Three Correctional Officers at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola Sentenced for Abusing Inmate and Cover-Up

From a press release from the US Department of Justice

Three former correctional officers with the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, were sentenced today before United States District Judge James J. Brady for the Middle District of Louisiana for abusing an inmate and engaging in conduct to cover up the criminal conduct.  Mark Sharp, 33, received 73 months.  Kevin Groom, 47, was sentenced to one year probation and a $500 fine.  Matthew Cody Butler, 29, received two years probation and a $3,000 fine.

According to court documents filed in connection with their guilty pleas, on January 24, 2010, defendants Groom, Sharp and Butler were on duty as correctional officials when they learned that an inmate had escaped from his assigned location.  Shortly after the defendants joined the search for the escapee, the inmate surrendered to prison officials. The inmate was handcuffed behind his back and placed in the back of a pick-up truck to be transported to the medical unit.  Groom, Butler, and Sharp escorted the inmate on the back of that truck.  During the drive to the medical unit, Sharp repeatedly struck the inmate with an baton.  During the ensuring investigation of the inmate’s complaint that officers had abused him, Groom and Butler engaged in various conduct to cover up the assault.

Sharp pleaded guilty to violating the civil rights of the inmate and to making false statements to the FBI.  Groom pleaded guilty to falsifying records in a federal investigation and making false statements to the FBI.  Butler pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony.

Another former officer, Jason Giroir, also pleaded guilty on May 29, 2013, to falsifying a report and making a false statement to the FBI.  He will be sentenced separately on January 29, 2015.

“The vast majority of American law enforcement officers conduct themselves with honor,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta for the Civil Rights Division.  “But when law enforcement officers abuse inmates and attempt to cover-up their misconduct, the Department of Justice stands ready to hold those officers accountable for their conduct.”

“It is unfortunate that the defendants’ criminal activities threaten to overshadow the courageous and outstanding work performed every day by the vast majority of law enforcement officers, both inside and outside the penal system,” said U.S. Attorney J. Walter Green for the Middle District of Louisiana.

“This thorough and patient investigation  not only resulted in the full accountability of all correctional officers involved, but also demonstrated unwavering adherence to the procedural rights of the victim and accused,” said Special Agent in Charge Michael J. Anderson of the FBI’s New Orleans Office.

The investigation in this matter was conducted by Special Agent Taneka Harris of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and prosecuted by Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney AeJean Cha and Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert W. Piedrahita.

RIP Herman Wallace - The Muhammad Ali of the Criminal Justice System

From the Angola 3 Newsletter.


This morning we lost without a doubt the biggest, bravest, and brashest personality in the political prisoner world.  It is with great sadness that we write with the news of Herman Wallace's passing.

Herman never did anything half way.  He embraced his many quests and adventures in life with a tenacious gusto and fearless determination that will absolutely never be rivaled.  He was exceptionally loyal and loving to those he considered friends, and always went out of his way to stand up for those causes and individuals in need of a strong voice or fierce advocate, no matter the consequences.

Anyone lucky enough to have spent any time with Herman knows that his indomitable spirit will live on through his work and the example he left behind.  May each of us aspire to be as dedicated to something as Herman was to life, and to justice.

Below is a short obituary/press statement for those who didn't know him well in case you wish to circulate something.  Tributes from those who were closest to Herman and more information on how to help preserve his legacy by keeping his struggle alive will soon follow.

On October 4th, 2013, Herman Wallace, an icon of the modern prison reform movement and an innocent man, died a free man after spending an unimaginable 41 years in solitary confinement.

Herman spent the last four decades of his life fighting against all that is unjust in the criminal justice system, making international the inhuman plight that is long term solitary confinement, and struggling to prove that he was an innocent man.

Just 3 days before his passing, he succeeded, his conviction was overturned, and he was released to spend his final hours surrounded by loved ones.  Despite his brief moments of freedom, his case will now forever serve as a tragic example that justice delayed is justice denied.

Herman Wallace's early life in New Orleans during the heyday of an unforgiving and unjust Jim Crow south often found him on the wrong side of the law and eventually he was sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for armed robbery.  While there, he was introduced to the Black Panther's powerful message of self determination and collective community action and quickly became one of its most persuasive and ardent practitioners.

Not long after he began to organize hunger and work strikes to protest the continued segregation, endemic corruption, and horrific abuse rampant at the prison, he and his fellow panther comrades Albert Woodfox and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown in solitary.

Robert was released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary but Herman remained there for an unprecedented 41 years, and Albert is still in a 6x9 solitary cell.

Herman's criminal case ended with his passing, but his legacy will live on through a civil lawsuit he filed jointly with Robert and Albert that seeks to define and abolish long term solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment, and through his comrade Albert Woodfox's still active and promising bid for freedom from the wrongful conviction they both shared.

Herman was only 9 days shy of 72 years old.

Services will be held in New Orleans. The date and location will be forthcoming.

For more information visit angola3.org and angola3news.blogspot.com.

Robert H. King responds to Louisiana Attorney General James Caldwell

From the Angola Three News website:

Many thanks to all of you who have aided our cause and added your voices to our quest to free Albert from an obviously unjust imprisonment of more than 40 years. Please continue to make your voices heard and your dissent known, especially in light of the recent email response by Louisiana's Attorney General, James Caldwell. One wonders: Why in the face of so many mitigating facts and circumstances would the Attorney General persist in his unethical efforts to pursue the persecution of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace? Is it really justice he seeks, or is there something else he wants? The following may add some light to the subject.

