Louisiana Prison Watch

Dispatch From Angola: Faith-Based Slavery in a Louisiana Prison

2011-09-04T14:12:00.000-06:00

Would Jesus, himself a prisoner on death row and executed, approve of this all?

From: Colorlines
By: Liliana Segura
Aug 4th 2011

“Welcome to the 46th annual Angola Prison Rodeo, the Wildest Show in the South!” It’s 9 a.m. and I’m driving through the gates of Louisiana State Penitentiary, otherwise known as Angola, and listening to KLSP, 91.7 FM. In the surrounding area, 91.7 is the province of American Family Radio, a conservative Christian station, but upon entering 70712—the prison has its own zip code—it becomes “the incarceration station,” currently playing factoids set to jaunty music. “Did you know that the Louisiana State Penitentiary had the first four-year accredited college program in prison in the United States?”

“Unique” is one way Warden Burl Cain likes to describe his prison, and it would be impossible to argue otherwise. With grazing cattle and rolling hills in the distance, it’s hard not to admire its strange, sprawling beauty, even as the towers come into view. The prison itself is absent from my GPS’s “points of interest,” yet Angola’s Prison View Golf Course—the first public golf course on the grounds of a state penitentiary—is not. At Angola’s official museum, opened by Cain in 1998, a retired electric chair and rusty prison contraband are displayed adjacent to a gift shop selling mugs and tote bags reading: “Angola: A Gated Community.”

Angola is the largest maximum security in the country, sitting on 18,000 acres of farmland and home to 5,200 men. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of adult prisoners in the United States; thanks to the state’s unforgiving sentencing laws, at least 90 percent of Angola’s prisoners will die there. It’s a large-scale embodiment of a national phenomenon: elderly inmates are the country’s fastest growing prisoner population.

Yet Angola is also lauded as a revolution in corrections, its story told many times: Angola was once the “bloodiest prison in America,” where inmates slept with magazine catalogs strapped to their chests to protect themselves from stabbings. Things began to turn around in the 1970s, when a federal judge ordered a major overhaul. But most of the credit has gone to Warden Cain for imposing order through a new model of incarceration.

Like all of Angola’s wardens, Cain has continued the tradition of hard labor: most inmates work in the fields eight hours a day, five days a week, harvesting hundreds of acres of soybeans, wheat, corn, and cotton—picked by hand and sold by Prison Enterprises, the business arm of the Louisiana Department of Corrections. But unlike his predecessors, Cain, an evangelical Christian, has also made it his mission to bring God to Angola. Inmate ministers tell new prisoners that they can either work on their “moral rehabilitation” or remain a “predator”—“the choice is yours.” The radio station plays gospel music. On the walls leading to the execution chamber are two murals: Elijah ascending to Heaven and Daniel facing the lion. One of Cain’s favorite anecdotes is the execution of Antonio James, a born-again Christian whose hand he held just before giving the go-ahead to end his life. As James lay on the gurney waiting for lethal drugs to enter his veins, Cain said, “Antonio, the chariot is here…you are about to see Jesus.”

Angola_prison_rider2.jpgI’ve come to Angola for the area’s biggest tourist attraction: the sole surviving prison rodeo in the country. Five Sundays a year, thousands of visitors drive down this road toward an inmate-constructed, 10,000-seat arena to watch Louisiana’s most feared criminals compete in harrowing events like “convict poker” (four prisoners sit around a card table and are ambushed by a bull; last one seated wins); “guts and glory” (a poker chip is tied to the forehead of a bull and inmates try to grab it off); and the perennial crowd pleaser, “bull riding.” Prisoners can win prize money, but have no chance to practice before entering the ring. Critics and fans alike compare them to the gladiators of ancient Rome.

The rodeo long precedes Cain, but today it has become an extension of his philosophy of submission through “Experiencing God,” as the Southern Baptist instructional course he’s instituted at Angola is called. Proceeds pay for inmate funerals, maintenance on Angola’s inmate-constructed chapels, and programs aimed at “moral rehabilitation.” Cain once told Christianity Today that the program helps inmates “accept they’re in prison and that it’s God’s will that maybe they don’t get out—and that while you’re here you do your best for him.” The rodeo may break bodies, but Cain is in the business of saving souls.

A Gated Community

Angola_prison_tourist_2.jpgThe rodeo’s atmosphere is festive. Live music plays as families explore a massive crafts fair, checking out prisoner-made goods and an impressive variety of fried snacks, including “fried Coke,” a nod to one of the rodeo’s major sponsors. A billboard invites visitors to “Take Your Jail Cell Photos Here.” It’s not unlike a state fair, except that there are inmates everywhere. Wearing white t-shirts and dark pants, they sell art, leather goods, and concessions on behalf of a dizzying array of clubs—roast beef po-boys for the Horticulture Club, donuts for Vets Incarcerated.

“There’s really not much difference between this and a campus,” says Assistant Warden Cathy Fontenot, Angola’s head communications officer. “It’s like when you go to college and you’re looking for your major.”

The prison has invested heavily in its PR machinery and Cain has a reputation for being intolerant of negative coverage. Veteran journalist James Ridgeway was barred after writing an article that painted him in a less than favorable light, eventually winning back access with the ACLU’s help. Ridgeway’s troubles surely had as much to do with the years he has spent covering the plight of the Angola Three, a trio of Black Panthers convicted of killing a prison guard in 1972 and thrown into solitary confinement. Two of them, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, have remained locked in solitary for almost 40 years.

Fontenot bristles at the mention of the Angola Three. “We don’t have solitary confinement,” she says flatly. Instead, she explains, there’s “extended lockdown,” where prisoners are confined alone in 9-by-6 foot cells for 23 hours a day.

The first prisoner I meet is Lane Nelson, a model inmate selling subscriptions to Angola’s prisoner-run magazine, The Angolite. Sentenced to death for a 1981 murder, Nelson came within days of execution before his sentence was overturned and commuted to life.

Nelson picked cotton when he got off death row. “It was hard,” he chuckles. “You had to get a quota—you had to learn real quick.” Like most at Angola, Nelson had no experience in farm labor. Unlike most, he’s white. (Nelson is also the rare example of a convicted murderer who has left Angola; he was granted clemency and released in January.)

Just before the arrival of Warden Cain, Nelson published an article about five prisoners confined to “extended lockdown” the longest, among them Woodfox and Wallace. The article revealed how the history of solitary confinement is tied to the history of Angola itself:

Angola was a plantation first, housing slaves who cut sugar cane for the master. At the end of the 19th century it evolved into a prisoner lease system, with sentenced prisoners being rented to area companies. In 1901, Angola officially became a state-operated penitentiary, but in name only. It remained a plantation, with prisoners crowded into large wooden buildings and working from sunup to sundown in sugar cane and cotton fields—rain or shine, 12-14 hours a day, seven days a week.

Beatings aside, the most effective way to discipline prisoners was “short-term solitary confinement,” first in “an iron casket buried into the ground,” then the “pisser”—a series of windowless cells (“no bunk, no toilet, no ventilation”). Today, visitors to Angola’s museum can read part of this history in “The Angola Story,” a pamphlet that illustrates how much the prison has evolved.

Sentences, too, have evolved. “Lifers” in Louisiana were once eligible for parole in as little as five years. In 1926 the state legislature installed the “10-6 rule”: prisoners sentenced to life were eligible for release after 10 years and six months. This held true until the 1970s, which saw a precipitous decline in parole recommendations and the rise of “tough on crime” reforms that would soon dominate nationwide.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which briefly suspended the death penalty, Louisiana abolished parole for a range of violent crimes. “Within less than a decade Louisiana went from turning all lifers loose in ten-and-a-half years or less to keeping virtually all of them in prison for their natural lives,” writes historian Burk Foster. As former head of the Louisiana Department of Corrections C. Paul Phelps once warned, “the State of Louisiana is posturing itself to run probably the largest male old-folks home in the country.”

Read the rest here...
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Would Jesus, himself a prisoner on death row and executed, approve of this all?

“God’s Own Warden”: Inside Angola Prison

2011-08-10T02:24:00.000-06:00

From: SolitaryWatch:

July 28, 2011
by James Ridgeway

[SolitaryWatch] Editor’s Note: The latest issue of Mother Jones magazine includes James Ridgeway’s long article on Burl Cain, warden of the nation’s largest prison, and possibly its most notorious. The former slave plantation is known for the fact that 90 percent of its more than 5,000 prisoners will die behind bars, and also for holding two members of the “Angola 3″ in solitary confinement for nearly 40 years. More recently, it has also become known for the “miracle” wrought by its controversial warden, who is said to have transformed the prison with the help of Christianity.

It took the threat of an ACLU lawsuit for James Ridgeway to gain access to Angola. The resulting article offers an alternative narrative on the miracle at Angola. The opening section of the article follows; the full article can be read on MotherJones.com.

It was a chilly December morning when I got to the gates of Angola prison, and I was nervous as I waited to be admitted. To begin with, nothing looked the way it ought to have looked. The entrance, with its little yellow gatehouse and red brick sign, could have marked the gates of one of the smaller national parks. There was a museum with a gift shop, where I perused miniature handcuffs, jars of inmate-made jelly, and mugs that read “Angola: A Gated Community” before moving on to the exhibits, which include Gruesome Gertie, the only electric chair in which a prisoner was executed twice. (It didn’t take the first time, possibly because the executioners were visibly drunk.)

Read the rest here...

Louisiana Legislature votes to parole some elderly prisoners

2011-06-29T02:34:00.004-06:00

From: SF Bay View, June 28th 2011
By Natasha R.

Baton Rouge, La. – The American Civil Liberties Union hailed the passage of a bill in the Louisiana legislature making it easier for elderly prisoners to get a parole hearing as an important step towards reducing the state’s unnecessarily high prison population.

The bill, H.B. 138, passed June 20 by the Louisiana Senate after it was passed two weeks ago by the state’s House of Representatives, will enable some prisoners to go before a parole board upon turning 60 years of age. The board can then decide to grant parole to those individuals who would pose no danger to the community upon release.

“Louisiana should not be using taxpayer dollars to lock up elderly individuals when they pose no danger to our communities,” said Marjorie Esman, executive director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “The state’s legislature deserves credit for tackling the state’s problem of over-incarceration by passing bills like this one.”

Louisiana has the largest incarcerated population of any state in the nation and half of those behind bars in Louisiana are there for non-violent offenses. The state has 1,224 people over the age of 60 locked up, 3 percent of the state’s total prison population.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections estimates that while it costs $19,888 to house a state prisoner for a year, it costs $80,000 to house an ailing inmate.

Research also shows that the likelihood of recidivism drops significantly with age. According to state corrections statistics, only 0.3 percent of those released at age 55 or older recidivate and end up reincarcerated.

With the passage of today’s bill, Louisiana tackled what is a national problem of needlessly incarcerating elderly prisoners. Across the nation, more than 35,000 people over the age of 60 are in prison, or 2.3 percent of the nation’s total prison population.

“Today, more Americans than ever before are unnecessarily and unfairly deprived of their liberty with no benefit to public safety and at great expense to taxpayers,” said Inimai Chettiar, policy counsel with the national ACLU. “Louisiana is to be commended for looking for ways to reduce its bloated prison population, and other states around the country should follow Louisiana’s lead.”

More information about the ACLU of Louisiana is available at www.laaclu.org. More information about the ACLU’s national initiative to combat mass incarceration is available at www.aclu.org/combating-mass-incarceration

Amnesty International Calls for Angola 3′s Release from 40 Years of Solitary Confinement

2011-06-08T02:18:00.003-06:00

By: SolitaryWatch
June 7, 2011
by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

Amnesty International has issued a press release, action alert, and detailed report on the case of the Angola 3, which has been extensively documented in Mother Jones (here, here, and here). The press release, issued yesterday, concerns the two members of the Angola 3 who remain in prison and have now entered their 40th year in solitary confinement.

The US state of Louisiana must immediately remove two inmates from the solitary confinement they were placed in almost 40 years ago, Amnesty International said today.

Albert Woodfox, 64, and Herman Wallace, 69, were placed in “Closed Cell Restriction (CCR)” in Louisiana State Penitentiary – known as Angola Prison – since they were convicted of the murder of a prison guard in 1972. Apart from very brief periods, they have been held in isolation ever since.

“The treatment to which Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace have been subjected for the past four decades is cruel and inhumane and a violation of the US’s obligations under international law,” said Guadalupe Marengo, Americas Deputy Director at Amnesty International.

The action alert urges readers to sign a petition to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. The twelve-page report describes the apparent miscarriages of justice involved in Woodfox and Wallace’s original murder conviction, and then asks, “Why are they still in isolation?” It goes on to explain:

Read the rest here.

Please sign the Amnesty International Action Alert here!

Court Order Ensures Treatment For Prisoners With Disabilities

2011-04-22T14:22:00.001-06:00

April 13, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org

NEW ORLEANS, LA -- In a victory for Louisianans with disabilities, today a federal court in New Orleans entered a consent decree requiring adequate treatment and care long denied to detainees with mental illness housed in the state's prisons. This agreement provides mental health care to those charged with crimes but lacking the mental capacity to stand trial. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of one detainee and the Advocacy Center, a non-profit corporation designated by the state to protect and advocate for persons with disabilities.

For years, pretrial detainees who needed restorative mental health treatment were denied such care because Feliciana Forensic Facility, the state facility providing that treatment, has been out of bed space. The lack of treatment beds meant that many detainees ordered by the courts into the custody of Feliciana have remained in local jails without the ability to go to trial, for periods sometimes exceeding a year, despite their presumed innocence. This settlement ensures that the detainees will now be transferred to Feliciana in a timely manner, so that they can have their day in court.

"For years, pretrial detainees with mental illness in Louisiana were denied court-ordered forensic care, which meant that sick people who had not been convicted of any crimes were languishing in our jails," said Marjorie R. Esman, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana, which represents the plaintiffs. "Under this agreement, the most vulnerable among us will now have the care they need. It's long past time for the State of Louisiana to recognize its responsibility towards people with disabilities in its custody."

The settlement ensures a host of reforms. Inpatient treatment will now be provided within 30 days of a finding of need, so that detainees will no longer have to wait months or years for medical help. Procedures have been established to ensure that adequate testing will be administered promptly and that those with emergency mental health needs will be transferred to Feliciana within two working days of assessment. Those with lesser but urgent needs will be transferred within ten working days. Ongoing reporting will ensure that these procedures are met and that all who qualify will receive the appropriate level of care. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana will provide oversight for the implementation of the order.

"This case was designed to enforce state court orders that require detainees to receive treatment," said Marjorie Lindblom, a partner with Kirkland & Ellis LLP, a private law firm that has represented the plaintiffs pro bono. "The people affected by this agreement must receive proper care so that their competence to stand trial can be restored, if possible. Until now they've been denied that care and kept in jail for months or years. They will now be assured the care they need, so that the justice system can work for all of us."

