Conyers (DMich.) , chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has taken a keen interest in the case and traveled to Angola last spring to visit with Woodfox and Wallace. “This is the only place in North America that people have been incarcerated like this for 36 years,” he told Mother Jones magazine. Meanwhile, the prevailing powers in Louisiana, from Angola’s warden to the state attorney general, are bent on keeping Woodfox and Wallace right where they are. The state’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, has thus far steered clear of the controversial case. Conyers, though, who has spoken with Jindal about Woodfox and Wallace, says the gover :

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nor seemed “open minded.” For his part, Conyers is optimistic that Woodfox’s fortunes, at least, could soon change. On Tuesday, Nick Trenticosta, who is one of Woodfox’s lawyers, will have 20 minutes to convince the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the decision of a district court judge in Baton Rouge, La., who last July overturned Woodfox’s conviction for the 1972 murder of an Angola prison guard. The murder, for which Wallace was also charged, occurred while Woodfox was already serving a sentence for armed robbery. Trenticosta, a longtime Louisiana death penalty attorney who heads the New Orleans-based Center for Equal=2 OJustice, will argue that his client received inadequate representation from his court-appointed attorneys when he was retried in 1998, as well as during his original trial in 1973. Better lawyers, he’ll argue, would have shown that Woodfox’s conviction was quite literally bought by the state, which based its case on jailhouse informants who were rewarded for their testimony. The primary eyewitness to the murder received special privileges and the promise of a pardon.

One of the corroborating witnesses was legally blind, while another was on the anti-psychotic drug Thorazine; both were subsequently granted furloughs. Angola Prison, one of the largest in the U.S. with over 5,000 prisoners located on 18,000 acres, was once a plantation, where the enslaved Africans had been captured from Angola, Africa. Woodfox’s lawyers will also make the case that the state failed to provide his previous defense attorneys with crucial information about the witnesses, ensuring that they-were unable to cross-examine them effectively and lost physical evidence, which was inconclusive at best, and possibly favorable to the defendant. (A spokeswoman for the Louisiana State Penitentiary said the prison, as a matter of policy, would not comment on an ongoing case.) Depending on how the appeals court decides, Woodfox may get a chance at another trial, where this time he’ll be represented by a team of highly skilled lawyers. If given that opportunity, Trenticosta told Mother Jones, in a recent interview, he20and his colleagues will go beyond continued on page 33 -v *r (, > '• IJ L k ’•' i F£// /V , * V X • ♦ » * if.' v #

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