When Woodfox was first granted a new trial in 1993, the Attorney General's Office elected to retry the case, which is a rare occurrence. Twenty-three years earlier, John Sinquefield, a young and ambitious local assistant district attorney, prosecuted Albert and made repeated references/inferences to Albert's political beliefs and militancy. Having had prior involvement in this case, Sinquefield could not (or chose not to) prosecute in his second hearing. However, this recusion (or self restraint) did not apply to his assistants. Enter Julie Cullen, an attorney working with Sinquefield.  It was Cullen who declared to the press, that she would retry Albert as "a 'Black Panther." During that trial in 1999,when I appeared as a character witness for Albert, Julie Cullen made repeated references to Woodfox's militancy as Sinquefield had done before her and Woodfox was again convicted.

Sinquefield, Cullen and Caldwell were all previously connected to this case by the thread of time and they have all used this case to further their careers. Sinquefield and Caldwell are well-documented boyhood friends, who went to school together, graduated together and became lawyers together. In Sinquefield's own words, "We've been friends, allies ever since." Julie Cullen has worked with and been very close to both men. As you can see, their careers have been protected at all costs, even accusing innocent men of murder or rape, as Caldwell in his recent email has done once again.

Buddy Caldwell has long done a great disservice to people of intelligence, especially lawyers...and jurists, in his attempt to sell this malicious and unsubstantiated rape lie. If, in 1969 there had been actual evidence of Albert committing rape, why would the system instead choose to try Woodfox on only the lesser charge of robbery? According to Caldwell, Albert was considered "a career criminal." The logical question therefore remains...If Albert had committed all of these other alleged crimes and was in fact a career criminal, why was he not prosecuted? Just for the record - any young black man that was arrested became a suspect for unsolved crimes. This was a process so widespread that across the country the practice is known as "clearing the books."    

It is in this same context that Caldwell has wrongfully accused Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace of committing the murder of prison guard Brent Miller. The evidence linking Herman and Albert to the crime is nonexistent. The bloody fingerprint at the scene of the crime did not match Herman or Albert's. A knife found at the scene of the crime had no fingerprints on it at all. Other DNA evidence that allegedly had Albert's specks of blood on it was lost by the prison. Furthermore, multiple alibi witnesses testified that Albert and Herman were in other parts of the prison at the time of the murder. In contrast, it has been proven that state witnesses were bribed to lie under oath. Albert's conviction has now been overturned three times, and Herman's conviction is similarly under Federal Court scrutiny for evidence exposing prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations.

Finally, by claiming that the Angola 3 have never been in solitary, Caldwell is redefining the nature of solitary confinement and minimizing its inhumane conditions. Courts here in the US have already ruled that confining prisoners in cells 23 hours a day constitutes solitary confinement regardless of any small privileges that may or may not be incrementally given and taken away at random. Over a decade ago, we filed a civil lawsuit challenging the State of Louisiana for their unconstitutionally cruel and unusual treatment that is solitary confinement. Magistrate Judge Dalby describes our almost four decades of solitary as "durations so far beyond the pale" she could not find "anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence." It is for the courts and not for Attorney General Caldwell to define whether or not being held in close cell restriction constitutes solitary confinement.

Attorney General Caldwell would do well to consider that I was prosecuted for being a "co-conspirator" by proxy for only knowing Albert and Herman and for my affiliation with the Black Panther Party. I had never met prison guard Brent Miller but I was put in solitary confinement and placed under investigation for this crime for 29 years. More to the point, had I not been 150 miles away at the time in another prison but at Angola prison, I would probably have been charged and convicted for a murder I did not commit. As I am free, speaking out now is what I must do.

Again, thanks to the many individual supporters and organizations who stand by the Angola 3 and ask you to continue to take action.

Power to the People/As Ever

Robert H. King
International Coalition to Free the Angola 3

Amnesty International Urges State of Louisiana Not to Appeal Federal Ruling Overturning Conviction in Angola 3 Case

From an Amnesty International news release:

Amnesty International called on Louisiana Attorney General James Caldwell today not to appeal a federal court ruling overturning the conviction of Albert Woodfox of the ‘Angola 3’ for the second-degree murder of a prison guard in 1972. Amnesty International has raised serious human rights concerns over the case for many years.

In a ruling on Tuesday, Judge James Brady of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana found that racial discrimination lay behind the under-representation of African-Americans selected to serve as grand jury forepersons in the jurisdiction in which Woodfox, 66, who is African-American, was retried after his original conviction was overturned in 1992.

Judge Brady found that the state had failed to meet its burden “to dispel the inference of intentional discrimination” indicated by the statistical evidence covering a 13-year period from 1980 to 1993 presented by Albert Woodfox’s lawyers. The state, Judge Brady found, had failed to show “racially neutral” reasons to explain the under-representation of African-Americans selected as grand jury foreperson during this period.