Lois Simpson, Executive Director of the Advocacy Center states: "The conclusion of this case ensures that hundreds of prisoners with mental illness get the mental health treatment they need. The Advocacy Center, Louisiana's Protection and Advocacy agency, will continue to advocate until all Louisianans with mental illness receive quality mental health treatment."

The plaintiffs were represented by ACLU of Louisiana Legal Director Katie Schwartzmann; Marjorie Lindblom, Maura Klugman, and Adam Humann from the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis LLP; as well as Nell Hahn, Miranda Tait and Conception Otero from the Advocacy Center.

A copy of the Consent Decree is available here: www.laaclu.org/PDF_documents/Feliciana_Signed_consent_decree_041311.pdf

http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/court-order-ensures-treatment-prisoners-disabilities

SolitaryWatch: Voices from Solitary: Lane Nelson on Angola’s Death Row

2011-03-07T03:28:00.002-07:00

From: SolitaryWatch:

March 5, 2011

by SOLITARY WATCH GUEST AUTHOR
While serving time at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, Lane Nelson spent 18 years as a staff writer and later managing editor for the nation’s most renowned prison magazine, The Angolite. He covered a wide range of subjects, including Angola’s longtermer population and hepatitis-C behind bars, and he interviewed and profiled several men just days before their executions. Nelson himself spent two years on death row–at one point coming within five days of being executed–before a judge overturned his death sentence citing inadequate counsel.

Lane Nelson received a pardon based on good behavior and his volunteer work at Angola. In January he rejoined the free world after 29 1/2 years behind bars. Nelson has opened his own business, Capital Punishment Consulting Agency (CPCA), offering services that extend outside the area of the death penalty to general matters concerning criminal justice and prison life, and he is available for speaking engagements.

In this memoir piece, titled “A Death Row Experience: The Summer of 1987,” Nelson writes about a fateful period on Angola’s death row when men were being executed just days apart. At the time, Louisiana’s death sentences were carried out in the electric chair.

Just before they moved Jimmy to the death house, he took his final shower. It was early in the morning and the 13-cell tier was silent. I lay on my bunk listening to the running water and wondered, “How hard is this last shower for Jimmy? Is he thinking, ‘This is the last shower I will ever take?’”
            Now every time I take a shower, the fresh memory of Jimmy haunts me. “Soon, in this very spot, I will take my last shower. Will I soak in it, uselessly stalling for time? Will I cry in it?”
            I now pause in the middle of writing letters and think, “In my last hours will I write all the letters I need to write? Will I forget to tell someone good-bye? In the middle of writing someone I love, will the minutes tick away and the guards come for me before I finish?”
•
Louisiana. The summer of 1987. Four men executed in the last nine days. Two of the men I knew well. One praised God with his last words. The other said simply, “I think I’d rather be fishing.” Two different personalities. Two different spiritual beliefs. Two friends gone. It has left me devastated. I sit on death row and wait.
            My wait so far has been five years, six months, and I have remained calm through the course of my appeals. But with my appeals nearing their end and with this sudden string of executions, a storm of fear and questions have pushed their way to the surface. The finality of death now overwhelms me.
            The night Jimmy was executed I laid in my bunk and prayed for him, and counted down the minutes with him. Emotionally exhausted, I dozed off and woke up 25-minutes later drenched in sweat and gritting my teeth. I felt empty inside. My watch read 12:15 a.m.
            Later that morning as news report confirmed Jimmy was executed at 12:14 a.m. It was at that moment I began to drown in tortuous questions. Was I overreacting? Was I weaker than the other ten men left on my tier?
            Lifting my head out of my hands, I noticed John standing in front of my cell. His hands trembling, his voice quivering. “I’ll fight the guards when my time comes,” he said. His voice did not ring with anger, but cracked with hopelessness.
            In the initial stages of his appeals, John has never doubted he would win a new trial, until now. And so I discover I am not alone to my reaction to the Executioner. Like my cell neighbor, I have my own doubts and fears. I find myself rehearsing day and night the orderly and sterile procedure planned for my death: the last shower, the handshakes and good-byes, the heavily escorted walk in tight shackles to the death house, the 12-hour excruciating wait in the death cell, someone shaving my head and legs and afterwards having to wear a diaper. Then, the last short walk to take my seat in the chair that will burn me into eternity.
            I also think about giving my last statement, wondering what my final words should be. It is important to me that I say something spiritual, and perhaps something concerning the injustice of capital punishment. I will be nervous for sure staring out at those who witness my execution, most there because they want to see me die. Will I choke on my words and end up saying nothing? Worse, will I ramble on nervously, making no sense to anyone? Or while standing in front of the witnesses, the media vultures, will I decide to say nothing at all, thinking, “What’s the use, what worth will my words have? And nothing I say now is going to stop them from killing me.”
           There is no evading the thoughts of the execution itself. Like a kid forcing himself to watch a scary part of a horror movie, I find myself forcing thoughts over the execution. Recently, I dug down to the bottom of my locker box and pulled up a book I had read a few years earlier. The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court. Opening it to page 225, one paragraph is enough:
           When the executioner throws the switch that send the electric current through the body, the prisoner cringes from torture, his flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. He defecates, he urinates, his tongue swells and his eyeballs pop out. In some cases I have been told the eyeballs rest on the cheeks of the condemned. His flesh is so hot it cannot be touched by the human hand.
            I close the book and shudder. “That’s what it will be like.”
            Will the pain of 2,400 volts be excruciating? Because I have kept up a strenuous exercise routine the past six years, will the reflex of my physically fit body fight against the surging electricity and prolong the pain? How many times will they throw the switch before they decide I’m dead and gone? Will I catch fire? Will I emit a terrible odor?
            More disturbing are the spiritual questions that plague me. Does God really exist? If so, will He accept me? Is there a heaven and hell and where will I go? Is there something I am missing, something I don’t understand?
            For six years I have held faith in God and never doubted my sins have been forgiven. But at this moment I am unsure. Perhaps this fear that engulfs me is an indictment against my faith. Or maybe it is that I just don’t want to reach heaven via the electric chair. Whatever it may be, I cannot deny these deep-seated emotions by pretending they don’t exist. I cannot lie to myself as I stand at the threshold of eternity. There is no better prescription for self-honesty than staring death in the face.
             I am beginning to understand that I should not be ashamed as I feel weak and fearful. There is no shame in honesty. My struggle, then, is to not let fear and doubt have the upper hand.
•
Once Jimmy finished his shower, the guards allowed him a quick trip down the tier, past each cell to shake hands good-bye. When he reached through my bars I gripped his hand tightly in mine, not wanting to let go. We just stood there in unnerving silence, staring into one another’s eyes. In his I could see a void of acceptance, and my own reflection. Finally, Jimmy broke the silence, “Well Lane, be cool my brother. “ His words floated too simply. They shook me.
            “Alright Jimmy,” and I added, ‘When you get to the death cell do some praying. It’s not too late and it sure can’t hurt, ya know.”
            With a weak smile he replied, “There you go preaching to me again. You know what time that is. Time for me to go. Softly breaking the tight grip of our hands he and with his eyes watering up he turned and walked away, down the tier and into the waiting arms of the guard team who would chain him up and escort him to the death house. Jimmy did go, forever.
            He left me waiting, and struggling to find reassurance my faith will overcome the perplexing questions that storm my mind.

A Year End Plea for Unity of Purpose

2010-12-18T04:42:00.001-07:00

From the Angola 3 Newsletter, by the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3

Supporters of the Angola 3 have watched over the past year as most of the small privileges won over the course of 40 years of resistance were stripped away and new inordinate and unfair punishments put in their place. Herman, now 69, has endured further isolation and harsh punishment for the most innocuous, exaggerated infractions. Most recently, the State apparently decided that 39 years in continued solitary was also not punitive enough, so they moved Albert to David Wade Correctional Center, seven hours north of his family and supporters, and stripped his phone and visiting rights and just about any other small comfort he might have had. He and Herman both continue to fight these deteriorating conditions, and have had some success, but only in returning to square one.

Other prisoners we work with are also increasingly being moved from facility to facility while triple and quadruple bunking is now commonplace. This is a system gone mad, where everyone involved is encouraged to act only barely human. We hear constant stories of facilities that have no heat in the coldest of winters and we wonder how long these American Gulags can continue to trade on human suffering while operating under guise of capitalist enterprise. How long is long enough? How much punishment is punishment enough? Is there no such thing as redemption?

Now more than ever there is a paramount need to work collaboratively, across all lines, to expand our efforts. Unity of purpose could drive the re-direction of incarceration funds to provide education, health care, and things of real value. With unity of purpose we can challenge the inhumane sentencing and treatment of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children adversely effected by the wholesale incarceration of America. Unity of purpose can unveil a system that calls itself correctional but is instead entirely involved in harsh punishment, both physical and mental, with absolutely no penological purpose.

We stand in unity with the prisoners in Georgia who have presented a completely rational and reasonable list of requests for improved treatment- across county lines and color lines. Their efforts clearly illuminate the success that can be achieved, in the most difficult of all circumstances, through unity of purpose. They decided that it's time to draw a line in the sand, and we hope there are many who follow.

We stand with the striking prisoners, with Mumia Abu Jamal, The Cuban 5, Leonard Peltier, Russell Maroon Shoats, Ruchell Magee, Eddie Conway, Hugo Pinell, Chip Fitzgerald, their supporters and so many others still languishing behind bars to pledge unity of purpose as we fight what the MOVE family aptly calls' this rotten-ass system'.

Power cedes nothing without a struggle and power on a budget is more formidable still! Unity of purpose is required to stand up to the joint forces of fear, violence and oppression.
May the New Year bring us closer to each other, for only with unity, can we reach freedom.

Solitarywatch: John Thompson Takes a Louisiana Injustice from Death Row to the Supreme Court

2010-10-07T04:25:00.001-06:00

October 5, 2010,

by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

Solitarywatch

The model electric chair sitting on the desk of New Orleans prosecutor JimWilliams was like a piece of stranger-than-fiction Louisiana Gothic. But for John Thompson, it was all too real. “Seated” in the electric chair were photographs of five African American men that the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office had proudly sent to death row. Thompson’s picture was dead center. “They were trying to kill me,” he said last week.

That plan was thwarted, but not until Thompson had spent 14 years on death row at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. His appeals were exhausted and his execution just weeks away before his legal team uncovered evidence that had been intentionally suppressed by the prosecution. Granted a retrial, Thompson was exonerated. So was another of the men in the prosecutor’s model electric chair. Of the remaining three, one was granted a new trial, while two others had their sentences commuted to life in prison.

All in all, the prosecutor’s bloodthirsty desk ornament has become an emblem of the faulty prosecutions that took place under the 28-year reign of Orleans Parish District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr., the father of the singer-actor and a Louisiana icon in his own right. In the past decade, fully a quarter of the men sentenced to death during Connick’s tenure have had their convictions overturned—every one of them based on evidence that cast doubt on their guilt, but was hidden from the defense by prosecutors.

Thompson is determined that the prosecutors’ conduct, which nearly cost him his life, should not go unpunished. “I am not going to let those motherfuckers get away with it,” he declares. It’s been a long haul, but on Wednesday, Thompson will be sitting in the Supreme Court, watching his lawyers argue that the New Orleans DA’s office must pay millions of dollars in restitution for railroading John Thompson into what they thought would be certain death in Angola’s lethal injection chamber.

At 11 a.m. on October 6, two days into its new session, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Connick v. Thompson. After they hear from lawyers representing Thompson, the justices will listen to representatives of the District Attorney’s office, who will argue that the office can’t be blamed for Thompson’s faulty conviction, and shouldn’t have to pay the unprecedented $14 million in damages awarded to him by a New Orleans jury in a civil case–one million for each year he spent on death row.

Read more here.
The book Killing Time on Amazon.com.

Oct 2nd 2010: Freedom March for Awareness for Wrongful Convictions

2010-10-01T07:23:00.000-06:00

RAISING AWARENESS OF WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS AND THE NEED FOR JUSTICE REFORM

For instance In Louisiana: Kenny Zulu Whitmore, the Angola 3.....

MARCH FOR FREEDOM OF WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS 2010On Oct. 2 2010, demonstrators are gathering in locations across America to raise awareness of wrongful convictions, spotlight the need for criminal justice reform, and support for a death penalty moratorium.

National Event Information: http://freedommarchusa.org/

EVENTS:

Demonstrations / events will take place at these locations:

1. Phoenix, AZ -- Coordinator: Camille Tilley - justice4courtney@mac.com

2. Los Angeles, CA - Coordinator: Gloria Killian - acwip@yahoo.com

3. Boise, ID - Coordinator: Gary Adams. Boise, ID - garyadams@getmpi.com / gla1949@hotmail.com

4. Lansing, MI - Coordinator: Ursula Armijo at ubarmijo@comcast.net

5. Poughkeepsie, NY - Coordinator: Patricia Borden pmborden@gmail.com.

6. Pittsburgh, PA – Coordinator: MaryAnn Lubas -- mlubas2@yahoo.com

If there is no event in your area, you can support this cause by:

1. Spreading the word about wrongful convictions and the need for criminal justice reform to your circle of friends, co-workers and acquaintances.

2. Sending an email, letter or calling your elected representatives to say that you are concerned about wrongful convictions and our justice system.

WHO:

Demonstrations organized by grassroots volunteers representing these organizations:

- Freedom March USA, Marching for Awareness of Wrongful Convictions - http://freedommarchusa.org/

- National Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform - http://www.reformingjustice.com/

CONTACT:

For information on a specific event, contact the coordinator listed above.

In Texas, the following organizations and individuals support this cause and serve as an information resource on wrongful convictions and the need for criminal justice reform:

Information on Oct 2 Events & Criminal Justice Reform:

National Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform - http://www.reformingjustice.com/

Texas chapter:

Lucy Frost justicereform@gmail.com

Americas Wrongfully Convicted - http://www.americaswrongfullyconvicted.com/

Roger McClendon
America’s Wrongfully Convicted
roger@americaswrongfullyconvicted.com

Information Resource on Criminal Justice Reform:

Dr. LeRoy Gillam, president Southeastern Christian Association (SECA)
832-228-3207

In The Interest of Justice (ITIJ)
http://www.itij.org/

Pastor Rod Carver
Supporters of Hannah Overton: www.freehannah.com

Terri Been, Kids Against The Death Penalty: http://www.freewebs.com/kadp

Kristin Houle Exec. Director
Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (TCADP): www.tcadp.org/

Jeff Blackburn or Cory Session
Innocence Project Of Texas: http://ipoftexas.org/

Lily Hughes, Campaign To End The Death Penalty: http://www.nodeathpenalty.org/content/index.php

BACKGROUND

MARCH FOR FREEDOM OF WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS 2010 aims to raise united voices for justice.

Modern science and technology have shaken the strong faith many once placed in the accuracy of judgments made by our criminal justice system.

