Symbol of grotesque
injustice: Albert Woodfox
You’re busy and successful, the very
embodiment of American culture, or perhaps you’re a single parent struggling to
pay the bills and stay one step ahead. You’re up early to exercise or get the
kids to school, you work hard all day, often into the night. If only there was more time in a day.
Never a moment to relax, attend a play, spend some time at the easel, practice
the violin, curl up with a good book. You wonder where the days go and you dream of just a few hours to yourself. How
much time alone in the quiet sounds good to you? A few hours, a couple of
days, maybe a week? How about 42 years? Except there are no violins to
play and you live in a six-foot-by-nine-foot box.
That’s exactly how Albert Woodfox has
lived for more than four decades. Now 67, he sits, an innocent man, all alone
in that box, that prison cell, for at least 23 hours a day, day after day. When
the weather allows, he is chained at the ankles, waist and wrist and escorted
to an outdoor cage to walk around or sit alone for under an hour. Until a few
weeks ago, he was still subject to strip and anal cavity searches at
least six times a day, despite only interacting with prison officials.
(A federal judge stopped this nonsense, thank goodness.) Woodfox’s conviction
has been overturned three times, most recently in February 2013. He has not
had a serious prison disciplinary infraction in decades and prison mental
health records confirm that he poses no danger to himself or other inmates.
Despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence, his conviction being
overturned, his age, and the fact that he is clearly no threat, Woodfox
remains in solitary confinement — where he was first put by Louisiana
prison officials 42 years ago. Forty-two years: long enough for a baby to
grow up and become a father and then become a grandparent.
Woodfox is no character in a novel of social
conscience. He is a real person living out an American nightmare. Forty-two
years ago, he was housed in the largest prison in the U.S., a former Louisiana
slave plantation called Angola. Along with Herman Wallace and
Robert King — now collectively known as the Angola 3 — Woodfox tried to put a stop to the
extraordinarily inhumane practices that earned Angola the reputation of being
the bloodiest prison in the South by organizing
hunger strikes to expose corruption and abuse. They paid an unthinkable price
for this, being wrongfully charged with the murder of a prison guard and each
thrown into solitary. While he was eventually moved to a different Louisiana
prison, Woodfox still remains, 42 years later, in solitary. He has never
stopped fighting to prove his innocence or to reform injustice from behind
bars.
There are three reasons why Woodfox’s
conviction has been overturned three times: racial discrimination, an
inadequate defense and prosecutorial misconduct. And then there is the exculpatory DNA evidence that has
been conveniently “lost.”And the bloody footprint at the scene of the
prison guard murder that didn’t match any of the three men. And, at
trial, the star witness who lied under oath about
promised rewards for “cracking the case.” The warden has admitted that
the star witness was “one who you could put words in his mouth” and that he
promised to get the witness — a serial rapist — a pardon for
his testimony. While the star witness serial rapist went free long ago, Woodfox remains in
hell.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Docia Dalby once
described what was then nearly four decades of solitary suffered by the Angola
3 as “durations so far beyond the pale” that she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the
annals of American jurisprudence.” Last fall, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture,
Juan E. M�ez, called on the U.S. to immediately end
Woodfox’s solitary confinement, stating that it “clearly amounts to torture.” Last year,
in July 2013, a group of U.S. Congressmen issued a
statement from the House Judiciary Committee calling on the Department of
Justice to investigate “the egregious and extensive use of solitary
confinement and other troubling detention practices in various Louisiana prison
facilities.” The allege that the Louisiana Department of Corrections has “engaged in a pattern or practice of violations of the U.S.
Constitution and Federal law in its use of such confinement and detention
practices.”
King and Wallace have been freed, although in
starkly different manners. King was
released after 29 years in solitary when he was able to “prove” his innocence.
Since his release, he has earned a Doctorate of Laws from Cambridge University and
speaks tirelessly about U.S. prison conditions — hardly the societal threat
that prison wardens claimed he was.