Woodfox was convicted in 1973 along with a second prisoner, Herman Wallace, of the murder of Brent Miller. This conviction was overturned in 1992, but Woodfox was re-indicted by grand jury in 1993 and convicted again at a 1998 trial, and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1999. In 2008, a U.S. District Court ruled that Woodfox had been denied his right to adequate assistance of counsel during the 1998 trial and should either be retried or set free. The court also found that evidence presented by Woodfox’s lawyers of discrimination in the selection of the grand jury foreperson warranted a federal evidentiary hearing. While the State appealed the District court for a retrial – and won – yesterday’s ruling from the evidentiary hearing, once again sees the conviction overturned.

Amnesty International has repeatedly expressed concern that many legal aspects of this case are troubling: no physical evidence links Woodfox and Wallace to the murder, potentially exculpatory DNA evidence was lost by the state, and their conviction was based on questionable testimony – much of which subsequently retracted by witnesses. In recent years, evidence has emerged that the main eyewitness was bribed by prison officials into giving statements against the men. Both men have robustly denied over the years any involvement in the murder.

Woodfox has been held since his conviction over 40 years ago in solitary confinement. The extremely harsh conditions he has endured, including being confined for 23 hours a day, inadequate access to exercise, social interaction and no access to work, education, or rehabilitation have had physical and psychological consequences. Throughout his incarceration, Woodfox has been denied any meaningful review of the reasons for being kept in isolation; and records indicate that he hasn’t committed any disciplinary infractions for decades, nor, according to prison mental health records, is he a threat to himself or others. Amnesty International has repeatedly called on the authorities that both he and Wallace be removed from such conditions which the organization believes can only be described as cruel, inhuman and degrading.

"The fact that Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned again gives weight to Amnesty International's longstanding concerns that the original legal process was flawed," said Tessa Murphy, an Amnesty researcher.

Angola Three Member Albert Woodfox Has Conviction Overturned For Third Time

From the Angola Three News website:
Today, February 26, District Court Judge Brady released a 34-page ruling that granted habeas to Albert Woodfox on the issue of racial discrimination in the selection of the grand jury foreperson for his 1998 retrial. This decision now overturns Albert’s conviction for a third time.

In the 34-page ruling, Judge Brady reviews the arguments of both sides and concludes that Albert's team used the correct baseline for comparison, and that using that baseline, the discrimination is statistically significant no matter which tests are used. It was the State's burden in these proceedings to prove that there was a race neutral procedure in place for selecting forepersons. Judge Brady agreed with Albert that the State failed to do this.

Just as when Judge Brady overturned Albert’s conviction in 2008, the State is now expected to appeal today’s ruling to the 5th Circuit. Therefore, nothing is certain except that the legal team and A3 supporters will not stop fighting until this ruling is affirmed by the 5th Circuit and Albert is finally a free man.

This is an important victory, thanks in no small part to the efforts of our supporters!

As we learn more, we will post updates here, so please check back for more information about Albert’s case. For more background, this is our report from the evidentiary hearing that preceded today's ruling.

View/Download a PDF of Judge Brady's ruling at this link.

A Child On Death Row - The Story of Shareef Cousin

From Resurrection After Exoneration:

“I was a child. Death row didn’t affect me like it would now. Today, I’d go crazy!” On July 3, 1996, when Shareef Cousin was only seventeen years old, he became the youngest inmate on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. As a matter of fact, he was the youngest person in the world to be sentenced to death at that time. 

The thirty-four-year-old man who works with me in the RAE House is Shareef Cousin. I have only known him for a couple of months, but the person I know is ambitious, driven, and eager to change the world. He presents himself as well-educated and hard-working. He refers to himself as an organizer. 

Before I ever met Shareef, I read a synopsis of his story…just a few paragraphs, but enough to peak my curiosity. I had heard little tidbits about him, and wondered how a kid, the same age as the students I’ve been teaching for four decades, could possibly survive the harshness of a death sentence for a crime which he did not commit. 

Last Friday night, I finally heard him tell his story to an audience. I had been told that he makes his listeners angry, that he leaves them wanting to take action, eager to become involved in the solution. I have found that to be absolutely true! Then, today, he sat down and answered my questions. He gave me a few hours of his time, to try to help me to understand where he has been and where is he today. 

Shareef described his childhood, growing up as the seventh of eight children of a single mother who was a minister in New Orleans. “We had the biggest house on our street, the only two-story house, and all of the kids in our neighborhood hung out in our basement.” He went to Catholic elementary school, and then moved to Massachusetts to stay with his older brother, where he attended school for eighth and ninth grades. When he returned to New Orleans for his sophomore year at F.T. Nicholls High School, he was bored and unchallenged. His gifted classes in Massachusetts had prepared him well, but not for the slow pace of public schools in New Orleans. He began cutting classes, and would ultimately find himself a high school dropout, not by choice, but as a result of his arrest for murder in 1995. 

When Shareef was only sixteen years old, he was arrested for the murder of Michael Gerardi, outside of Port of Call, a restaurant on the outskirts of the French Quarter.