Thanks to DNA analysis of biological evidence, hundreds have been exonerated—many after spending years on death row.

Research by Seton Hall law professor D. Michael Risinger indicates that 3.3%-5% of those convicted of crimes are factually innocent. Those who value justice demand that the criminal justice system apply the lessons to be learned from the many cases of wrongful conviction, and support policy initiatives that:

1. Raise the accuracy rate in judgments of guilt and innocence.

2. Resolve credible post-conviction claims of innocence.

3. Remedy the tragic impact of wrongful convictions.

For those who are guilty of crimes, we support enlightened approaches to incarceration that nurture genuine rehabilitation and reintegration of productive citizens whenever possible.

FACTS ABOUT AMERICA’S CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM:

- The United States incarcerates more people than any country in the world, including the far more populous nation of China[1].

- One in 100 Adult Americans is incarcerated in a prison or jail.

- One in 31 Adult Americans is incarcerated, on probation or parole.

- Incarceration rates heavily concentrated among men, racial and ethnic minorities, and 20-and 30-year olds.

1 in 9 Black men 20-34 years old, 1 in 15 Black men 18+, 1 in 36 Hispanic men 18+.

- Texas is one of the leading states in verified wrongful convictions. To date, more than 38 people have been exonerated in Texas using DNA.

- Nationally, more than 133 people have been exonerated from death row since 1973[2].

- Expert estimates of wrongful convictions range from 3% to 12%, based on data from DNA & other exonerations[3].

- Executed But Possibly Innocent: Of the cases frequently cited as those executed despite strong evidence of innocence, 6 are Texas cases[4].

- How many innocent people are in prison? No one knows, but experts agree that “any plausible guess at the total number of miscarriages of justice in America in the last fifteen years must be in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.”[5]

Senator Jim Webb’s page about the problem and legislation he has introduced: http://webb.senate.gov/email/criminaljusticereform.html

“America's criminal justice system has deteriorated to the point that it is a national disgrace. Its irregularities and inequities cut against the notion that we are a society founded on fundamental fairness. Our failure to address this problem has caused the nation's prisons to burst their seams with massive overcrowding, even as our neighborhoods have become more dangerous. We are wasting billions of dollars and diminishing millions of lives.” – Senator Jim Webb

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Pew Research Center - http://www.pewcenteronthestates.org/uploadedFiles/8015PCTS_Prison08_FINAL_2-1-1_FORWEB.pdf

[2] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty

[3] Research by Seton Hall law professor D. Michael Risinger and other expert estimates

[4] http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/executed-possibly-innocent

[5] http://truthinjustice.org/exonerations-in-us.pdf

Louisiana Jail Holds Suicidal Prisoners in "Squirrel Cages"

2010-08-15T00:47:00.002-06:00

Jul 8th, 2010

Suzanne Ito, ACLU

Mentally ill prisoners deserve more care and consideration while incarcerated, but time and again, the ACLU often finds the exact opposite: they're treated even worse than the general population. Today, the ACLU of Louisiana sent a letter to the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Jack Strain and Parish President Kevin Davis asking them — horrifyingly enough — to stop treating suicidal prisoners like animals.
St. Tammany Parish officials have a policy of locking suicidal prisoners in 3-by 3-foot metal cages that prison staff call "squirrel cages." After prisoners are deemed suicidal, they're stripped half-naked and put in the cages without a bed, blanket, shoes or toilet. Requests to use the bathroom are often ignored by guards, so prisoners urinate in milk cartons, or soil themselves inside the cage. Some prisoners reported being forced to wear bright orange, Daisy Duke-style shorts with the words "HOT STUFF" scrawled across the backside.
To add insult to injury, the cages are placed in the main part of the jail, so the caged prisoners are a spectacle for other prisoners to gawk at.
The ACLU of Louisiana's letter (PDF) points out:

These conditions are clearly unconstitutional. According to the St. Tammany Parish Code they are also inhumane. St. Tammany Parish Code 4-121.10 states that dogs must be kept in cages at least 6' wide x 6' feet deep, with "sufficient space [. . .] to lie down." Sick prisoners in your care are afforded approximately one quarter of the space required for animals under the Parish Code.

So despite Sheriff Strain's previous assertion that prisoners "need to be caged like animals," in Tammany Parish, suicidal prisoners aren't even afforded the rights of a dog.

Tammany Jail is set to receive $2 million to upgrade its facilities after a prisoner escaped earlier this year. The ACLU urges the sheriff to put some of that money toward more humane treatment of mentally ill and suicidal prisoners. The letter concludes: "St. Tammany is one of the wealthiest parishes in Louisiana; not only can you afford to treat your sick better than this, but the Constitution mandates that you do so."

Link to Article Here

BP Using Prison Labor in Oil Spill Cleanup

2010-07-29T10:41:00.000-06:00

From, The Root

Surprise, surprise. BP is using inmates from the Louisiana prison system to clean up the oil spill. The words "Inmate Labor" are emblazoned on their backs as they toil in record heat, cleaning up the mess that BP has made. Local residents are angry that the company is using cheap labor instead of employing local residents who need jobs. Inmate laborers, aka "trustees," are paid very little, while BP and subcontractors receive tax credits. We don't know why people are surprised. We've said it before and we'll say it again: Prison is the only place in the United States where slavery is not outlawed. The inmates are being treated like modern-day slaves because they actually are modern-day slaves. In the infamous words of Nancy Reagan, "Just say no" -- to prison, that is.

--Nsenga K. Burton

_______________________________________________

More on the story from BV Blackspin.

Soon after a BP wellhead exploded in the Gulf of Mexico
spewing a jillion gallons in to the waters off the coast of Louisiana,

the British company started the business of cleaning up the worst oil

spill United States' history.

Within days, cleanup workers were spotted on beaches, wearing T-shirts

with the words "Inmate Labor" printed in large red block letters

(pictured). Coastal residents, many of whom had just seen their

livelihoods disappear, took to town hall meetings to express their

outrage. The community wanted to know why BP was using cheap or free prison labor when so many people were unemployed?

The short answer is that hiring prison labor is a way for BP to save money while cleaning up their mess. It's what we call a "two-fer" or a win-win. By tapping in to the inmate workforce, the company and its subcontractors get cheap labor and lucrative tax write-offs. But cheap labor is only part of the story.

In a fascinating story featured in The Nation, Abe Louise Young investigated BP's use of inmate labor to clean up their mess.
In Louisiana, inmates who have maintained good behavior become eligible for work release in the last three years of their sentences. The Louisiana Department of Corrections
calls them "trustees." This means they can work for private companies
on the "outside." The trustees get to keep a portion of their earnings,

which they can redeem upon their release. Participating

businesses receive a tax credit of $2,400 for every work release inmate

they hire under a federal program designed to encourage the hiring of risky "target groups."

The use of inmate labor on the oil spill is a hot button topic on the coast. When

Young asks a warden of a South Louisiana jail about this practice, he

refused to discuss the matter, exclaiming, "You want me to lose my job?"

A different warden, on condition of anonymity, said that inmates from

his facility had been employed in oil cleanup, but declined to answer

further questions.

Some officials did speak with Young, though. A lieutenant in the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff's Office stated that three crews of inmates were sandbagging in Buras, La., in case oil hit there: "They're not getting paid, it's part of their
sentence," she said. "They'll work as long as they're needed."

Inmates can't pick and choose their work assignments and may face penalties for rejecting a job, including loss of earned "good time." The warden of the Terrebonne Parish Work Release Center in Houma explained:

"If they say no to a job, they get that time that was taken off their sentence put right back on."

This is particularly controversial in that this work could have

adverse health implications for those exposed to the toxic chemicals

used as dispersants.

The scientific community has acknowledged that while the dangers of

mixed oil and dispersant exposure are largely unknown, the chemicals in

crude oil can potentially damage every system in the body. The

uncertainty regarding the impact of oil cleanup operations on the

health of the workers has led many to protest the use of involuntary

labor in potentially hazardous conditions.

Now one may wonder why a company would use inmate labor at all instead of giving those jobs to coastal citizens? Particularly when so many residents are unemployed or have been put out of business by the oil spill.

The answer is not so simple. Turns out, these jobs are really sh*tty, and the workforce is not as willing as you might expect.

Young spoke to Scott Rojas of the Jefferson Parish Economic Development Commission, who stated that finding local labor to do oil-spill cleanup jobs is easier said than done. "These are really hard, and really low-paid jobs -
I know agencies have put effort in to finding locals to do the work.
But they may not always have an easy time of it."

The Louisiana state unemployment agency advertises oil spill cleanup positions as "green jobs." At $10 per hour, these jobs would seem like an attractive opportunity.

But Paul Perkins, a retired Angola Prison deputy warden

and owner of five for-profit inmate work release centers, told Young

that even as the agency is "overflowing with applications for oil spill

jobs," the work force is inconsistent. "They might hire 400 people on

Monday, and after one day of work, only 200 will come back on Tuesday."

And in some cases, residents feel like they shouldn't have to take these jobs. In a fascinating account of an encounter with some locals at A-Bear's Restaurant in Houma, Young recalls an elderly man speaking frankly about his son's financial dilemmas. His son is 40, married with children and was laid off from an oyster shucking factory shortly after the BP leak started. He now walks around
with a lawnmower, looking for grass to cut. When asked if his son would
be applying for a clean-up position, he responded, "Maybe, no, I don't

think so...that would be hard for his pride, you know? For that little

money? No."

Work-release programs are nothing new. From the businesses' perspective, you have a group of employees that will always show up and are never late. BP's use of inmate labor in a potentially hazardous situation, though, smacks of prisoner exploitation.

At the same time, it also forces us to examine our lives in the context of a bad economy. How large a role does pride and entitlement play with regards to the jobs we will and will not do? People say that many immigrants do the work that Americans will not do, and frankly, I always thought that was a load of crap. Now, I'm not so
sure...

ACLU Responds To St. Tammany Sheriff: Cages Aren't Humane

2010-07-10T12:52:00.001-06:00

July 9, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org

Today the ACLU responded to Sheriff Jack Strain's statements about the use of cages on suicidal prisoners in his jail. In its letter, the ACLU of Louisiana stood by its allegations, noting that: "There is one fact that we agree upon: you are housing human beings in cages that are smaller than the St. Tammany Parish Code authorizes for dogs."

In the letter, Executive Director Marjorie Esman went on to write: "The use of these cages that do not allow people to lie down to sleep is inhumane, especially when used on suicidal prisoners. Dr. Inglese testified on June 22, 2010 in Advocacy Center, et al v. Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals that he is 'aware of people in St. Tammany who have been in our little suicide cell for weeks because there is no other safe place in our facility to house that person.' All that we ask is that the $2 million your office is bound to receive be used to create that 'safe place.'"

After reviewing the Sheriff's letter to the ACLU of Louisiana, Nell Hahn, Director of Litigation for the Advocacy Center—the State's leading organization advocating for people with disabilities—said: "The Advocacy Center understands the problems faced by local jails in dealing with mentally ill, suicidal inmates. There are best practices in the mental health field and in the field of jail suicide prevention that are clearly less restrictive, less dehumanizing, and less likely to discourage mentally ill inmates from seeking treatment than the cages used at the St. Tammany jail. These include the creation of special suicide resistant cells in which inmates who are actively suicidal can receive constant supervision. We would be happy to work with the Sheriff's office to try to find a better solution."

In an effort to get assistance for mentally ill people, the Advocacy Center and the ACLU recently sued the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals to require it to promptly admit inmates who have been ordered to the State psychiatric hospital for treatment. The ACLU of Louisiana's letter concludes: "All we ask is that people be housed more humanely than dogs."

Link to News Release Here

Corruption Indictment: White Castle Mayor and Police Chief.

2010-07-10T09:34:00.003-06:00

US Department of Justice/
New Orleans FBI
For Immediate Release
July 7, 2010

United States Attorney's Office
Middle District of Louisiana
Contact: (225) 389-0443

Mayor and Chief of Police of White Castle, Louisiana Indicted

BATON ROUGE, LA—In an ongoing investigation designated “Operation Blighted Officials,” United States Attorney Donald J. Cazayoux, Jr., announced today that a federal grand jury has returned an indictment charging MAURICE A. BROWN, age 45, of White Castle, Louisiana, and MARIO D. BROWN, age 40, also of White Castle, Louisiana, with twenty (20) counts of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, mail fraud, wire fraud, use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, and forfeiture. If convicted, MAURICE BROWN, who is the mayor of the Town of White Castle, faces up to 170 years' imprisonment and a $3,250,000 fine. If convicted, MARIO BROWN, who is the chief of police for the Town of White Castle, faces up to 145 years' imprisonment and a $3,000,000 fine.

The indictment alleges that the defendants obtained cash and other things of value worth over $10,000 from businesspeople in exchange for using their official positions with the Town of White Castle for the benefit of the businesspeople in connection with transactions represented to be worth over $5,000,000. According to the indictment, such conduct occurred in connection with three different bribery schemes involving the defendants and the businesspeople.

The indictment alleges that one of the bribery schemes involved MAURICE BROWN obtaining cash and other things of value from businesspeople in exchange for using his position as mayor to promote and to obtain money for the businesspeople’s conceptual product known as the “Cifer 5000.” The Cifer 5000 was marketed as an automated waste container cleaning system using specially designed and equipped trucks to clean and sanitize commercial and residential waste containers.

The indictment alleges that a second bribery scheme involved the defendants obtaining cash and other things of value from businesspeople in exchange for MARIO BROWN using false representations to obtain confidential law enforcement information from the FBI and providing such information to one of the businesspeople. The indictment alleges that a third bribery scheme involved MARIO BROWN obtaining cash from one of the businesspeople in exchange for using his position as chief of police to fraudulently obtain leniency for an individual facing drug charges in Connecticut.

United States Attorney Cazayoux stated, “It is always a sad day when a public official betrays the trust of the citizens he has sworn to represent and protect. I am thankful for the diligence and sophisticated work of the FBI in this case, and am hopeful that all of our citizens will realize that all of us must abide by the law.” Cazayoux encouraged the public to be vigilant and report crimes of public corruption to the FBI.

FBI Special Agent-in-Charge David W. Welker said, “This is another demonstration of the FBI’s commitment to aggressively pursue public corruption at any level, along with our federal, state, and local law enforcement partners and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. We will not tolerate self-dealing among those who are entrusted with providing services or support to our citizens.”

This ongoing investigation is being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Attorney’s Office with assistance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Inspector General. This matter is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Corey R. Amundson who serves as a Deputy Chief in the Criminal Division.

NOTE: An indictment is a determination by a grand jury that probable cause exists to believe that offenses have been committed by a defendant. The defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty at trial.

