Herman Wallace, Free At Last | Democracy Now!

9.10.13

Herman Wallace, Free At Last | Democracy Now!

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan
After close to 42 years in solitary confinement, Herman Wallace is free. Wallace is dying of liver cancer, with days if not hours to live at the time of this writing. In a stunning legal ruling, Judge Brian A. Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana ordered Wallace’s release by overturning his 1974 murder conviction. As he lies dying, Herman Wallace knows that after a lifetime of enduring the torture of solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit, he is now a free man.
Herman Wallace is one of the “Angola 3,” along with Robert King, who was released from prison in 2001, and Albert Woodfox, who remains imprisoned in solitary confinement, despite having his sentence overturned on three separate occasions. These three men, all African-American, were locked up in what was considered America’s bloodiest prison, maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary, known simply as “Angola.” The sprawling prison is on the grounds of a former slave plantation, with 5,000 prisoners. It’s named for the African country of many of its earlier enslaved occupants. Prisoners toil in the prison’s fields, overseen by armed guards on horseback.
Wallace first went to prison for robbery. He, Woodfox and King formed one of the first prison chapters of the Black Panther Party, organizing inmates to oppose the systemic violence and sexual slavery that pervaded the institution.
Wallace and Woodfox were then convicted of the 1972 murder of a young prison guard, Brent Miller. No physical evidence linked the men to the crime. A bloody fingerprint at the murder scene, which matched neither Wallace’s nor Woodfox’s fingerprints, was ignored by authorities. Wallace and Woodfox believe they were targeted by officials because of their organizing work. After their conviction in 1974, they were put in solitary confinement along with Robert King, who was being punished for another crime, also one that he did not commit.
Read the rest of this column at Truthdig.org.