Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Appeals court blocks Albert Woodfox “Angola 3” prisoner's release

As of this week a federal judge (for the 3rd time, has rules Albert Woodfox’s conviction is to be overturned due to lack of evidence and unfair jury selection. 

As he was set to walk out of that iron door solitary cell, the state of Louisiana put in an emergency appeal. Three days later the 5th circuit court of appeals ruled in favor to keep in imprisoned until the appeal is decided.

15 June 2015
A federal appeals court ruled Friday that Albert Woodfox, the last “Angola Three” prisoner still behind bars in Louisiana, must remain incarcerated for the time being. The decision came despite a district court judge’s ruling Tuesday that Woodfox be freed after more than four decades in solitary confinement.
In the earlier ruling, Judge James J. Brady of the US District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana also barred a third trial for Woodfox. He was convicted twice for the murder of a prison guard, but both convictions were overturned.
Woodfox, now 68, is one of a group of three prisoners at the notoriously brutal Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola who came to be known as the “Angola Three.” Members of the Black Panther Party, the three were targeted by prison and state authorities for their political beliefs and outspoken comments against conditions in the prison.
Angola, the oldest and largest maximum-security prison in the US, sits on the site of a former slave plantation turned into a prison at the end of the Civil War. It derives its name from slaves who once worked its fields, most of whom came from the African nation of Angola. Seventy-seven percent of inmates at the prison are African-American, and prison labor still works the fields.
Woodfox and Herman Wallace were convicted of the April 1972 killing of Brent Miller, a prison guard at Angola. They were tried and convicted by an all-white jury within two hours. Robert King, the third man, was convicted of the death of a fellow inmate in 1973. Combined, the three have spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement.
Wallace was set free October 1, 2013, at the age of 71, after a campaign waged by Amnesty International (AI) for his release on humanitarian grounds. A grand jury reindicted him two days later, but did not arrest him. He died the following day of advanced liver cancer.
King was released in 2001, after a court reversed his conviction. He has remained a tireless advocate for Wallace and Woodfox, writing on his web site, “I may be free from Angola, but Angola will never be free of me.”
In overturning Woodfox’s convictions, federal courts have ruled that his constitutional rights were violated through racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense and suppression of exculpatory evidence.
A 2011 report by AI condemned the legal case against Woodfox and Wallace, stating: “No physical evidence linking the men to the guard’s murder has ever been found; potentially exculpatory DNA evidence has been lost; and the convictions were based on questionable inmate testimony.”
Despite the lack of physical evidence and Woodfox’s twice-overturned convictions, the state of Louisiana is demanding further retribution. A spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General James D. “Buddy” Caldwell said Judge Brady’s order Tuesday “arbitrarily sets aside jury decisions and gives a free pass to a murderer based on faulty procedural issues.”
According to Woodfox’s attorneys, he suffers from high blood pressure and health and kidney disease. Having been held for the vast majority of the last 43 years in solitary confinement, he is believed to have spent the most time of any US prisoner in what Angola authorities refer to as “closed cell restriction.”
He has been held alone for 23 hours a day in a six-foot by eight-foot cell with views through metal bars of only a concrete corridor. In the remaining hour, he is allowed to shower and walk up and down the corridor or to have an isolated walk in the exercise yard, weather permitting.
Woodfox’s attorney George Kendall told the Guardian last year, “There is no other American prisoner who has been as long in solitary. If you ask other prisoners who have spent time in solitary, they will tell you that it is the worst thing that can happen to you in prison—it’s as lonely and painful as it gets.”
In 2008, Woodfox described the bouts of claustrophobia he has suffered frequently in his cell: “When I have an attack I feel like I am being smothered, it is very difficult to breathe, and I sweat profusely. It seems like the cell walls close in and are just inches from my face. I try to cope by pacing, or by closing my eyes and rocking myself.”
Juan E. Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, in 2013 called for Woodfox’s immediate release from solitary confinement, stating: “Four decades in solitary confinement can only be described as torture.”
The horrific conditions of Albert Woodfox’s incarceration are an indictment of the US prison system, which houses an estimated 2.4 million inmates in its prisons and jails.
While there is no government reporting system to count the number of prisoners in solitary confinement nationwide, the Vera Institute for Justice estimates that more than 80,000 people are placed in isolation in state and federal prisons on any given day. This is likely an underestimation, as the figure does not include those in jails, military facilities, juvenile facilities or immigration detention centers.
The recent suicide of Kalief Browder has focused renewed attention on the barbaric practice. Browder, who was accused of stealing a backpack at age 16, was incarcerated for three years at New York’s Rikers Island prison, where he was tortured and starved in solitary confinement without ever having been convicted of a crime. He committed suicide after returning home, psychologically shattered by the experience.
A recent Human Rights Watch report exposed that mentally disabled prisoners in the U.S., including minors and the elderly, are frequently subjected to solitary confinement. These prisoners, who are incarcerated in record numbers due to the shutdown of mental health services, often spend months, years and even decades locked in solitary confinement, being allowed only three to five hours a week of “recreation” alone in caged enclosures.