Court Reverses Appeal of Angola 3′s Albert Woodfox: No End in Sight to 38 Years in Solitary Confinement

2010-06-22T01:56:00.000-06:00

From: SolitaryWatch

June 22, 2010
by James Ridgeway and Jean Casella

Photo: Herman Wallace, Robert King, and Albert Woodfox in 2008, during a rare break from solitary

Albert Woodfox has spent nearly all of the last 38 years in solitary confinement at the Louisiana State Penitentiary 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 ruling by a federal appeals court ensured that for the forseeable future, Albert Woodfox will remain right where he has been for nearly four decades: in a 6 x 9 cell in the heart of America’s largest and most notorious prison.

It’s been nearly two years since a federal district court judge in Baton Rouge overturned Woodfox’s conviction 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 permanent 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.”

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 a fair trial in 1998 (at what was itself 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 this 2009 article for Mother Jones.)

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 Louisiana justice system were committed to keeping Woodfox in prison and in lockdown. After his conviction was overturned, Attorney General James “Buddy” Caldwell declared, “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.”

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.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals once had a reputation as one of the finest appellate courts in the land. In the 1960s, a small group of Fifth Circuit judges—mostly Southern-bred moderate Republicans—was 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 U.S. 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.

In addition, the decision in Woodfox’s case shows the crippling effect 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 bombing. 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.

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.”

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 in the case at hand, ”the district court failed to apply the AEDPA’s heightened deferential standard of review to Woodfox’s ineffective assistance claims.” Woodfox’s conviction may have been wrong, but it was not, in the eyes of the Fifth Circuit, “unreasonable”–so there will be no new trial for him. This is how justice works in post-AEDPA America.

For Woodfox, this means that his time in prison stretches before him with no obvious 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 constitutional challenge to their solitary confinement, 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.

Woodfox’s release from solitary, as well as his criminal appeal, is vehemently opposed by Angola’s warden, Burl Cain, who has likened the Black Panthers to the KKK, and is adamant that the aging Woodfox is and always will be a menace to society by virtue of his political beliefs. He has said that Woodfox is “locked in time with that Black Panther revolutionary actions they were doing way back when…And from that, there’s been no rehabilitation.”

Louisiana Prisoners and their Families Denied Contact Visits

2010-05-29T05:28:00.000-06:00

From Freezulu

Recently inmates housed at Louisiana Penitentiary’s RC CCR (closed cell restrictions or solitary confinement) units have been denied normal contact visits and privileges. Even after contact visits have been approved and some visitors have travelled across the country at considerable expenses. This is primarily due to the actions of security officer Lt. Gail Smothers. In multiple instances, stretching back to 2009, Lt Smothers has denied visitors contact by creating rules which are not a part of the CCR contact visiting policy.

Inmates at LA State Prison are allowed ten (10) people at any time on their Approved visiting list. This list constitutes those individuals who have completed the prison’s necessary paperwork and who have submitted to a comprehensive police background check. Upon acceptance the applicant is listed on the inmate’s approved visiting list and may then visit up to 2 times a month.

Contact visiting is the normal policy for inmates at Angola. Only those inmates assigned to punitive housing units are restricted to non-contact visits. While CCR is a non-punitive housing unit, CCR inmates are allowed only 2 contact visits a month. All other visits received in a month by CCR inmates are held in CCR’s non-contact visiting booths (small, closet like spaces with inmates and visitor separated by a thick mesh screen). The reason given for this policy is the lack of visiting space for large numbers of contact visits on the RC CCR unit. As opposed to the main prison compound with its large visiting room capable of accomodating over 100 inmates and their visitors at a time with inmates run food concessions, CCR’s far smaller contact visiting room may only accommodate 30-40 people. Consequently, only 5 contacts may be scheduled each visiting day for the roughly 90 inmates housed in CCR.

Given such limited space for contact visits at CCR the units policy requires inmates to submit requests for approval often months in advance to reserve an available date. When a CCR inmate submits a request for contact visitation he is merely reserving a date. On that date any visitor from his visiting list who arrives – up to a total of 5 – may enjoy a visit under normal contact visiting procedures. This requirement is merely to insure that no more then 5 contact visits are scheduled for any visiting day. CCR inmates are NOT required to also seek approval for those visitors, since they are already on the Approved visiting list.

This is the point of contention between inmates, visitors and Lt. Smothers. Visitors, upon arriving at Louisiana State Prison are being allowed into the prison – but upon arrival at the CCR unit – being denied a contact visit and forced into non contact visiting booths. Lt. Smothers has repeatedly denied contact visits by claiming only visitors whose names are submitted in advance for a contact visit may then visit contact. CCR inmates are not required to submit the names of their visitors when requesting a visitation date.

To re- approve a visitor as a visitor is a rule only Lt. Smothers has decided to create and enforce. A rule she has no authority to impose as she is not involved in any manner with approving visitors or scheduling visits. Those procedures are the responsibility of the institutes Investigative Service Dept. and CCR’s Assistant Warden.

The difficulties this has created for visitors in wasted money, time and travel has already been addressed by verbal complaints to Lt. Smothers’ superiors up to the unit’s Assistant Warden and by submitting grievances through the institutions Administrative Remedy Procedure (A.R.P.). A grievance procedure available for inmates to seek relieve for wrongs within the institution.

In April 2010, RC CCR col. Menzia resolved a grievance filed by verbally informing Lt. Smothers of the proper contact visiting policy and ordering how to stop denying inmates and their visitors approved contact visits.

Approximately 1 week later, Col. Menzia was transferred to another unit as a new Assistant Warden. Immediately afterwards Lt. Smothers returned to her previous practices. Over the weekend of April 24th and 25th Lt. Smothers denied at least 2 inmates their pre-approved contact visits without proper authority, with one visitor having travelled from California. When incidents like this occur inmates and their visitors are left without recourse as over the weekend Lt. Smothers may be the highest ranking officer on duty at CCR. No appeal can be made to any superior at that time.

This presents an identifiable hardship as many family members and friends must plan months in advance to schedule their contact visits – as they come from long distances and may only visit a few times a year they specifically plan for contact visits, which entails the costs of flight tickets, rental cars, hotels reservations and often time taken off from work.

Inmates with elderly or infirm family members schedule contact visits for the extra room and ease provided versus the cramped and difficult conditions of the non-contact visiting booths.
When Lt. Smothers then denies approved contact visits without authority, inmates are not recredited with a contact visit for that month, nor are visitors reimbursed their expenses.

Those concerned can help stop Lt. Smothers by calling warden Burl Cain’s office at (001) 225-655-4411 or Secretary of Corrections James LeBlanc. Letters of concern may be faxed to (001) 225 655-2319.

YOUR ACTIONS AS CONCERNED CITITZENS HAVE AN IMPACT!!

On behalf of all my fellow inmates, Kenny Zulu Whitmore.

Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice: Hunger Strike!

2010-05-16T06:33:00.000-06:00

The Gray-Haired Witnesses for Justice are conducting a Hunger Strike at the Department of Justice Headquarters in Washington, DC on June 21, 2010.

Contacts: Ruby Sales / B.J. Janice Peak-Graham

1-706-323-0246 / 0247 - spirithousedc@gmail.com

We, who are three strikes removed from the center of the power structure of this country, want to raise the political consciousness of the nation while standing as the moral soul of the nation. We are Gray-Haired Witnesses who have struggled from time immemorial within the Black community. We are building towards a movement in history and we need all people of good will to be a part!

When Ida B. Wells stood up, she set in motion a resistance movement where many Americans broke their silence against lynching and said NO. She stood for a race of people bereft of political power or resources. More than 100 years later Gray-Haired Witnesses, Black women with a new Freedom Movement calling on this nation, stand in the spirit of those proud men and women who won hard-fought for victories in struggle and blood. We speak to the totality of the struggle of the Black woman who is debased regularly as uneducated, immoral, subhuman, whore, bad mother, and welfare queen. We also recognize the systemic racism that leads the police to even arrest the lack woman in the first place, the racism during sentencing, during incarceration, in dealing with social services, education, health discrimination, and beyond.

Over the last 20 years, the women’s population in US prisons has more than tripled. Most women are in prison as a result of drug selling, addiction, domestic violence and criminal acts mostly related to men. Too many are victimized by biased and negligent lawyers and judges. The evidence of oppression against Black and poor women significantly increased and continues to mount. Our Sisters are victimized, and subsequently our families, by enormous health care disparities, and emotional degradation through corporate media demonization of our image and place in our community. We now see a coalition of corporate, cultural and political wars fully embracing a White supremacist culture of domination and terrorism.

Our primary focus is the case of the Mississippi Scott Sisters, Jamie and Gladys, whose almost 16 yrs of unjust incarceration is a shocking revelation of the pure nothingness with which our lives are deemed in the eyes of this society and world, where such egregious travesties of justice are heaped upon our women with hate-filled arrogance and in plain view! In 1994, the State of Mississippi sentenced Jamie and Gladys Scott to consecutive double-life terms each for two counts of armed robbery they did not commit. They did not have prior criminal records, vigorously maintained their innocence, approximately $11 was said to have been netted, no one was harmed or injured and no weapon was ever recovered.

In January, 2010, Jamie Scott suffered failure of both kidneys. The combination of absymal health care under deplorable conditions has culminated in her steep decline to stage 5 (end stage) kidney disease. Jamie Scott has now effectively been sentenced to death. We must address this specific issue with urgency and demand that an Inspection and Observation Team be allowed into the Pearl, MS prison where Jamie Scott is being held for independent evaluation, as well as call on this government to free Jamie and Gladys Scott, wrongfully convicted and with no business being incarcerated in the first place! The case of the Scott Sisters is a horrific representation of the cases of countless other Black and poor women who have been denied the benefits of true justice and been incarcerated wrongly and in the process punishing, injuring and destroying Black families and children across the nation.

The Gray-Haired Witness are calling on all people of good will to fast and strike and resist with us across the nation on this day. The greatest asset we have is our body, mind and spirit and our willingness to step out of the daily flow of life and stand tall for what is right and just. In the tradition of race women throughout history and our survival, we declare our presence and we will not be silent and we are not afraid. Our lives have prepared us to come to this place, at this time.

STAND WITH US IN WASHINGTON, DC AND HELP TO BUILD THIS EVENT.

WE ASK THAT YOU STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH US:

1. Organize attendees to come to the event on June 21.

2. Sign your organization/club/church/mosque/temple, etc. on in solidarity with the event.

3. Put a statement in support on your website and link to our blogspot. Send a mailing to your email list and memberships.

4. Assist in distributing literature for this event to build it to the maximum level.

5. Assist in garnering press now and at the event.

6. Organize a local fast where you are and send a press release to local news outlets about the hunger strike and your local support efforts.

7. Dress and wear buttons in solidarity with us on that day.

8. Assist with donations towards expenses earmarked "Gray-Haired Witnesses" at http://www.spirithouseproject.org/donation.cfm.

We call on our Sisters, our Brothers to join with us to demand what is right. We must speak loudly and clearly to the devaluation of Black women's bodies and lives. We want people of all colors to wage a struggle and stand with us on these issues because none of us are free until we are all free.

SHAKEERAH ABDUL AL-SABUUR, Paralegal

FATIRAH AZIZ, ICFFMAJ, African American Freedom & Reconstruction League, Quba Institute

MAE JACKSON, Art without Walls

MARPESSA KUPENDUA, M'Backe House of Hope, Inc.

DEBRA D. NAPIER, PhD.

BJ JANICE PEAK-GRAHAM, OUR COMMON GROUND Communications, Inc., Progressive Alternative Talk Radio

RUBY NELL SALES, Founder and Co-Director of SpiritHouse project - Public theologian, educator and long time runner for justice

JAMIA SHEPHERD, Founder/President of S.O.P.E. - Support Our People's Efforts

http://www.grayhairedwitnesses.blogspot.com

The SpiritHouse Project

100 6th Street

Columbus, GA 31901

Prisoner Punished For Writing Complaints Vindicated

2010-05-09T17:56:00.000-06:00

May 4, 2010

NEW ORLEANS, LA – Because of ACLU of Louisiana litigation, the Louisiana Department of Corrections ("DOC") has settled a lawsuit filed last year on behalf of Ernest Billizone, a prisoner punished for simple written complaints about his treatment. Mr. Billizone's written complaints contained neither foul language nor threats of violence or unlawful or improper action, but the prison placed him in punitive isolation and stripped him of earned good time credit because they said he was "spreading rumors." In settling, the Department of Corrections agreed to clear Mr. Billizone's record and has 60 days to amend the unconstitutional disciplinary rule under which he was punished.

This is the second time within six years that the DOC has amended the same rule as a result of litigation. In 2004, in Cassels v. Stalder, a U. S. District Court declared an earlier version of the rule unconstitutionally vague and overbroad because it prohibited "spreading rumors." Despite this ruling, Mr. Billizone was punished for "spreading rumors." This court settlement and the change it requires should ensure that in the future prisoners will be able to exercise their rights to contact government officials.

ACLU Executive Director Marjorie R. Esman said: "No prisoner should be placed in isolation or punished for filing a written complaint, especially when it's not a threat to anyone. Mr. Billizone had the right to speak out. His record has been restored because he shouldn't have been disciplined in the first place. This should protect prisoners who want to speak out in the future."

As part of the settlement, the Department of Corrections has agreed to reimburse the ACLU the amount of $56,697.85 for the attorneys' fees and costs incurred in representing Mr. Billizone. The case, Ernest Billizone v. James LeBlanc et al., was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana. Billizone was represented by ACLU attorneys Barry Gerharz and Katie Schwartzmann.

Link to Article click Here

Man dies of apparent suicide while in custody of Orleans Parish sheriff

2010-04-22T15:04:00.002-06:00

A man died in the custody of the Orleans Parish sheriff Friday night, about two hours after he arrived at an intake facility on a charge of heroin possession.

In a news release, Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman called the death of Michael Hitzman, 31, an apparent suicide.

Hitzman is the fourth inmate to die this year while in the custody of the sheriff's office.

Hitzman arrived at the sheriff's Intake and Processing Center at about 5 p.m. Friday. He was screened by medical staff, who observed wounds on his forearms consistent with intravenous drug use, the news release said.

According to the release, a physician prescribed an antibiotic and scheduled a follow-up appointment.

Hitzman initially appeared calm but subsequently attempted to leave through the emergency doors and began exhibiting "belligerent, uncooperative" behavior, according to the sheriff's office.

For his own safety and the safety of others, Hitzman was placed into an individual holding cell at around 6 p.m., the news release said.

At 7:14 p.m., a deputy found that Hitzman had apparently attached his T-shirt to the cell door and strangled himself. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.

"At no time during the booking and screening process for this arrest, or any prior arrests, or during any of his prior incarcerations, did Hitzman express or exhibit any suicidal tendencies," said an e-mail sent by sheriff's office spokeswoman Mary Martin.

An autopsy is being conducted by the Orleans Parish coroner's office.

Last month, two Orleans Parish Prison inmates died about an hour apart, though the deaths were unrelated.

About midday on March 30, Shedrick Godfrey, 48, died of an apparent heart attack while working a community service detail with other inmates. About an hour later Chris Blevins, 22, died from a stab wound to the chest suffered during a lunchtime fight with another inmate.