Despite video and numerous witnesses providing absolute proof that Shareef was playing in a basketball game at the time of the crime, he was convicted and sentenced to death. Every possible factor was a part of his story: prosecutorial misconduct (The prosecutor actually “kidnapped” the witnesses for the defense during the trial), lack of investigation (His mother lost her home and church paying fees for inadequate legal defense), his age (only seventeen years old, a juvenile), his race (black on white crime), suppressed evidence, police dishonesty (One of the homicide detectives anonymously called in the tip to Crimestoppers, which had Shareef arrested and collected the reward himself!), and of course, the oft-debated issue of capital punishment. The media coverage was enormous…”Geraldo,” Time, Essence, satellite interviews from death row. “They made a website about my case, and I would get large bags of mail every day from strangers.” 

Attorneys convinced Shareef to plead guilty to four unrelated robbery charges, promising him a lesser sentence of ten years, of which he would serve half. He was assured that they would win the murder trial with the overwhelming evidence proving his innocence. None of these promises were brought to fruition. He was sentenced to twenty years for the robberies, death for the murder, and still remains on parole today for the robberies, with which he had no connection whatsoever. 

“It might have been all of those kids hanging out in my basement. They were all robbing people, and the police saw me as their ring-leader. I had been in a little trouble – things like truancy and smoking weed. Once I was arrested for possession of a firearm. That was crazy! I was just carrying it for my image. I never even had any bullets to put in that gun. I was just a bad kid!” 

“Did you ever notice?” he asked me. “The feds build a case. Sometimes it takes years. And then they make an arrest. The state, on the other hand, makes an arrest and then they start to build their case. You see that? That’s what they did to me. I was framed.” 

Yes, I see that, but I must admit that I didn’t “see that” until Shareef pointed it out to me.

When asked about his time on death row, Shareef paused before responding. “As a child on death row…children are immune to it in a sense. I went up there playing a lot. I was a kid. I dealt with it like it was all a joke.” I sense his childish idealism as he continues, “I knew I didn’t do it, so I knew I was going home. I got depressed. I cried because I missed my family and friends, but I never thought I wouldn’t make it home.” 

Shareef never received an execution date while he was on death row. “None! Everybody else was getting them, but not me. I brought life to the guys on death row, by the fact that I was always upbeat, crackin’ jokes, playin’ a lot. I think everybody on death row has hope. 90% think they never will be executed. Even the ones who know they are guilty don’t think it will ever really happen! ” It definitely happens. The cruel reality of the situation is that three men were executed while Shareef was there. 

Education was a top priority for Cousin on death row. “I literally went to school on death row by myself.” Shareef set a schedule for himself. He got up and got dressed for school every morning, and went to school right there in his cell. He set a schedule for his classes and kept to it. He taught himself math from 8:00 until 9:00, English from 9:00 until 10:00, social studies, science, and all the other courses throughout the day….every day! When he left death row and went into general prison population, he had to trick the administration into letting him get into literacy classes, by telling them that he could not read or write. After a few more slick moves, he was able to take the GED and passed it on the first try. His next step was to take correspondence courses from LSU. 

“Release from death row was bittersweet.” Cousin was offered a plea bargain. He could plead guilty to the murder, be released on time served, and it would all be over. “One of the attorneys representing me in my appeals encouraged me to take the offer and go home! I was like NO! Right after that, just about two or three hours after I turned them down, they dropped the murder charges completely. It was a Friday. I was on the tier at Orleans Parish Prison while I awaited trial. It was lunchtime and I was playing spades. We saw it on TV. The murder charges against me had been dropped. I found out about it from the television, because they didn’t allow attorney visits between 11 AM and 1PM."

Cousin says that he wasn’t even happy when he saw that on television. He wanted to go to trial. “I was disappointed. All the shit they did me in my first trial! This time it wouldn’t be me on trial; it would be them on trial. I would take part in my own defense. They were going to be made a spectacle of. That’s why they dropped those murder charges – just to protect themselves.” 

It was the end of death row for him, but Cousin still had to remain in prison. The murder charges were dropped, but those robbery convictions that had been used as a bargaining tool persisted. “I was happy to leave most of those guys on death row. But people like John Thompson and Juan Smith…I didn’t want to be there, but at the same time, I didn’t want to leave them behind either.” 

Shareef Cousin cannot remember the exact date that he came home. When he was finally released from prison in September of 2005, he could not come home, because there was no home to come home to. Katrina had devastated New Orleans only a couple of weeks before his release, so he went to a cousin’s house in Bossier City, in order to have a Louisiana address. “They would have sent me to a shelter if I didn’t have a family member to go to in Louisiana.” He went to visit his mother in Massachusetts for a week. 

Rachel, his attorney, lived in Atlanta, and Shareef went to stay with her to get back on his feet. “I wasn’t thinking about feelings at that point. I was happy to be out, of course, but I was thinking about what I needed to accomplish. I spent a lot of time those first months studying for the ACT and the SAT.” In January, Cousin entered Morehouse with a free ride, and worked fulltime to abolish the death penalty, at Southern Center for Human Rights as a community organizer. He received no compensation from the state or counseling for his mental or emotional needs, and he did not know how to say “NO.” This articulate young man was the perfect person to represent the cause. “People were using me up. My life seemed like it was designed for me. I was doing what everyone expected me to do. I didn’t make any decisions for myself. Life was happening to me. I wasn’t living my own life.” 

“I was doing what everyone expected me to do, but I was lost. I was immature in relationships, finances, decision-making, period! I was also very impressionable. I had a sense of entitlement. They owed me after what they did to me. Now I realize no one owes me anything, but at that time I couldn’t see life like that.” 