Woodfox’s advocate, Angela Allen-Bell, a professor at the Southern University Law Center visited Woodfox after the 5th circuits ruling to keep him incarcerated. He is so strong after all he has been through. It breaks my heart this nightmare continues. Here Allen-Bell describes the effect being moved from a state prison to a parish prison has adversely effected him.

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Albert Woodfox, the Louisiana prisoner who has spent 43 years in solitary confinement, will not be set free today. A three-judge panel ruled this afternoon that Woodfox will remain behind bars while it considers whether he can be retried for the 1972 murder of a prison guard. His conviction has twice been thrown out. Earlier today, we spoke to Angela Allen-Bell, an advocate for Woodfox and a professor at the Southern University Law Center. She visited Albert Woodfox yesterday and said he was prepared for the judge's decision either way.
ANGELA ALLEN-BELL: He has been through litigating this case, now, consistently since 1972. And so he's developed an ability to sort of understand that, you know, he has control over only one set of things, which is the truth, and nothing more. And so he does not allow himself to become very optimistic. He's very cautious when it comes to the judicial system because his experience has taught him that that is best.
CORNISH: After these last 40-plus years in solitary confinement, how is his physical health? I mean, what evidence can you see of the effects of his isolation?
ALLEN-BELL: Well, one of the things that I can often notice is, in the letters that he writes, his handwriting differs when he is under the duress of this confinement. And so a lot of times, when you read the writing, it almost looks like a child learning to write, like a toddler's writing. And when I see that, I know that he's succumbing to those conditions. The other thing is, he has panic attacks regularly. He also has diabetes. He has high blood pressure. And, you know, he's 68, and he has all of the issues that goes along with living in the body of a 68-year-old. But many of those things are enhanced because of these extreme conditions that he's living under.
CORNISH: We know that his initial imprisonment was at Angola, and he's now at a separate detention center. But the conditions, it sounds like, have been the same. He's been kept away from the general population. He's been in solitary confinement. How does he describe that - the size of the cell, what he's allowed to do or not do?
ALLEN-BELL: In that cell, he has a small bunk, and there's a very thin mattress that would be akin to what you would send to preschool with your kid. He has a toilet, and he has a small desk area. And it measures about six-by-nine. For the larger part of the 43 years, he actually had bars on the outside of his cell so that he could actually hear the television or hear the guards as they move about and even hear other inmates, sometimes screaming in agony. But he had the pleasure of hearing other people up until about two months ago, when he was moved to West Feliciana. Now, he has a solid metal door on the outside of his cell, and he's sealed behind the metal door, and that seems to be taking a toll on him because he's having a lot more panic attacks and issues with anxiety as of these last few months.
CORNISH: Now, Albert Woodfox - his original crime was armed robbery. His solitary confinement came after now questionable convictions for the death of the prison guard, Brent Miller. But at the time, his advocates said that he also was being punished, in a way, for being an organizer within the prison of the first chapter of the Black Panthers. The group was organizing against inhumane conditions at the prison. Angela Allen-Bell, has Albert Woodfox ever expressed to you any regret or concern about his activity during that time?
ALLEN-BELL: Absolutely not, and it's odd that you ask that question because that was some of the conversation we had on yesterday, when he was telling me of some of the things that he would like to do when he's free. And one of the things that he says that he would love to spend time doing is mentoring young boys who grew up without a father, like himself. And I said to him, well, Albert, I said, do you think maybe you should not try to help other folks? You know, try to be a little selfish? I mean, actually, you trying to be a public servant is what got you in this. And he said, absolutely not, I'll never do that. He said, that's what I was called to do.
CORNISH: What are next steps?
ALLEN-BELL: Well, his steps have always been to trust the judicial system, but what I expect also will happen is the public will become more involved in this, and this is going to turn into a bigger movement. This is not going to quietly go away. The people are now invested in this case because of what has been done to Mr. Woodfox.
CORNISH: Angela Allen-Bell. She's a professor at the Southern University Law Center. She spoke to us about Albert Woodfox. Thank you so much for talking with us.
ALLEN-BELL: Thank you for having me.
Copyright © 2015 NPR. All rights reserved. 
What can we all do? As Allen-Bell points out, the only way to push Louisiana Attorney General, Buddy Caldwell is for us to gain momentum on an international scale.

Please share this meme world wide! 