Richard Scearce, 60, who was arrested after a daylong standoff with New Orleans police last fall, died of cardiac arrest Jan. 19 while in custody of the sheriff's office. Scearce died at the Interim LSU Public Hospital, where he had been transferred for treatment of a urinary tract infection, Gusman's office said.

Scearce had barricaded himself inside his Uptown apartment Oct. 30 after receiving an eviction notice. He fired an assault rifle several times and set fire to his home, police said.

In December, Gusman and several of his staff members were sued by the father of a New Orleans woman who died in restraints in the jail's psychiatric unit.

Cayne Miceli, 43, had a history of asthma, panic attacks and depression but was denied adequate medical care after she arrived at the jail in January 2009, the suit alleges. Miceli was arrested after allegedly biting a police officer who tried to remove her from Tulane Medical Center, where she had been treated for an asthma attack.

A U.S. Department of Justice report last year raised numerous concerns about the jail's medical services.

The report -- which Gusman said was outdated and ignored post-Katrina difficulties -- mostly singled out the jail's mental health care procedures. It criticized the jail's use of restraints on a tier reserved for mentally ill patients and the facility's procedures for preventing suicide and dispensing medication to inmates.

The report did not criticize screenings for other medical problems at the intake and processing center, and it concluded that other aspects of the jail's medical care met constitutional mandates.

4/13 URGENT JAMIE SCOTT MEDICAL UPDATE!

2010-04-13T17:28:00.002-06:00

Jamie Scott is again in medical crisis and we are asking everyone reading these words to push the prison to hospitalize her!

Jamie woke up last night in a puddle of blood from the painful catheter in her groin area. The catheter had green liquid, showing signs of infection. The guard called the doctor and was told to clean her up, change her bandage, give her a Tylenol, and send her back to her unit without anyone examining her at all! When she arrived back at the building she began vomiting uncontrollably and is still unable to keep anything down as far as we know. The most recent update today is that she is in the prison clinic and not in the hospital.

We need the prison to know that we are on top of what's going on and that Jamie Scott needs to be hospitalized now.

More updates will be sent out as soon as they come available.

Christopher Epps, Commissioner of Prisons for the State of Mississippi
601-359-5600
CEPPS@mdoc.state.ms.us
723 North President Street
Jackson, MS 39202

Emmitt Sparkman, Deputy Commissioner
(601) 359-5610
esparkman@mdoc.state.ms.us

Margaret Bingham, Superintendent of Central Mississippi Corrections Facility
(601) 932-2880
mbingham@mdoc.state.ms.us
FAX: (601) 664-0782
P.O. Box 88550
Pearl, Mississippi 39208

Dr. Gloria Perry, Medical Department (601) 359-5155
gperry@mdoc.state.ms.us

Governor Haley Barbour
P.O. Box 139
Jackson, Mississippi 39205
1-877-405-0733 or 601-359-3150
Fax: 601-359-3741
(If you reach VM leave msgs, faxes, and please send letters)

Attorney General Eric Holder
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
HOTLINE: 202-353-1555
PHONE: 202-514-2000
202-307-6777 fax

PLEASE CONTACT POLITICIANS AND MEDIA

A complete list of politicians to send Scott Sisters info to is at:
http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/search.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4860375

A complete list of the media that we have listed (feel free to send to any others that
you wish to!) is at http://freethescottsisters.blogspot.com/2010/01/119-emergency-update.html

BLACK WOMEN's Defense League: Press Conference Today.

2010-03-26T08:02:00.001-06:00

TODAY: NOON

PRESS CONFERENCE: Official "Kick Off" for

"The DIRECT ACTION National Campaign To
FREE THE SCOTT SISTERS NOW !!!!"

FRIDAY MARCH 26, 2010 12 noon

IN FRONT OF THE CAPITOL BUILDING
400 High St. JACKSON, MS

For more information e-mail: nationalmwm@aol.com
Call The Black Women's Defense League @267-636-3802

Official and National Million Woman March & Universal Movements
Black Women's Defense League Unit
P.O. Box 53668
Philadelphia, PA 19105

Davis: The Challenges of Prison Abolition

2010-03-25T14:55:00.000-06:00

Celebrate the International Observation of the Anniversary
of the Abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade:
ABOLISH THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!!

--------------------

this is a great article from a few years back, posted in History is a Weapon, with Angela Davis making the connections between the institution of slavery and the prison industrial complex of today.

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The Challenge of Prison Abolition:

A conversation between Angela Y. Davis and Dylan Rodriguez

2004

History is a weapon

Angela Y. Davis teaches in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California (215 Oakes College, Santa Cruz, CA 95060), and has been actively involved in prison-related campaigns since the events that led to her own incarceration in 1970. Dylan Rodriguez is an Assistant Professor at University of California - Riverside and was involved in the formation of Critical Resistance. Rodriguez’s first book, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the Formation of the U.S. Prison Regime will be published in 2005 by the University of Minnesota Press.

Dylan: Your emergence as a radical prison activist was deeply influenced by your experience as a prisoner. Could you talk a bit about how imprisonment affected your political formation, and the impact that it had on your eventual identification as prison abolitionists?

Angela: The time I spent in jail was both an outcome of my work on prison issues and a profound influence on my subsequent trajectory as a prison activist. When I was arrested in the summer of 1970 in connection with my involvement in the campaign to free George Jackson and the Soledad Brothers, I was one of many activists who had been previously active in defense movements. In editing the anthology, If They Come in the Morning (1971) while I was in jail, Bettina Aptheker and I attempted to draw upon the organizing and legal experiences associated with a vast number of contemporary campaigns to free political prisoners. The most important lessons emanating from those campaigns, we thought, demonstrated the need to examine the overall role of the prison system, especially its class and racial character.

There was a relationship, as George Jackson had insisted, between the rising numbers of political prisoners and the imprisonment of increasing numbers of poor people of color. If prison was the state-sanctioned destination for activists such as myself, it was also used as a surrogate solution to social problems associated with poverty and racism. Although imprisonment was equated with rehabilitation in the dominant discourse at that time, it was obvious to us that its primary purpose was repression.

Along with other radical activists of that era, we thus began to explore what it might mean to combine our call for the freedom of political prisoners with an embryonic call for the abolition of prisons. Of course we had not yet thought through all of the implications of such a position, but today it seems that what was viewed at that time as political naivete, the un-theorized and utopian impulses of young people trying to be revolutionary, foreshadowed what was to become, at the turn of the century, the important project of critically examining the political economy of a prison system, whose unrestrained growth urgently needs to be reversed.

Dylan: What interests me is the manner in which your trial -- and the rather widespread social movement that enveloped it, along with other political trials -- enabled a wide variety of activists to articulate a radical critique of U.S. jurisprudence and imprisonment. The strategic framing of yours and others' individual political biographies within a broader set of social and historical forces -- state violence, racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, the growth and transformation of U.S. capitalism -- disrupted the logic of the criminal justice apparatus in a fundamental way. Turning attention away from conventional notions of "crime" as isolated, individual instances of misbehavior necessitated a basic questioning of the conditions that cast "criminality" as a convenient political rationale for the warehousing of large numbers of poor, disenfranchised, and displaced black people and other people of color.

Many activists are now referring to imprisonment as a new form of slavery, refocusing attention on the historical function of the 13th Amendment in reconstructing enslavement as a punishment reserved for those "duly convicted." Yet, when we look more closely at the emergence of the prison-industrial complex, the language of enslavement fails to the extent that it relies on the category of forced labor as its basic premise. People frequently forget that the majority of imprisoned people are not workers, and that work is itself made available only as a "privilege" for the most favored prisoners.

The logic of the prison-industrial complex is closer to what you, George Jackson, and others were forecasting back then as mass containment, the effective elimination of large numbers of (poor, black) people from the realm of civil society. Yet, the current social impact of the prison-industrial complex must have been virtually unfathomable 30 years ago. One could make the argument that the growth of this massive structure has met or exceeded the most ominous forecasts of people who, at that time, could barely have imagined that at the turn of the century two million people would be encased in a prison regime that is far more sophisticated and repressive than it was at the onset of Nixon's presidency, when about 150,000 people were imprisoned nationally in decrepit, overcrowded buildings.

So in a sense, your response to the first question echoes the essential truth of what was being dismissed, in your words, as the paranoid "political naivete" of young radical activists in the early 1970s. I think we might even consider the formation of prison abolitionism as a logical response to this new human warehousing strategy. In this vein, could you give a basic summary of the fundamental principles underlying the contemporary prison abolitionist movement?

Angela: First of all, I must say that I would hesitate to characterize the contemporary prison abolition movement as a homogeneous and united international effort to displace the institution of the prison. For example, the International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA), which periodically brings scholars and activists together from Europe, South America, Australia, Africa, and North America, reveals the varied nature of this movement. Dorsey Nunn, former prisoner and longtime activist, has a longer history of involvement with ICOPA than I do since he attended the conference in New Zealand three years ago. My first direct contact with ICOPA was this past May, when I attended the Toronto gathering.

Dylan: Was there anything about ICOPA that particularly impressed you?

Angela: The ICOPA conference in Toronto revealed some of the major strengths and weaknesses of the abolitionist movement. First of all, despite the rather homogenous character of their circle, they have managed to keep the notion of abolitionism alive precisely at a time when developing radical alternatives to the prison-industrial complex is becoming a necessity. That is to say, abolitionism should not now be considered an unrealizable utopian dream, but rather the only possible way to halt the further transnational development of prison industries.

That ICOPA claims supporters in Europe and Latin America is an indication of what is possible. However, the racial homogeneity of ICOPA, and the related failure to incorporate an analysis of race into the theoretical framework of their version of abolitionism, is a major weakness. The conference demonstrated that while faith-based approaches to the abolition of penal systems can be quite powerful, organizing strategies must go much further. We need to develop and popularize the kinds of analyses that explain why people of color predominate in prison populations throughout the world and how this structural racism is linked to the globalization of capital.

Dylan: Yes, I found that the political vision of ICOPA was extraordinarily limited, especially considering its professed commitment to a more radical abolitionist analysis and program. This undoubtedly had a lot to do with the underlying racism of the organization itself, which was reflected in the language of some of the conference resolutions: "We support all transformative measures which enable us to live better in community with those we as a society find most difficult, and most consistently marginalize or exclude" (emphasis added)¹.

A major figure in ICOPA even accused a small group of people of color in attendance of being "racist" when they attempted to constructively criticize the overwhelming white homogeneity of the conference and the need for creative strategies to engage communities of color in such an important political discussion. Several black student-activists I met at ICOPA told me how alienated they felt at the conference, especially when they realized that the ICOPA organizers had never attempted to contact the Toronto-based organizations with which these student-activists were working: a major black anti-police-brutality coalition, a black prisoner support organization, etc.

So I certainly share your frustrations with ICOPA. At the same time, I find myself wondering how a new political formation of prison abolitionism can form in such a reactionary national and global climate. You have been involved with a variety of prison movements for the last 30 years, so maybe you can help me out. How do you think about this new political challenge within a broader historical perspective?

Angela: There are multiple histories of prison abolition. The Scandinavian scholar/activist Thomas Mathieson first published his germinal text, The Politics of Abolition, in 1974, when activist movements were calling for the disestablishment of prisons -- in the aftermath of the Attica Rebellion and prison uprisings throughout Europe. He was concerned with transforming prison reform movements into more radical movements to abolish prisons as the major institutions of punishment.

There was a pattern of decarceration in the Netherlands until the mid-1980s, which seemed to establish the Dutch system as a model prison system, and the later rise in prison construction and the expansion of the incarcerated population has served to stimulate abolitionist ideas. Criminologist Willem de Haan published a book in 1990 entitled The Politics of Redress: Crime, Punishment, and Penal Abolition.

One of the most interesting texts, from the point of view of U.S. activist history is Fay Honey Knopp's volume Instead of Prison: A Handbook for Prison Abolitionists, which was published in 1976, with funding from the American Friends. This handbook points out the contradictory relationship between imprisonment and an "enlightened, free society." Prison abolition, like the abolition of slavery, is a long-range goal and the handbook argues that an abolitionist approach requires an analysis of "crime" that links it with social structures, as opposed to individual pathology, as well as "anticrime" strategies that focus on the provision of social resources.

Of course, there are many versions of prison abolitionism -- including those that propose to abolish punishment altogether and replace it with reconciliatory responses to criminal acts. In my opinion, the most powerful relevance of abolitionist theory and practice today resides in the fact that without a radical position vis-a-vis the rapidly expanding prison system, prison architecture, prison surveillance, and prison system corporatization, prison culture, with all its racist and totalitarian implications, will continue not only to claim ever increasing numbers of people of color, but also to shape social relations more generally in our society.

Prison needs to be abolished as the dominant mode of addressing social problems that are better solved by other institutions and other means. The call for prison abolition urges us to imagine and strive for a very different social landscape.

Dylan: I think you make a subtle but important point here: prison and penal abolition imply an analysis of society that illuminates the repressive logic, as well as the fascistic historical trajectory, of the prison's growth as a social and industrial institution. Theoretically and politically, this "radical position," as you call it, introduces a new set of questions that does not necessarily advocate a pragmatic "alternative" or a concrete and immediate "solution" to what currently exists. In fact, I think this is an entirely appropriate position to assume when dealing with a policing and jurisprudence system that inherently disallows the asking of such fundamental questions as: Why are some lives considered more disposable than others under the weight of police policy and criminal law?

How have we arrived at a place where killing is valorized and defended when it is organized by the state -- I'm thinking about the street lynchings of Diallo and Dorismond in New York City, the bombing of the MOVE organization in Philadelphia in 1985, the ongoing bombing of Iraqi civilians by the United States -- yet viciously avenged (by the state) when committed by isolated individuals? Why have we come to associate community safety and personal security with the degree to which the state exercises violence through policing and criminal justice?

You've written elsewhere that the primary challenge for penal abolitionists in the United States is to construct a political language and theoretical discourse that disarticulates crime from punishment. In a sense, this implies a principled refusal to pander to the typically pragmatist impulse to demand absolute answers and solutions right now to a problem that has deep roots in the social formation of the United States since the 1960s. I think your open-ended conception of prison abolition also allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the prison-industrial complex as a set of institutional and political relationships that extend well beyond the walls of the prison proper.

So in a sense, prison abolition is itself a broader critique of society. This brings me to the next question: What are the most crucial distinctions between the political commitments and agendas of prison reformists and those of prison abolitionists?

Angela: The seemingly unbreakable link between prison reform and prison development -- referred to by Foucault in his analysis of prison history -- has created a situation in which progress in prison reform has tended to render the prison more impermeable to change and has resulted in bigger, and what are considered "better," prisons.

The most difficult question for advocates of prison abolition is how to establish a balance between reforms that are clearly necessary to safeguard the lives of prisoners and those strategies designed to promote the eventual abolition of prisons as the dominant mode of punishment. In other words, I do not think that there is a strict dividing line between reform and abolition.