Wallace was released last October after 41 years in solitary,
only because his conviction was overturned and because a Federal judge ordered
his release – this, despite dramatic cries by Louisiana
Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, that the world would come to an end.
Wallace died three days after his release of advanced liver cancer at age 72.
Not to be accused of being soft, the state of Louisiana attempted to indict
Wallace again on his deathbed. Why? Maybe because Louisiana prosecutors needed
to underscore their conservative credentials for the next election cycle. Or
maybe they are just plain cruel. After Wallace’s death, a group of U.S.
Congressmen marked his passing with an official tribute into the Congressional Record describing
him as “a champion of justice and human rights.”
Woodfox, the last of the Angola 3, remains behind bars,
fighting to expose the truth about Louisiana prisons and the inhumane torture
society politely called “solitary.” If the State of Louisiana has its way, he
will not only die in prison, but will die behind locked doors and alone, closed
off from the world or anyone who cares two hoots about him. Caldwell, who probably won’t get an award for “Mr.
Compassion,” calls this 67-year-old, frail man man “the most dangerous person on the planet.” (By the way, he
said this while Osama Bin-Laden was still on the loose.
Sounds to me that ol’ Buddy could use a reality check.)
For seven years, I have had the honor of
working to free the Angola 3.
My role has been minimal compared to many others. I was recently reminded of
why I got involved. Besides fighting for his personal freedom, Woodfox has
filed a civil suit against the prison to try and force the state of Louisiana
to stop using extended solitary for no good reason. Frankly,there is no
good reason for extended solitary. In anticipation of the trial, the state
had him interviewed by a psychiatrist, hoping to get him to say that solitary
isn’t so bad. Recently, he recounted the encounter to a friend.
Here are his words:
Now, all these years later, the hearing on the civil case related to our long-term solitary confinement is approaching. So they sent this psychiatrist to question me. What he was doing, of course, was to try to get me to say that 40 years in solitary confinement hasn’t really been all that bad. ‘You seem quite well adjusted,’ he said.
I told him that unless he sits in a cell 23 hours a day for 40 years, he has no idea what he’s talking about. I said, you want to know what I’m afraid of? I’m afraid I’m going to start screaming and not be able to stop. I’m afraid I’m going to turn into a baby and curl up in a fetal position and lay there like that every day for the rest of my life. I’m afraid I’m going to attack my own body, maybe cut off my balls and throw them through the bars the way I’ve seen others do when they couldn’t take any more.
No television or hobby craft or magazines or any of the other toys you call yourself allowing can ever lessen the nightmare of this hell you help to create and maintain.
I have been sustained in my struggle by three men. Nelson Mandela taught me that if you have a noble cause, you can bear the weight of the world on your shoulders. Malcolm X taught me that it doesn’t matter where you start out; what matters is where you end up. And George Jackson taught me that if you’re not willing to die for what you believe in, you don’t believe in anything.
I know you’re only doing your job, Doc. You have your job and I have mine. I am a teacher. And I am living proof that we can survive the worst to change ourselves and our world no matter where we are. I do not want to die in a cell, but if I must to make the lesson clear, then I am willing to do just that.
Now you know why it’s my privilege to help in
any way I can.
Caldwell, along with Louisiana
Governor Bobby Jindal, have spent tens of millions of taxpayer dollars
keeping an old, harmless man not just in prison, but in solitary. Denials
of “nothing I can do” and “I’m just doing my job” ring hollow at best and lack
moral authority. At worst, such denials indicate that, 42 years later,
Louisiana hasn’t changed one damn bit. You have to wonder why citizens of the
state put up with cruel, vindictive behavior from these people. Hasn’t justice
— and Woodfox – been punished enough?
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Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of the United States. He
is an author, lecturer, and consultant. He is the founder of the Mark of Cain
Foundation, regularly writes daily meditations at www.thehubbellpew.com,
and is working on a novel soon to be published.
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