Please join the 1000s of people who support Albert Shaka Woodfox by contacting Gov. Bobby Jindal to NOT to waste anymore tax payer money in prosecuting this case. Consider yourself acting on behalf of a turning tide of justice, equality, dignity, & history.
Here are some ways you can contribute:

Sign Amnesty Petition Below: 
Call Buddy Caldwell’s office and ask him to withdraw his appeal: 225-326-6079

The conditions where he is right now are the very worse he has been in. Anyone who wants to write him and show support to him directly, he can use your words of encouragement. 
His address is:

Albert Woodfox #72148
West Feliciana Parish Detention Center
PO Box 2727
St. Francisville, LA 70775

Thursday, April 23, 2015

You will be shocked at how ignorant Americans are

You will be shocked at how ignorant Americans are

If you think the widening chasm between the rich and the rest spells
trouble for American democracy, have a look at the growing gulf between
the information-rich and-poor.

Earlier this year, a Harvard economist’s jaw-dropping study of American’s
beliefs about the distribution of American wealth became a viral video.  Now a new Pew study of the distribution of American news consumption is just as flabbergasting.

According to the Harvard study, most people believe that the top 20 percent ofthe country owns about half the nation’s wealth, and that the lower 60percent combined, including the 20 percent in the middle, have onlyabout 20 percent of the wealth.  A whopping 92 percent of Americansthink this is out of whack; in the ideal distribution, they said, the lower 60 percent would have about half of the wealth, with the middle 20 percent of the people owning 20 percent of the wealth.What’sastonishing about this is how wrong Americans are about reality.

In fact, the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent of the nation’s wealth,
and the top 1 percent hold more of the country’s wealth – 40 percent – than 9 out of 10 people think the top 20 percent should have.  The top 10 percent of earners take home half the income
of the country; in 2012, the top 1 percent earned more than a fifth of
U.S. income – the highest share since the government began collecting the data a century ago.

But America’s information inequality is at least as shocking as its economic inequality.

Pew sliced the TV news audience into thirds: heavy, medium and light.  In my Jeffersonian fantasy, that distribution would look like a bell curve; in fact, it looks like a cliff.  Heavy viewers watch a little over two hours of TV news a day, but medium viewers barely watch a quarter of an hour and light viewers average only two minutes a day.  The top third of the country does 88 percent of the day’s TV news viewing; the middle third watches only 10 percent of the total time; the bottom third sees
just 2 percent of the minutes of news consumed.  Two-thirds of Americans live in an information underclass as journalistically impoverished as the minuscule bazillionaire class is triumphant.This month, the Pew Research Journalism Project reported how Americans get their news at
home.  If you think it’s from the Internet, you’ll be surprised that the 38 percent of us who access news at home on a desktop or laptop spend an average of only 90 seconds a day getting news online.  America’s dominant news source is television, and the disparity between heavy viewers of TV news and everyone else is as startling as the gap betweenthe plutocrats and the people.

As for those heavy news viewers, says Pew, “There is no news junkie like a cable junkie.”  A
heavy local news viewer watches about 22 minutes of it a day at home,
and a heavy network news viewer watches about 32 minutes a day.  But a
heavy cable news consumer averages 72 minutes of it a day. The gap
between heavy, medium and light cable news viewers is especially stark.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably in that 72-minutes-of-cable-news-a-day class. 
But medium cable news viewers see barely more than three minutes of it a day, and
light cable news viewers see about 12 seconds of it a day.  In other words, either you
live in the country that watches more than an hour of Blitzer, O’Reilly,
Maddow, et al, a day – or in the country that watches virtually none of
them at all.

If you want to know where this is heading, consider another cheery piece of Pew research.
Americans 67 to 84 years old spend 84 minutes a day watching, reading
or listening to the news.  Boomers (48 to 66) are close behind, at 77
minutes a day.  But Gen Xers (33 to 47) spend 66 minutes, and
Millennials (18 to 31) spend only 46 minutes a day.  The kids are tuning
out.  I love it that 43 percent of “The Colbert Report” audience, and
39 percent of “The Daily Show” viewers, are 18 to 29 years old;
the young audiences of those fake news shows get real news from them. 
But fewer than a million and a half Americans under 50 are watching
them.

Much has been made of the ideological news bubbles we live
in, where we see the world exclusively through Fox-colored lenses, or
filters manufactured only by MSNBC or CNN.  The Pew study upends this
belief.  It’s true that about one-quarter of American adults watch only
Fox News, another quarter watch only CNN and 15 percent watch only
MSNBC.  But 28 percent of Fox News viewers also watch MSNBC, and 34
percent of MSNBC viewers watch Fox.  More than half of MSNBC viewers,
and nearly half of Fox viewers, watch CNN, and of CNN’s viewers, about 4
out of 10 also watch Fox, and 4 out of 10 also watch MSNBC.

It’s encouraging that our self-segregation into polarized news ghettos is a
bit of a myth.  But whatever joy there is in that finding is blunted by
the disparity between people who watch a lot of news and people who
watch almost none of it, and by the trend toward an even deeper division
ahead.  The danger democracy faces isn’t so much that different
segments of our country inhabit alternative realities constructed from
different data delivered by different news sources.  It’s that a
minority of the country watches a fair amount of news, and a majority
may as well be living on the moon.

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.