The inevitable “relationship” occurred, and Shareef wasn’t prepared for the ready-made family he found himself a part of. She had three kids already and they had another child. Shareef had never lived with a woman and he wasn’t ready for that at all. He was in his third year at Morehouse and working full-time. Since he did not have a father in his life when he was growing up, he wanted the opposite for his family. “Even though I knew she wasn’t the woman for me, I stuck with the relationship, taking over the financial burden of an entire family. I had been comfortable by myself. I bought a five bedroom house in Atlanta to give my child a home. I never thought about the responsibilities of home ownership. Everything started going downhill. She wasn’t working. I was in a financial bind with a $1500 mortgage, car note, utilities, insurance…all that! I had to find more dollars!” 

Shareef began attending real estate seminars, the kind you see advertised on television in those infomercials. Seeking a way to make some easy money, he became involved in fraudulent real estate deals, and found himself back in jail. “I was really unhappy! In a way, I sort of welcomed the jail sentence. It was almost an out for me…out of that bad relationship, that is.” When he was released from the Georgia prison this past summer, he chose to return to New Orleans. He says that Atlanta feels more like home to him, but that there is death penalty work to be done all over the country, and he thought he would give New Orleans a try. Shareef chooses to live in the transitional housing of RAE, the non-profit agency which he co-founded in 2007. He is actively participating in the mission of Voices of Innocence and Resurrection after Exoneration. He says that he is no longer angry, but he continues instilling anger and drive in others through sharing his story. He has developed a business plan for Beacon Industries, a print shop located in the RAE House and has put that plan into action, running a start-up business. “It’s a lot of work. I have a real strong belief in God. I joined church. This is the most peaceful my life has ever been. I know that there is something here I’m connected to! I’m not trippin’ off the material stuff. I’m on the right path and I know it, because God keeps placing people on that path to facilitate my journey.”

This is Not Theoretical: Reflecting on a Recent Visit to Louisiana State Penitentiary, By Nicky Gillies

Reposted from our friends at The Oyster Knife.

This piece was written after guest contributor Nicky Gillies participated in the NOLA to Angola bike ride, a fundraiser for the Cornerstone Builders’ Bus Project, which helps people in Louisiana travel to visit their incarcerated loved ones. 

This October I spent three days pushing through the 160 winding bike miles from my home in New Orleans to Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola.  It is still a functioning plantation, much as it has been since the time of slavery.  Angola spreads across 18,000 acres of lauded farmland tucked into a bend in the Mississippi River.  Roughly 5,000 people live and work and eat and sleep and write and shit and dream and shower there, not counting the employees.  Most of those 5,000 people are Black men, young and old, and the vast majority of them—almost 90%—will die inside barbed wire.

Intellectual discussions of the 13th amendment and years of participating in prison-related organizing did not prepare me for the heartbreak and outrage of seeing farmland that is still tilled by a captive and almost 80% Black population.  This is not an antiquated system.  Slavery is contemporary, although it has been refashioned several times, and prison labor is integral to the US economy.  Activist lawyer and former prisoner Paul Wright wrote that simultaneously removing over 2 million incarcerated people from the work force and employing another million as guards “is the most thoroughly implemented government work program in American history since the New Deal.”  Knowing this, seeing Angola—endless barbed wire and guard towers and prison uniforms and eerily beautiful fields stretching in all directions—is devastating.  It is an atrocity.  It is also mundane.

Here are things I saw and learned:  The warden uses dogs bred with wolves to guard prisoners and chase them down, and has even recruited dogs in the area that were supposed to be euthanized for aggression to work in the prison.  There is a golf course in Angola.  You can tee-off there for twenty dollars.  The prisoners manufacture the coffins used when someone passes away inside, which happens on average 32 times each year.  An inmate is paroled and walks out the gates to the free world an average of only 4 times a year.  There are 18,000 acres where cotton is grown.  The operating budget is one hundred million dollars.  The prison museum keeps an old electric chair on display, as if the state no longer murders people, as if this was a fleeting oddity.  And then there’s the rodeo, which was happening the day of our visit.

We blow past several miles of backed up cars waiting to enter through the first set of gates.  A mass of smelly kids on bikes, we press into the surge of 10,000 people there to see the rodeo.  The rodeo has been running since the 1960s, and at $5 per person to enter the inner gates and $15 per person to get rodeo tickets, it brings in an enormous profit for Warden Burl Cain each October.  (Angola proudly calls itself a self-sustaining prison, meaning that its profits—mostly extracted from an exploited labor force—cover its operating costs.)  The rodeo is quite dangerous.  Some events require significant skill and others are designed to humiliate the participants.  Prisoners compete to win extra visitation hours and cash prizes.  The rodeo also features a “crafts fair” where prisoners can sell things they’ve produced and keep about 80% of the profit.  This money can only be spent in the prison—phone calls, soap, cigarettes, underground purchases from guards, etc.