For example, it would be utterly absurd for a radical prison activist to refuse to support the demand for better health care inside Valley State, California's largest women's prison, under the pretext that such reforms would make the prison a more viable institution. Demands for improved health care, including protection from sexual abuse and challenges to the myriad ways in which prisons violate prisoners' human rights, can be integrated into an abolitionist context that elaborates specific decarceration strategies and helps to develop a popular discourse on the need to shift resources from punishment to education, housing, health care, and other public resources and services.

Dylan: Speaking of developing a popular discourse, the Critical Resistance gathering in September 1998 seemed to pull together an incredibly wide array of prison activists -- cultural workers, prisoner support and legal advocates, former prisoners, radical teachers, all kinds of researchers, progressive policy scholars and criminologists, and many others.

Although you were quite clear in the conference's opening plenary session that the purpose of Critical Resistance was to encourage people to imagine radical strategies for a sustained prison abolition campaign, it was clear to me that only a few people took this dimension of the conference seriously. That is, it seemed convenient for people to rejoice at the unprecedented level of participation in this presumably "radical" prison activist gathering, but the level of analysis and political discussion generally failed to embrace the creative challenge of formulating new ways to link existing activism to a larger abolitionist agenda. People were generally more interested in developing an analysis of the prison-industrial complex that incorporated the local work that they were involved in, which I think is an important practical connection to make.

At the same time, I think there is an inherent danger in conflating militant reform and human rights strategies with the underlying logic of anti-prison radicalism, which conceives of the ultimate eradication of the prison as a site of state violence and social repression. What is required, at least in part, is a new vernacular that enables this kind of political dream. How does prison abolition necessitate new political language, teachings, and organizing strategies? How could these strategies help to educate and organize people inside and outside the prison for abolition?

Angela: In order to imagine a world without prisons -- or at least a social landscape no longer dominated by the prison -- a new popular vocabulary will have to replace the current language, which articulates crime and punishment in such a way that we cannot think about a society without crime except as a society in which all the criminals are imprisoned.

Thus, one of the first challenges is to be able to talk about the many ways in which punishment is linked to poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, and other modes of dominance. In the university, the emergence of the interdisciplinary field of prison studies can help to trouble the prevailing criminology discourses that shape public policy as well as popular ideas about the permanence of prisons. At the high school level, new curricula can also be developed that encourage critical thinking about the role of punishment. Community organizations can also play a role in urging people to link their demands for better schools, for example, to a reduction of prison spending.

Dylan: Your last comment suggests that we need to rupture the ideological structures embodied by the rise of the prison-industrial complex. How does prison abolition force us to rethink common assumptions about jurisprudence, in particular "criminal justice?"

Angela: Since the invention of the prison as punishment in Western society during the late 1700s, criminal justice systems have so thoroughly depended on imprisonment that we have lost the ability to imagine other ways to solve the problem of "crime." One of the interesting contributions of prison abolitionists has been to propose other paradigms of punishment or to suggest that we need to extricate ourselves from the assumption that punishment must be a necessary response to all violations of the law.

Reconciliatory or restorative justice, for example, is presented by some abolitionists as an approach that has proved successful in non-Western societies -- Native American societies, for example -- and that can be tailored for use in urban contexts in cases that involve property and other offenses. The underlying idea is that in many cases, the reconciliation of offender and victim (including monetary compensation to the victim) is a much more progressive vision of justice than the social exile of the offender. This is only one example -- the point is that we will not be free to imagine other ways of addressing crime as long as we see the prison as a permanent fixture for dealing with all or most violations of the law.

Jail Leaves Woman 'black and blue'

2010-02-26T16:54:00.000-07:00

The family of a homeless, mentally ill woman said Thursday the woman is in “bad shape” after she remained locked up in Parish Prison for six months because of a clerical error made by the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office.
“We have been told by other family members who have seen her that she’s black and blue,” Libby Poche said, referring to her sister-in-law Melissa Poche.
“I can’t believe any of this happened in the United States,” Libby Poche added.
Melissa Poche, 55, was released Wednesday from the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, where she has been locked up since her July 22 arrest on four misdemeanors.
The District Attorney’s Office decided in August to dismiss the misdemeanors, but because of a clerical error, only one count was dropped.
As a result, Poche remained in jail an additional six months.
Libby Poche and her husband, David Poche, a pharmacist who is Melissa Poche’s brother, live in Mississippi. They were on their way Thursday to Baton Rouge to see her.
“Melissa has said she was beaten up while she was in jail,” Libby Poche said. “So I don’t know what we’re going to see when we get there.”
Melissa Poche, who was diagnosed in 1992 with schizophrenia and bipolar diseases and also has Type II diabetes, was sent to a hospital for treatment after she was released from jail, Libby Poche said.
She also said Melissa Poche told family members she asked to call them, but was not allowed to make the call.
It’s unclear whether Melissa Poche asked jailers in East Baton Rouge Parish or East Carroll Parish — where she was sent when the local jail was overcrowded — to make a call.
The East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office spent $20 to $25 a day for each of the 118 days Poche was housed in East Carroll Parish Prison, said Casey Rayborn Hicks, a spokeswoman for the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office.
Melissa Poche’s family, most of whom live out of state, have been searching for her since she was arrested and did not know she was in jail until mid-February, Libby Poche said.

“We even reported her missing to the Baton Rouge Police Department’s missing person’s department,” Libby Poche said. “I just can’t understand why they couldn’t find her in jail.”
Libby Poche said she found out her sister-in-law was in the Parish Prison when she searched for names of prison inmates on the Internet about two weeks ago.
After Libby Poche found her sister-in-law, she called authorities in East Carroll Parish and East Baton Rouge Parish to try to get her released.
“I found out that the (counts) had been dropped,” she said. “We couldn’t figure out why she was still in jail.”
She also said Melissa Poche has told family members she asked jailers why she was being held.
“She’s not stupid,” Libby Poche said. “She knew something was wrong.”
East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore said Thursday he met with his eight section chiefs, 48 assistant district attorneys as well as secretaries to ensure a similar mistake does not happen again.
He also said he met with officials from the Sheriff’s Office to try to determine why a “green sheet” had not been attached to the file on Melissa Poche that was sent to the District Attorney’s Office from the Parish Prison after she had been booked.
Moore said green sheets include all the information regarding those who are booked, including such basic information as age, birth date, address and phone number.
He said the green sheet is also supposed to include all the counts filed by the arresting agency — which in Melissa Poche’s case was the Sheriff’s Office.
“But in Melissa Poche’s case, there was only one (count) on the green sheet,” Moore said. “That’s the formal document we look at to determine what she was (booked) with and what (counts) we would have dismissed.”
Moore did say that a narrative included in the file did contain all of the misdemeanors Melissa Poche had been accused of committing.
Hicks dismissed the criticism about the missing green sheet and said the Parish Prison does not make the decision to release inmates.
“The sheriff is not authorized under the law to release those persons until ordered to do so by the district attorney or by court order,” she said.
Moore said that all he wants to do is “get it right.”
“We also hope that Melissa gets the medical care she needs,” he said.
Melissa Poche was arrested July 22 after she tried to buy cigarettes at a convenience but did not have any money.

Judge Thomas Porteous impeachment moves forward in U.S. House

2010-02-21T03:30:00.000-07:00

By The Times-Picayune

February 21, 2010, 3:06AM

No official word yet, but some congressional staffers are expecting the House this week to take up four articles of impeachment against embattled U.S. District Judge Thomas Porteous.

Thomas Porteous

The Judiciary Committee last month voted out the four articles that accuse the judge of ethical
lapses, including a refusal to recuse himself from a case even though he had been receiving money and expensive meals from one of party's lawyers.

If the House votes to impeach Porteous, the matter will move to the Senate for trial. It would take a two-thirds vote by the Senate to remove him from office.

Porteous, a Metairie resident, continues to receive his $174,000 judicial salary, although
he has been blocked from hearing cases. He was appointed a federal district judge in 1994 by President Bill Clinton after serving on the state bench in Jefferson Parish .

Lifers Giving Back: Angola Prisoners and Hospice.

2010-02-09T13:18:00.000-07:00

Came across this, today, looking for Kenny's address. It's a reprint from USA today, which I found on the Louisiana Department of Corrections' website. I don't want to give the DOC free PR, but I think the story about prisoners being there for eachother needs to be told. I'll be posting this in a few places today - like Mississippi Prison Watch. Even lifers have something to give that's worthwhile; when you're dying, it doesn't matter so much what someone was convicted of earlier in life - it matters who they have become.

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Inmates assist ill and dying fellow prisoners in hospices

By Rick Jervis, USA TODAY

ANGOLA, La. — Ted "Animal" Durbin expected prison life to be about brawls and knife fights — not changing adult diapers or bathing grown men.

Four times a week, Durbin, 51, who's serving 140 years for armed robbery at Louisiana State

Penitentiary, meets with frail, dying inmates at the prison's Treatment Center. He bathes them, provides other personal care and often squeezes skeletal hands as their bodies succumb to shriveled livers or stomach cancer. It's the best job he has ever had, he said.

"I can't repay society for some of the things that I did," Durbin said during a recent shift at the prison's hospice program. "But I can do it right here where I'm at."

The program at the penitentiary, better known as Angola state prison, is one of a growing number of hospice programs for dying inmates, said Carol McAdoo, a coordinating consultant with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. More than 75 state and federal prisons in 40 states, from California to Iowa to Texas, have hospice programs, she said.

Volunteer inmates shave debilitated prisoners, give them bed baths, help them to the bathroom or clean their rooms. Many of the volunteers are lifers themselves who hope the favor is repaid when they are unable to walk 10 paces to the bathroom.

"I know one day I'm going to be there," said Scott Meyers, 35, a volunteer at Angola who's serving 149 consecutive years for armed robbery and second-degree murder. "All I can do is hope there's going to be someone like me to be there for me."

The hospice programs underscore the challenges prison officials face in taking care of a rapidly graying prison population. The number of state and federal prisoners age 50 or older has soared from 41,586 in 1992 to more than 167,000 in 2005, McAdoo said. About 3,300 inmates die in prisons each year, she said.

"Tougher sentencing laws have created a huge growth in the number of aging inmates and people who aren't going to get out before they die," McAdoo said.

Before the programs, inmates died alone in prison medical wards and often suffered through painful ailments, said Fleet Maull, a former inmate who helped start the nation's first hospice program at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo. The programs also save money by reducing hospital visits, he said.

"When we started, people were being given aspirin for bone cancer," said Maull, who served 14 years on drug trafficking charges. "Today, people can have a self-administered morphine drip. We've figured out how to do these things in a safe and a compassionate way."

No prison in the USA houses more life-term inmates than Angola, where 3,712 inmates — 74% of the prison population — are serving life sentences, Assistant Warden Cathy Fontenot said. More prisoners die a year at Angola (32) than are paroled (four).

Inmates volunteer for the program, which has served 134 prisoners since it began in 1997. They are taught basic hospice practices and how to counsel a dying inmate. Gary Tyler, 51, who's serving a life sentence for first-degree murder, joined in 1997 after witnessing four of his friends die.

"I didn't want the situation I'm in to dehumanize me," he said. "Everything I thought about life has

changed. This program has reassured me of my humanity."

Warden Burl Cain created the hospice program after reading about one in the local newspaper, he said. The program has fostered compassion among inmates, he said.

"That's the real road to rehabilitation: to learn to give to others rather than take from others," Cain said.

Hospice patients live in six small, windowless rooms in the prison's Treatment Center. They're given a hospital bed, a TV with a DVD player and a bedside table.

George Brown, a volunteer inmate, is there often, making sure patients have enough water and are not in pain or in need of bathing. Often, he just sits and listens to them talk — about their families, their crimes and how their lives could have unfurled differently.

Last week, he sat through the night with one patient, Anthony Duke, who was wilting from liver cancer. Brown left him at 2 a.m. Five hours later, Duke was dead.

When an inmate dies, volunteer prisoners wash the body, zip it into a body bag and wheel it to the prison morgue, he said. From there, the body is either delivered to the family or ferried in a horse-drawn hearse to the prison cemetery for burial.

Losing a patient is at once painful and reassuring, said Brown, 49, who's serving a life sentence for killing two men.

Durbin, who earned his nickname after biting off a man's nose in a fight, says a prayer each day for 11 months when one of his patients dies. He also collects pictures of all his dead inmates. One day a year, he spreads them across his bed and meditates.

"This program has brought me to my own existence, my own humanity," Durbin said. "When I was young,I didn't care about nothing. This gives me something to care about."

http://www.corrections.state.la.us/Wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/DITN-Angola-Hospice1.pdf

Free Zulu, too.

2010-02-09T12:49:00.001-07:00

Hey All,

I'm officially on sick leave, but I just found this card that Annabelle and I made for Kenny Whitmore for his birthday this fall - I posted it to his facebook or something and turned it into a postcard, but don't think I ever mailed it to him because I only had black ink in my printer for a month...I guess time got away from me then.

So, I figured in addition to sending off his birthday card, at long last, I'd give him a little PR. It's also just a great idea, for those of you supporting prisoners: if you can't bust them out of the pen or visit them there, throw a party for them anyway, make a card with everyone there, and take a picture. Pass the hat while you're at it and drop a little something extra in their commissary account.

Anyway, most folks who know anything about prisons or the Black Panthers have heard about the Angola 3 - Kenny's story is more of the same, pretty much. I don't know how Louisiana gets away with what they've done to all these guys at Angola, but prisoner organizers get hit pretty hard all over the place. If it was just Louisiana (or Arizona or Nevada or New Mexico or...), there wouldn't be all these Prison Watch websites going up in protest across the country.

This is Kenny's story, in his words, from the site run by some of his supporters, Free Zulu.

All Power to the People.

- Peg (Arizona Prison Watch)

----------------------

My name is Kenny Zulu Whitmore. I have been enslaved In Angola state prison Louisiana for the last thirty-two years, falsely charged and convicted of armed robbery and murder.

In December 1973 I was arrested on frivolous charges and held over for a magistrate hearing where a bond would be set. While awaiting my court appearance I found myself in a cage right across from a black man who struck me as a fearsome revolutionary. It turned out to be Herman Wallace. I was impressed with his words of wisdom, which enabled me to better understand the treatment and condition of my community by the police. I felt honored just to have been in his presence. There were others on the unit, but all you could hear was the voice of Herman. We talked all through the night after he learned why I was arrested. He explained that if my concern was to protect the people, my only route of doing so would be to educate myself of the political Kingdom and then organize the people to effectively challenge the ill that cripple the people. I realized my speaking out against drug dealers and police brutality alone would be viewed as a personal war and wouldn't achieve anything. He told me he and others had established a chapter of the Black Panther party in Angola, to fight against prison corruption.