We approach the gates to the rodeo, but cannot bring ourselves to hand over $5 for a closer look.  Instead we wander the perimeter and stare: children jumping on the bounce house next to the guard tower, families excited and laughing and shouting across the crowd, the fake trolley bus that laps the parking lot to transport visitors, the prisoners in their uniforms staffing the event, the hotdog stand, the barbed wire, the guards, the guns.  I wonder how many generations have died inside these gates.  I also wonder why anyone would bring their children to a prison for fun on a gorgeous Louisiana October Sunday.  What does this teach them?  Some in the crowd are probably rushing to see their incarcerated loved ones.  But many, many more of them are shoving through the gates to get good seats.  I pass a white woman walking away from her parked car, yapping into her phone and scanning the crowd for whoever she plans to meet.  “This is a nightmare,” she says, exasperated.  She means the fucking parking.

This is a nightmare.  Named for the country where the original group of enslaved Africans were abducted from when this land first became a plantation, Angola used to be known as the bloodiest prison in America.  The particulars of its atrocious conditions are widely known, documented, and criticized, and must absolutely be reformed.  But narratives of imprisonment often fixate on the sensationalized details—the wrongly accused, the exonerated, the most extreme of inhumane conditions, the gruesome executions gone wrong.  These things matter, but that story is one of exceptions.  How many hours does it take to exonerate one innocent person?  How many lawyers?  And how much media attention?  And the right hand of how many governors?

What about those who are guilty of their charges?  It is morally convenient to assume that they are monsters who deserve to be locked away from society.  But mass incarceration in the US is a recent and economically-driven trend; it does not have to be this way.  If we refuse to accept that over 2 million people are beyond help, and if true safety is rooted in access to living-wage jobs, better schools, counseling, drug treatment, childcare, mediation, intergenerational mentorship, and safe places to live and play, what a great responsibility we then bear.  This is what most fundamentally disturbs me:  We incarcerate the largest percentage of our population of any nation in the world.  The vast majority of people inside prisons are non-violent offenders.  Penal work camps are widely accepted as a logical solution to crime.

We sit outside the rodeo and watch the crowd and I try to burn everything into my cells—what it is to be literally and physically free, what it is to see people living in cages, what it is to have no family inside this or any prison, to have never before schlepped out to visit someone I loved and couldn’t even touch, what it is to witness all this and strive to live a just life.  I pedal slowly back out of Angola past manicured marigolds (prison labor) and stashes of extra barbed wire.  We congregate in the shade of the tiny post-office nearby.  Someone has brought half-eaten funnel cake back from the rodeo.  My friend casually laughs that she almost waltzed into the prison with two joints in her bag.  I wonder how many of these inmates were once kids who forgot to take the joints out of their pockets.

What purpose does it serve for these 5,000 people to be in Angola?  We have long abandoned the notion of rehabilitation for those imprisoned in this country.  Locking up poor people and people of color in the south has never been a means to help offenders re-enter society, but was instead a solution to the economic crisis when the chattel slavery system was declared (mostly) illegal.  But slavery remains explicitly legal as punishment for a crime.  This is not theoretical.  It’s 160 winding bike miles from my house.  It’s the children and parents and cousins and lovers of my neighbors and co-workers and of my political community.  Notably, it’s not my close friends.  The statistical impossibility of having lived in this hyper-policed city with the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world for six years without anyone close to me getting locked up is only explained by whiteness and class privilege.

We arrive back in New Orleans, hug, and gather damp tents.  With aching legs I push through the five miles back to my house—five miles now seems like a short flight of stairs or a deep breath.  Flashing blue lights up the Treme and St. Claude Avenue, where I have never once been pulled over despite joints in cars and loud, tipsy bike rides and lots of sober speeding to work and yes that one time we all peed in the gutter when we were lost and drunk and nineteen.  Behind Armstrong Park, I see a young man pressed into a NOPD car.  I hear the cinch of metal cuffs as my wheels clatter past him across raggedy pavement.  I wonder if his white undershirt is hanes like mine and if he has a toddler who pulls on his ears and I wonder if his mom will call his cellphone over and over until she thinks to check the Orleans Parish Prison docket online.  I wonder if he will pick cotton until he fucking dies.  I do not want this world–I did not make it, but it sure as hell made me.  Now the question is can we unmake each other.

I hope that if by the grace of the universe I grow old, the small children I treasure now will become adults who are ashamed that I lived less than 200 miles from this sprawling prison farm camp and did very little.  That I averted my eyes and paid my bills and breathed shallowly and claimed not to smell it upwind of my home, upriver of my life.  I do not want them to know a world where young people are plucked out of difficult and violent circumstances to work until their untimely death behind bars.  I want to make them something better.

Nicky Gillies moved to New Orleans in 2007, works as an ASL interpreter, and strives to learn how to accountably organize against the Prison Industrial Complex and live in a just way.

Inmates at Angola Prison Complain of Excessive, Unrestrained, Frequent and Unjustified Use of Chemical Agents on Prisoners

From a letter sent today by the ACLU of Louisiana:

October 25, 2012

Dear Warden Cain:

In the past few months, the ACLU of Louisiana has received numerous allegations of excessive or unjustified use of chemical agents, such as OC (oleoresin capsicum), upon inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP). We write to bring the issue to your attention, and to request that you provide us LSP’s policies on chemical spray use, investigate the matter and immediately correct any unlawful practices.

Background

Specifics vary, but the theme of each account is the same: with increasing frequency and decreasing restraint, corrections officers at LSP are using chemical irritant upon offenders in inappropriate ways. The spray is not being used sparingly to discipline unruly or disobedient inmates, but gratuitously to punish offenders who pose no threat and are engaged in lawful activity.

For example, in several complaints, inmates state that chemical spray was discharged into their locked, unventilated cells and left to linger there, forcing them to breathe the acrid fumes for hours at a time. They add either that they were not given opportunities to decontaminate, or that decontamination followed only many hours later - in some cases only when the trapped inmates were in respiratory distress and required medical attention.

Inmates also allege that they were sprayed for complaining about minor problems, such as not being allowed to shower during a regularly-allotted bathing time; or for requesting emergency medical assistance; or for minor incidents such as failing to clear the cell floor of water that had spilled from a blocked toilet. Inmates state that on several occasions, Without instigation, they were taken in groups to the showers, stripped naked, doused with pepper spray and simply returned to their cells Without explanation.

Perhaps most seriously, quite a few inmates complained that they were sprayed in retaliation for filing administrative grievances, and in some cases were specifically told by corrections  that they would be sprayed again unless they withdrew their complaints.

Law Regarding Pepper Spray Use

As you are aware, the law does not permit use of chemical agents upon inmates for purely punitive or malicious purposes - use must be justified either by disciplinary need or a threat to security. Indeed, the federal courts of both Louisiana and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal have specifically addressed some of the factual scenarios we describe above. For example, the Fifth Circuit on more than one occasion has held it unlawful to spray inmates who are confined to a cell and pose no threat to corrections officers. Chambers v. Johnson, 372 Fed. Appx. 471, 473 (5th Cir. 2010); Johnson v. Dubroc, 3 F.3d 436 (Sth Cir. 1993) (Eighth Amendment violated where an isolation-tier inmate who loudly called out to another inmate
from inside his cell was sprayed in the face, treated and allowed a shower and change of clothes, but then was returned to his still-contaminated cell).

Similarly, the Middle District of Louisiana has stated that chemical agents cannot be used against inmates maliciously or for no apparent reason. Causey v. Poret, 2007 WL 2701969 (MD. La. 2007) (Eighth Amendment violated Where officers maced, choked, and kicked inmate in the shower  removing him from the kitchen area, where he had been accused of looking at a female officer).

Likewise, the Middle District has recognized excessive force where corrections officers pepper­sprayed an inmate after commanding him to take off all his clothes and locking him in a segregation cell, where he then became argumentative but still posed no threat. Young v. Huberl, 2008 WL 2019576 (M.D. La. 2008).

And of course, retaliation against an inmate for filing a grievance is unlawfull in any form, including retaliation by chemical spray, as it violates the First Amendment. Morris v. Powell, 449 F.3d 682, 684 (Sth Cir. 2006) (prison officials may not retaliate against a prisoner for exercising his First Amendment right of access to the courts or to complain through proper channels about a guard’s misconduct through the grievance process).

Relief

All of the scenarios we have listed above seem to be increasing in frequency, and all cross the line into excessive force, and therefore violate the Eighth andfor First Amendments. We therefore request the following:

(1) That you investigate the use of chemical agent at LSP to ensure that such use comports with applicable regulations, state and federal law;
(2) That you immediately curb any unlawful chemical spray practices at LSP and take all measures necessary to ensure that such practices do not recur including training all appropriate personnel on the lawful use of chemical agents;
(3) That you provide this office with a report of your investigation, including a report of any remedial or corrective measures taken; and
(4) That you provide this offìce with a copy of all guidelines, rules and regulations applicable to chemical spray use at L-SP3.

I will expect to hear from you within 48 hours. Please do not hesitate to Contact us if you have any questions. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Esman

Another Day in Court for Angola Three Prisoner

From our friends at the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3:
On Tuesday, May 29th, Albert Woodfox will begin a 3 day hearing that may result in his conviction being overturned for a third time. Proceedings will begin at 9am in Courtroom 1 at the US District Court in Baton Rouge and continue through Thursday, May 31st.

Albert will be present for the proceedings, and the hearing is open to the public. Please remember if attending that the Federal Court strictly enforces a more formal, conservative dress code (no short skirts or shorts of any kind, even with tights, no bare upper arms, sleeveless, or low cut shirts) and requires that observers don't react, either visibly or audibly, to anything the might see or hear in the courtroom. Also security is tight, so bring only your ID, car keys, and a pen and paper into the courthouse.

There is limited seating in the courtroom so if you arrive and are turned away, consider your show of support a success and try coming back the next day!

Unlike the first and second time that Albert's conviction was overturned based on judges who cited racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense, and suppression of exculpatory evidence during his first trials for the 1972 murder of Brent Miller, this proceeding will seek to overturn based on apparent discrimination in the selection of a grand jury foreperson during his 1998 retrial.

The well known facts of the A3 case will not be debated; all that will be examined is whether or not people of color were discriminated against during the grand jury selection process. This means instead of murder mystery theatre, witnesses will mostly discuss compositions of the pool of grand jury forepersons in the Parish where Albert was indicted. Expert witnesses will discuss statistical analysis and methodology, the demographics of the community, and the sociological mechanics of how discrimination can play out in the criminal justice system. If successful, this claim could serve to overturn Albert's conviction for a third time.