I gave him all my information because what he spoke of was what I needed in my life. I dare say it was my first true political education. The next day I learned he was there on trial for the death of a prison guard. At that time I believed he didn't stand a chance. In the mean time history has proven I was wrong. However, instead of focusing on his trial, he had many questions about community service and conditions. I ended up giving him my name and address. He told me he was officially making me a member of the Angola Chapter of the Black Panther Party. I was very honored but I had no idea what this man expected of me. But I knew about the Panthers and so I went back to the community with the idea of organizing the community against illegal drug trafficking.

On February 19, 1975 I was arrested again. This time charged with two counts of armed robbery of a Zachary shoe store. In June of 1975 all charges were dropped after both victims argued with the judge that I was not the person who did this crime. But I still couldn't go free. While awaiting an evidentiary hearing on the two robbery charges I was also charged with a 1973 robbery and murder. In this case the district attorney Ossie Brown came to me with a prepared confession and said, "You, Whitmore, were imprecated in the 1973 robbery and murder of Marshall Bond. And I know you didn't do this, but I need a key witness against the guy who did this and you are going to help me to get this guy."

He, the then D.A., gave me the confession to read and sign. The D.A. told me out right, "You are going to take the stand against this guy and say what I have prepared in that confession for y'all. And I am going to give you five years. You will not go to Angola, and you will be out in two and a half years." I told him, "Man, I don't have any idea of what you are talking about." He said, "I am the district attorney and my word is three against yours. And I can do whatever I want to you. Now help me get this guy or I will send you to Angola for the rest of your life." I refused and they immediately started beating me with sticks.

On January 3-6, 1977 I was tried and found guilty of second-degree murder and armed robbery. The victim was a wealthy ex-Mayor, member of the KKK in Zachary, Louisiana, which is a small rural community in the northern part of East Baton Rouge Parish. In the early morning I was dragged from my house to the murder place. I was beaten up from that time till 10 in the evening in order to make me confess, which - of course - I did not.I was given life and ninety-nine years. I believe my incarceration on these charges is a direct result of my being out spoken against the police harassment and brutality in the community. The police had a procedure of randomly choosing a Black person and falsely charging them to clear their unsolved cases.

On March 14, 1977 I arrived here at Angola. I was not here a good two hours before Angola guards jumped on me because I dared to complain of the guard throwing my mother's picture in the trash can. In a matter of minutes I was surrounded by guards in brown uniforms. I had an instant flash of Hitler's Brown Shirt Troops. They returned my personal property and within an hour I went before the classification board and I was assigned to CCR maximum security D-tier, which was known at that time as a militant tier. I was put in D#9.

Once in the cage a Big Brother stopped and spoke to me. He told me his name was King Wilkerson. He told me that the tier was organized in a way to benefit everyone and explained to me what was expected of me while on that tier. King said Mondays were tier discussion days; any questions I might have about the structure of the tier would be discussed. Classes were held on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: reading, writing, math, history and language. Albert Woodfox was teaching history. Albert Woodfox and I had become cool. Still, I had not learned of his connection with Hooks (Herman Wallace) until much later. But Woodfox and I fastly became best friends. About two weeks after being on D-tier, we had a confrontation with the guards and King was singled out and sent to Camp-J for breaking a guards jaw after they tried to jump him.

Since being on D-tier, I had heard the name Hooks many times, but had not had the opportunity to meet him because by the administration rules I could not go out on the yard for two years. And those two years were a learning experience - Woodfox was teaching me the principles of the BPP and the struggle here in Angola. Our goal was to organize all of the tiers of CCR.

In March of 1980, my two-year yard restriction was up. My third day on the yard Woodfox and I were out there with the brother everyone called Hooks. When I first saw him, I said to myself, I know this brother. I said "Herman from Baton Rouge Jail!". He remembered me and asked, "How long have you been here?" And Woodfox asked, "Y'all know each other?" Herman told him how we met and Woodfox said, "This is the little brother I have been telling you about."

That very day on the yard our family began. Though Hooks made me a member of the Black Panther Party long time ago (1975), it was agreed upon by all of us that I would remain in the shadows to keep me from being exposed to the danger that they themselves faced. And I would be in a better position to walk from the shadows and by-pass some of the harassment that they were getting from the administration and the inmate hatchet men that the administration would place on the tier to try and destroy the collective lifestyle that had been established in CCR. And thus we could reach out in the general population area. In the spring of 1981, King had returned from Camp-J, and they put him back on D-tier with Woodfox and I. King had heard that I had become a member of the Black Panther Party through Wallace, and he too agreed that I should remain in the shadows out of the direct line of the administration fire.

Woodfox, Wilkerson, Wallace and I would often be on the yard at the same time. Thereafter, I think security suspected that I had become a member of the Black Panther Party. They started with their harassment. I had too many books and I needed to put this or that in my locker box. And when I would go before the classification board, they would tell me, "We heard you are a Black militant. We hate Black militants. Denied." And when I asked why I was being denied release from CCR, they would say "nature of original reason".

In September of 1981, I was sent to Camp-J for, as security said, a partially dismantled zip gun they found in my cell. 'Camp-J' was security for lil' torture camp. I stayed at Camp-J for three weeks before I was on transfer back to CCR. While back on the tier I was on, I saw the guards brutally beat two guys on the tier.

Then they dragged them off as though they were dead animals. I immediately started to organize the tier. I asked guys on the tier to set their differences aside and become one voice. Two nights later three guards came down the tier harassing a few people about b.s. stuff, then they stopped in front of a guy's cell who clearly had mental problems. We all stood at the bars with homemade missiles to throw at them if they had attacked that guy. The guards left with a "we'll be back" look on their faces. The very next day I was transferred back to CCR, security's way of preventing me from spreading our revolutionary ideas at Camp-J.

The only reason I am being denied release from CCR is my connection with A-3 and my political concepts. My only reason for stepping out of the shadows is the truth of the guard's death back in the 1970's, which has now been proven to be part of a conspiracy against Albert and Herman. I was recruited by Herman Hooks Wallace into the Black Panther Party in 1974; once I got to Angola I participated in the Angola chapter of the Black Panther Party. Other comrades who made up the Angola Chapter, I later learned of. It was the prison authorities and the FBI trying to learn the names of Panthers and it was for that reason everyone became a shadow.

My being in the Shadow has nothing to do with my activism. I have been a part of the A-3 committee since its inception. Right now I have a motion before the court to correct my sentence. I have an illegal sentence for which I intend to prove that could very well set me free. The Louisiana State Court just recently ordered my trial court to respond to my motion, and if the judge applies this motion to the letter of the law, he would have no choice other than to correct this sentence and set me free.

So here I am, out of the shadow,
IN THE STRUGGLE.

Visiting in a Louisiana Correctional Facility as Defined By Them

2010-02-07T04:21:00.002-07:00

The visiting terms at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center are spelled out quite clearly on their website. If you have no computer at home, I guess you're just plumb out of luck unless you call the facility.

When an offender first arrives at Hunts, they are placed in reception.(HRDC) For the first thirty days, they are not allowed visitors. Their website states: "If an offender's stay at HRDC (the reception center) exceeds thirty (30) days, it is possible for the offender to request and receive special visits if approval of the Administration is secured. Such visits are generally allowed with certain members of the immediate family i.e. parents, legal spouse, sibling, grandparent or child of the offender." http://www.corrections.state.la.us/ehcc/services/offender/VisitInfo.htm

My husband was transferred to Elayn Hunt Correctional Facility on December 28, 2009 from a private facility in north Louisiana. He was placed in HRDC. According to my calendar, and I do know basic math, his thirty days are up. Yet, he is still in HRDC because every facility in Louisiana is filled to overcrowding and Hunts has no place to put him in general population. Keep in mind that he is in for a technical parole violation. He is not in for a new offense.

As per the guidelines at Hunts, he filled out a form requesting a special visit with me, his wife. He even called me to make sure he had all the information filled out correctly. He did write to me and advise me to call before I made the drive, but it's been my experience in calling these facilities that one person can tell you one thing on the phone, yet when you arrive, you are told something else. I opted to take the chance.

When I arrived at Hunts, my visit with my husband was denied. I was flabbergasted. I politely inquired as to why the visit had been denied. I was told they could not verify my relationship to my husband. What? I am his emergency contact on his paperwork. We have the same address. We have the same last name. I provided identification in the form of a Louisiana driver's license. We are legally married. I have the marriage license to prove it. I've been visiting him since his parole revocation.

So, they won't give him a visiting form for him to send to me to fill out. A special visit was denied. He has been in HRDC for over thirty days. For some reason he hasn't called me to talk to me about this. I know my husband. He WILL call home. I suspect they have denied him phone privileges and I have no clue why. What next?

Anonymous

Angola Prisoner Released From Solitary Confinement After ACLU Urging

2010-01-22T16:59:00.001-07:00

1.8.2010

Prompted by a letter from lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana, officials at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola have transferred Hymel Varnado to a shared cell after forcing him to endure 12 years of solitary confinement for no legitimate reason.

“For over a century, it's been clear that prolonged isolation has severe medical consequences, and in 1890 the US Supreme Court found that it can cause mental illness and that it is often too severe a punishment,” said Marjorie R. Esman, Executive Director of the ACLU of Louisiana. “It shouldn't have taken over a century for the Warden of Angola to recognize that no one should be isolated from human contact without a very good reason.”

Varnado, who has no record of escape attempts, assaulting staff or harming himself or others, was transferred to a shared cell on Dec. 30, 2009, after ACLU lawyers wrote to Angola’s Warden Burl Cain urging that Varnado be placed in a less restrictive setting and explaining the many medical reports and court rulings showing that prolonged isolation is dangerous and cruel.

Since his arrival at Angola in May 1997, Varnado has spent almost his entire time in an individual cell 23 hours a day. He was allowed to exercise alone in a fenced yard three times a week. His isolation caused him to experience psychological torture on a daily basis, including sleep deprivation and acute psychological pain.

Varnado was placed in solitary confinement not because of his behavior while in prison, but because he was young – 21 – at the time of his incarceration. In fact, he was released from solitary into a dormitory for several months last year and although he did well there and his health improved, he was returned to solitary when the dorm was closed.

“Logic, as well as human decency, demand that we allow people to interact with others,” said Esman. “The evidence has been clear for long enough that isolation causes illness. Hymel Varnado did not need to be isolated from other prisoners, and he spent years deprived of his ability to function for no reason other than that he was young when he committed his crimes. We're delighted that Mr. Varnado will now be able to have human companionship.”

The United States holds tens of thousands of inmates in long-term solitary confinement. Louisiana subjects a disproportionate number of prisoners to isolation despite the extensive evidence of harm of solitary confinement. Some, such as the Angola 3, were forced to endure more than three decades of isolation in solitary confinement.

“We are honored to help Mr. Varnado usher in the new year in more humane conditions,” said Jim Swanson, an attorney with the law firm Fishman, Haygood, Phelps, Walmsley, Willis & Swanson, L.L.P. “He can now regain his health, and we hope this will serve as a reminder that long-term use of solitary confinement is contrary to the law and, more importantly, to human decency.”

A copy of the ACLU's letter to Warden Cain may be found here. A copy of the notification of Mr. Varnado's transfer may be found here.

Gerald Bordelon Executed

2010-01-10T22:09:00.002-07:00

A convicted sex offender who confessed to killing his 12-year-old stepdaughter has been executed for the 2002 killing.

Gerald Bordelon was put to death Thursday evening by injection at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The 47-year-old waived his right to appeal the death sentence.

Bordelon strangled Courtney LeBlanc in 2002 after kidnapping her from her home in Livingston Parish at knifepoint and forcing her to perform oral sex on him. Bordelon led police to her body in a wooded area by the Amite River, about 20 miles from Baton Rouge.

He gave a taped confession and was convicted of the murder in 2006.

Bordelon's execution was Louisiana's first since 2002. No other executions are scheduled.

Melinda Deslatte of The Associated Press wrote this report.

Louisiana has seen dramatic decline in executions, in line with national trend

2010-01-10T22:02:00.001-07:00

By Michelle Krupa, The Times-Picayune
January 10, 2010, 6:20AM

Staff writer Katy Reckdahl also wrote this story.

In 1987, eight men were electrocuted at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola within the span of eleven weeks, during a decade when 18 state inmates were executed for crimes they committed.

But the past 10 years, have been quiet ones for Louisiana's death row, with three inmates put to death by lethal injection. The most recent, Thursday's execution of Gerald Bordelon, happened only because the convicted killer waived his appeals, hastening his death by many years. His was the first execution since 2002, when Leslie Dale Martin was executed for the rape and murder of a Lake Charles woman in 1981.

he dramatic decline in Louisiana executions since 1987, when the state briefly led the nation in that statistic, comes at a time when, nationally, both executions and the imposition of new death sentences have waned significantly.

For victim's families, the long wait between conviction and lethal injection -- during which inmates are given several layers of appeals -- can be interminable, advocates say. They question why the appeals process isn't in some way sped up: Texas, after all, still executes convicts at a steady clip.

"It shouldn't take them that long to decide whether somebody was really and truly found guilty," said Beverly Siemssen, president of Victims and Citizens Against Crime, pointing to cases that take more than decade to wind through the appeals process. "That is a lot of time to put a family through."

Lawyers for death row inmates counter that the reversal rate for death sentences in Louisiana is significant, underscoring the need for caution. Fifty percent of cases considered by federal judges since 2000 have been sent back to the state court for new trials, said Sarah Ottinger, executive director of the Capital Appeals Project.

The advent of DNA technology, which has exposed wrongful convictions -- including many from death rows across the country -- has changed some people's confidence in death penalty verdicts. Since 1989, seven men have left Louisiana's death row as free men after they were exonerated based on DNA and other evidence.

State is reviewing its process
A committee created by the Louisiana Supreme Court last year plans to examine the entire process for post-conviction appeals, both for defendants in capital cases and those serving other prison sentences.

"There is an obvious concern with trying to expedite the process, so that error can be identified as quickly as possible," said Cheney Joseph, an LSU law professor who serves on the panel. "If a conviction is a valid one, it will be affirmed and the law would take its course."

Chief Justice Catherine "Kitty" Kimball, in an interview with the Baton Rouge Advocate last fall, emphasized that the committee's aim is not to "hurry up and execute people."

"I think it is our goal to know that if someone has been sentenced that they may languish for years and years and years without being able to finalize their conviction or to find out that the conviction is not good," she said.

Appeals have more resources
The lengthy appeals process in Louisiana is not anomalous. Death-row inmates in the U.S. now usually spend at least a decade awaiting execution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In Louisiana, nearly 85 percent of the inmates on death row have been there for six or more years. More than half have been held there for 11 or more years, according to data provided by Angola.

During 2009, 11 states executed 52 inmates, with Texas accounting for nearly half of them. Since the death penalty was re-implemented by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, nearly 38 percent of the 1,188 executions in America have been carried out by Texas.

The change in the execution rate in Louisiana between the 1980s and now is explained, in part, by the fact that more and better-financed lawyers are handling the appeals process for these inmates, said Denny LeBoeuf, an attorney who actively handled death row appeals in Louisiana for many years.

"In the 1980s, we had no lawyers or very few lawyers working with no resources or time," said LeBoeuf, who is now the director of the ACLU's John Adams Project in New York.

Since the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1976, Orleans Parish juries have condemned 38 defendants to death. But a recent tally by attorneys for death-row inmates calculated that courts have found errors in 25 of those sentences, or nearly two-thirds. In some cases defendants were retried, resulting in convictions on lesser charges, while in others defendants were released.

Many of these reversals occurred during "post-conviction" appeals, which typically occur at least several years after conviction. The direct appeal, during which lawyers can only challenge decisions made during the trial, is the first level of review by the courts.

During the post-conviction process, defense attorneys obtain the entire case file, allowing them to see whether prosecutors or law enforcement withheld any evidence that might have helped the defense. These files can be voluminous, requiring thousands of hours to work through, said Gary Clements, director of the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana.

The less-thorough appeals process in Texas is one Louisiana shouldn't strive to emulate, Clement said, pointing to the 2004 execution of a man who forensic experts later concluded wasn't responsible for a house fire that killed his three children.

"They don't give their lawyers time to do the things that need to be done," he said.

Sometimes, arguments brought up during state appeals are, years later, embraced by federal judges. This was true in the 1987 case of Robert Tassin, whose Jefferson Parish murder conviction and death sentence was overturned two years ago by a federal judge on the same grounds raised before state courts for years, Ottinger said

Fewer death penalties
But Cynthia Killingsworth, first assistant district attorney in Lake Charles and a veteran of many death penalty cases and appeals, said she believes the process could be shortened while still holding onto safeguards to ensure people are treated fairly.

"I think a lot of it is redundant," she said about the appeals process.

Of Louisiana's current death row roster, totaling 83, nearly 20 percent -- 16 -- came from East Baton Rouge Parish. Thirteen condemned convicts are from Caddo Parish, while 10 are from Jefferson and seven are from Orleans.

John Holdridge, director of the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project, said one of the most significant changes in the death penalty has been the nationwide reduction in death sentences, which had once reached more than 300 annually. Last year, there were just over 100 new death sentences.

The change reflects not only juror attitudes, but a steep reduction in the number of cases in which prosecutors seek the death penalty.

In Calcasieu Parish, Killingsworth said her office has sought fewer capital charges over the years.
The change owes to many factors, she said, including the burden it can put on victim's families when a case is reversed and needs to be retried.

"We do consider how this is going to affect them," she said.

In Jefferson Parish, there hasn't been a defendant condemned to death since 2004. An Orleans Parish jury in August broke a 12-year period of local juries rejecting death sentences, finding that Michael Anderson should die from lethal injection for the 2006 massacre of five teenagers in Central City. Anderson has not yet been formally sentenced and is still in Orleans Parish jail.

One Inmate's Louisiana Story

2010-01-04T14:27:00.001-07:00

I have a rather unique story that takes many twists, but it truly doesn’t take an engineer to figure this case out.

On January 21, 1986, I was arrested in a small town named Pearlington, Mississippi and accused of committing the following crimes: 2 counts of aggravated rape, 2 counts of armed robbery, 1 count of crimes against nature, 1 count of assault and battery, and 1 count of auto theft. All these crimes added up to two life sentences and 300 plus years.

I flatly refused to plead guilty to any of these charges even after the police department in Slidell, Louisiana beat a so-called “confession” out of me. The DA saw that I pled “Not guilty” to all charges all the way to my trial date.

About 1 hour prior to trial, the DA sent my mother into the parish jail claiming the judge was going to give me life and that if I took 40 years, they would drop all other charges except the rape. I told my mother that I didn’t do any of it, and I would rather take life than 40 years. I was 17 years old at the time, and me and my mother were ignorant to the game that was being played. After much tears and pleading by my mother, I agreed to take a plea of 40 years for forcible rape.

In 1991, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals vacated my 40 year sentence and remanded it back to District Court for an evidentiary hearing. I appeared before the court on September 21, 2001 with a public defender. Once again I was denied by the court. But, during this hearing, a lot of facts came out that are pretty amazing.

1. At the time my first trial was supposed to take place, the DA didn’t have any of the arresting officers ready to go to trial. He stated that one was no longer with the department, and the other had gone to work for Customs.

2. Supposedly a knife was used in the commission of the crime. The Louisiana State Police crime lab listed a gun and bullets in the forensic report.

3. A sex crime kit used in the processing of this case. According to the forensic scientist, all exhibits were free of seminal stains. Hairs were processed that were not a match to mine.

When the DA was questioned during the hearing as to all the discrepancies, all he could say was at that time they were having a problem with the machine that was used to process sex crime kits. He had no answers for the other discrepancies.

That is just a summary of the foolishness that caused me to spend 20 years 9 months and 9 days in prison.
Upon my release, my case takes yet another twist. I am told by my parole agent that I have to go to sex offender classes and pay $50.00 a month per class for two classes a month. I had to send out flyers of my status with a three mile radius of my residence. I also had to give the police department photos of my vehicle AND my wife’s vehicle and have “SEX OFFENDER” placed on my driver’s license in bright orange letters.

Even though all of these aspects are current laws in Louisiana, there is one major flaw. They don’t apply to me because I copped out to the charge and one cannot subtract or add to an agreed upon contract, to wit, A Guilty Plea or Plea Bargain. However, I am being forced to abide by these guidelines or risk going back to prison. Then in January of 2008, I was forced to sign a contract agreeing to register for life as a sex offender or get arrested on the spot even after I carefully explained to the sheriff’s department that the law only applied to child predators. They still made me sign it.

There is yet another twist to my case. On October 16, 2008, my parole was revoked and I was sent back to prison for having a letter opener in my vehicle. According to the Louisiana Parole Board, a letter opener is a dangerous weapon. On the other hand, the Louisiana Criminal Code of procedures states: Dangerous Weapons include any gas, liquid, or other instrument which in the manner in which it is used, is calculated or likely to produce death or great bodily harm. With that said, how does a letter opener lying on the floorboard of my vehicle amount to a dangerous weapon. At that rate, the screwdrivers I had in my trunk could have been construed to be dangerous weapons.

I am back in prison on a technical violation serving 9 years for a letter opener. I stayed out of prison 16 months. Not once did I ever miss a sex offender class. I never missed a single payment, and I never missed a visit to my parole officer. I kept a job and never got into a single incident prior to this. Where is the justice in this foolishness?

Louisiana incarcerates more people than any other state in the US. People all across the nation know this, but when is someone going to step up and say enough is enough? It won’t ever be a person in the South to do this because the people of the South have their minds twisted and their head turned backwards when it comes to the justice system. Most lawmakers don’t even understand what they pass into law until they get caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

Citizens of the South rarely pay any attention to the laws passed in Louisiana until it hits home when their brother, sister, mother, etc get penalized by the state. Then they want to get concerned.

The justice system in Louisiana needs reform period. People have long known this. Right now in this state, inmates are doing 85% of their sentence. That law took effect in 1999. Right now as a result of this brilliant idea by lawmakers, every single parish and DOC facility is filled to capacity. That’s totally sad. At least 15 to 20% of those people are parole and probation violators. Why lock a man like me up to become a tax payer’s burden when I could be out in society helping to raise the economy up in this state instead of bringing it down?
Have the citizens of Louisiana stopped to think about all of the parolees and probationers that were violated and sent back to prison for trying to make sure their loved ones were safe during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita? Some of these guys called Louisiana to let their probation officers know where they were, and as soon as they came back to Louisiana, they were violated. On October 16, 2008, 36 people went before the Louisiana State Parole Board at Hunts Correctional Center. All 36 people were revoked. What does that say about Louisiana?

Stephen Sams
Currently located at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center

Torture at a Louisiana Prison

2010-01-04T14:19:00.001-07:00

CounterPunch

By Jordan Flaherty

The torture of prisoners in US custody is not only found in military prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. If President Obama is serious about ending US support for torture, he can start here in Louisiana.

The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is already notorious for a range of offenses, including keeping former Black Panthers Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, in solitary for over 36 years. Now a death penalty trial in St. Francisville, Louisiana has exposed widespread and systemic abuse at the prison. Even in the context of eight years of the Bush administration, the behavior documented at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola stands out both for its brutality and for the significant evidence that it was condoned and encouraged from the very top of the chain of command.

In a remarkable hearing that explored torture practices at Angola, twenty-five inmates testified last summer to facing overwhelming violence in the aftermath of an escape attempt at the prison nearly a decade ago. These twenty-five inmates - who were not involved in the escape attempt - testified to being kicked, punched, beaten with batons and with fists, stepped on, left naked in a freezing cell, and threatened that they would be killed. They were threatened by guards that they would be sexually assaulted with batons. They were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves. They were bloodied, had teeth knocked out, were beaten until they lost control of bodily functions, and beaten until they signed statements or confessions presented to them by prison officials. One inmate had a broken jaw, and another was placed in solitary confinement for eight years.

While prison officials deny the policy of abuse, the range of prisoners who gave statements, in addition to medical records and other evidence introduced at the trial, present a powerful argument that abuse is a standard policy at the prison. Several of the prisoners received $7,000 when the state agreed to settle, without admitting liability, two civil rights lawsuits filed by 13 inmates. The inmates will have to spend that money behind bars –more than 90% of Angola's prisoners are expected to die behind its walls.

Systemic Violence

During the attempted escape at Angola, in which one guard was killed and two were taken hostage, a team of officers - including Angola warden Burl Cain - rushed in and began shooting, killing one inmate, Joel Durham, and wounding another, David Mathis.

The prison has no official guidelines for what should happen during escape attempts or other crises, a policy that seems designed to encourage the violent treatment documented in this case. Richard Stalder, at that time the secretary of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, was also at the prison at the time. Yet despite – or because of - the presence of the prison warden and head of corrections for the state, guards were given free hand to engage in violent retribution. Cain later told a reporter after the shooting that Angola's policy was not to negotiate, saying, ''That's a message all the inmates know. They just forgot it. And now they know it again.''

Five prisoners – including Mathis - were charged with murder, and currently are on trial, facing the death penalty – partially based on testimony from other inmates that was obtained through beatings and torture. Mathis is represented by civil rights attorneys Jim Boren (who also represented one of the Jena Six youths) and Rachel Connor, with assistance from Nola Investigates, an investigative firm in New Orleans that specializes in defense for capital cases.

The St. Francisville hearing was requested by Mathis' defense counsel to demonstrate that, in the climate of violence and abuse, inmates were forced to sign statements through torture, and therefore those statements should be inadmissible. 20th Judicial District Judge George H. Ware Jr. ruled that the documented torture and abuse was not relevant. However, the behavior documented in the hearing not only raises strong doubts about the cases against the Angola Five, but it also shows that violence against inmates has become standard procedure at the prison.

The hearing shows a pattern of systemic abuse so open and regular, it defies the traditional excuse of bad apples. Inmate Doyle Billiot testified to being threatened with death by the guards, "What's not to be afraid of? Got all these security guards coming around you everyday looking at you sideways, crazy and stuff. Don't know what's on their mind, especially when they threaten to kill you." Another inmate, Robert Carley testified that a false confession was beaten out of him. ""I was afraid," he said. "I felt that if I didn't go in there and tell them something, I would die."

Inmate Kenneth "Geronimo" Edwards testified that the guards "beat us half to death." He also testified that guards threatened to sexually assault him with a baton, saying, "that's a big black…say you want it." Later, Edwards says, the guards, "put me in my cell. They took all my clothes. Took my jumpsuit. Took all the sheets, everything out the cell, and put me in the cell buck-naked…It was cold in the cell. They opened the windows and turned the blowers on." At least a dozen other inmates also testified to receiving the same beatings, assault, threats of sexual violence, and "freezing treatment."

Some guards at the prison treated the abuse as a game. Inmate Brian Johns testified at the hearing that, "one of the guards was hitting us all in the head. Said he liked the sound of the drums – the drumming sound that – from hitting us in the head with the stick."

Solitary Confinement

Two of Angola's most famous residents, political prisoners Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have become the primary example of another form of abuse common at Angola – the use of solitary confinement as punishment for political views. The two have now each spent more than 36 years in solitary, despite the fact that a judge recently overturned Woodfox's conviction (prison authorities continue to hold Woodfox and have announced plans to retry him). Woodfox and Wallace – who together with former prisoner King Wilkerson are known as the Angola Three - have filed a civil suit against Angola, arguing that their confinement has violated both their 8th amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment and 4th amendment right to due process.

Recent statements by Angola warden Burl Cain makes clear that Woodfox and Wallace are being punished for their political views. At a recent deposition, attorneys for Woodfox asked Cain, "Lets just for the sake of argument assume, if you can, that he is not guilty of the murder of Brent Miller." Cain responded, "Okay. I would still keep him in (solitary)…I still know that he is still trying to practice Black Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks chasing after them...He has to stay in a cell while he's at Angola."

In addition to Cain's comments, Louisiana Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell has said the case against the Angola Three is personal to him. Statements like this indicate that this vigilante attitude not only pervades New Orleans' criminal justice system, but that the problem comes from the very top.

The problem is not limited to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola – similar stories can be found in prisons across the US. But from the abandonment of prisoners in Orleans Parish Prison during Katrina to the case of the Jena Six, Louisiana's criminal justice system, which has the highest incarceration rate in the world, often seems to be functioning under plantation-style justice. Most recently, journalist A.C. Thompson, in an investigation of post-Katrina killings, found evidence that the New Orleans police department supported vigilante attacks against Black residents of New Orleans after Katrina.

Torture and abuse is illegal under both US law – including the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment - and international treaties that the US is signatory to, from the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified in 1992). Despite the laws and treaties, US prison guards have rarely been held accountable to these standards.

Once we say that abuse or torture is ok against prisoners, the next step is for it to be used in the wider population. A recent petition for administrative remedies filed by Herman Wallace states, "If Guantanamo Bay has been a national embarrassment and symbol of the U.S. government's relation to charges, trials and torture, then what is being done to the Angola 3… is what we are to expect if we fail to act quickly…The government tries out it's torture techniques on prisoners in the U.S. – just far enough to see how society will react. It doesn't take long before they unleash their techniques on society as a whole." If we don't stand up against this abuse now, it will only spread.

Despite the hearings, civil suits, and other documentation, the guards who performed the acts documented in the hearing on torture at Angola remain unpunished, and the system that designed it remains in place. In fact, many of the guards have been promoted, and remain in supervisory capacity over the same inmates they were documented to have beaten mercilessly. Warden Burl Cain still oversees Angola. Meanwhile, the trial of the Angola Five is moving forward, and those with the power to change the pattern of abuse at Angola remain silent.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans, and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.

Research assistance for this article by Emily Ratner.