Judge James A. Brady, the same judge who overturned Albert's conviction the second time in 2008, will preside. That ruling was ultimately reinstated on appeal by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals who cited AEDPA-gutted habeas protections that limit federal power that allowed them to defer judgment to Louisiana.

Although there are no time limits officially imposed by law, Brady is expected to rule before the end of 2012.

You can view or download a new A3 flyer updated to be used as an organizing resource here.

Angola Warden Burl Cain on "Black Pantherism"

Last week, the newsletter of the International Coalition to Free the Angola Three published recently transcribed testimony of the October 2008 deposition of Burl Cain, Warden of Angola Prison, questioned by Nick Trenticosta, an attorney representing former Black Panther and Angola Three member Albert Woodfox. The testimony, quoted below, reveals a lot about Cain's view of Black Panthers and others who have engaged in prison organizing.
NICK TRENTICOSTA: I would like to show you State's Exhibit 30. Are you familiar with this document? It purports to be a letter, and who is it from?

BURL CAIN: Albert Woodfox.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: Is this letter significant to you?

CAIN: Yes, it is. You can read here, "I view amerikkka" - and he spelled it real crazy, more like the Black Panther would, I suppose - "and her lies, capitalism, imperialism, racism, exploitation, oppression, and murder of the poor and oppressed people as being highly extreme. It is my opinion that anyone who views these situations as anything other than extreme is petty bourgeois or a capitalist fool!!! History has taught us that revolution is a violent thing but a highly necessary occurrence in life. Revolution is bloodshed, deaths, sacrifices, hardships. It is the job of the revolutionary forces in this country to manufacture revolution instead of trying to avoid it. To do otherwise is the act of an opportunist." This is very scary because it means that it needs revolution. Violent revolution is scary for America, for us.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: What is the date of that letter?

CAIN: September 9, 1973.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: And do you know whether his political views have changed since that time?

CAIN: That is what is scary to me. I think not because even in 1997 we had the protest in front where - "Release the Panther" and "Angola is a shame, Burl Cain to blame" - there was a Black Panther demonstration there. Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace is locked in time with that Black Panther revolutionary actions. Even when Robert King Wilkerson came with Congressman Conyers to Angola, they gave me a little pack of pralines, Congressman Conyers did, and on that pack of pralines was a Black Panther.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: Let's look at State's Exhibit 3. You stated, if I can paraphrase, Woodfox was throwing human waste?

CAIN: Apparently they were throwing human waste at each other. It's on their cell bars, both of them. So either he was throwing it out or throwing it in.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: Could it possibly be someone throwing human waste at Mr. Woodfox?

CAIN: It could be, and I would ask why. How did Mr. Woodfox provoke him to throw human waste at him?

NICK TRENTICOSTA: You have some mentally ill people that live on CCR, don't you?

CAIN: I have 1,900 inmates taking psychotropic medicines. I don't know where they live, but I would hope the medicine would tame them down.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: An inmate only gets human waste thrown on them when they provoke it to happen? Is that your testimony?

CAIN: Not only, but if you're throwing human feces at somebody, you have to have normally a reason. You just wouldn't throw it at the wall.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: Are you aware that a federal judge has ruled that Mr. Woodfox's conviction is now reversed?

CAIN: Until we get release papers, he's in our prison guilty of the murder of Brent Miller.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: So it's your understanding everybody in jail is guilty? Come on.

CAIN: In Angola. Because he's in Angola.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: In the last five years he has done pretty good, hasn't he?

CAIN: He's like a man on death row could do good, but he is still on death row. He's just good because he is locked in CCR, not because he's good at heart.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: He didn't cause very much trouble, correct?

CAIN: Because the lion in a cage can't cause much trouble, you see.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: Let's just assume, if you can, that he is not guilty of the murder of Brent Miller.

CAIN: I would still keep him in CCR. 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 kinds of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the whites chasing after them. I would have chaos and conflict.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: Warden Cain, what is Black Pantherism?

CAIN: I have no idea. I know they hold their fists up. I know that they advocated for violence.

NICK TRENTICOSTA: Assume that he did not kill Brent Miller and he is not a member of the Black Panther party, because you don't know what the Black Panther party is, then why are you considering him so dangerous?

CAIN: You would like me to say yes to everything you say so you can go say I did, but you can't go there, and you're trying everything in the world to get me there. I'm happy. I'm laughing at you. I'm not mad. You just ain't going to get me there. That's just Angola. What can I say? He's bad. He's dangerous. I believe it. He will hurt you. They better not let him out of prison.

Of Traitors and Fools: Robert King Comments on Brandon Darby

In a recent newsletter published by the International Coalition to Free the Angola Three, former New Orleans Black Panther Robert King has written his first comments on notorious FBI informant Brandon Darby. His comments are quoted here:
Unfortunately this year has seen the rise of the far right and it saddens me that people have the propensity to be gullible, tricked and trapped by the lies spun by the likes of Brandon Darby who by his own actions has undermined his credibility.

In a recent presentation to a far right group, Darby recalls his endeavors within the progressive movement and his abrupt epiphany which led him to become an informant. However he fails while telling his tales to disclose he only had a short life as a credible informant. He now continues to spin his lies to far right groups who have no regard for the truth.

One word describes Darby: deranged. He continues to mislead people and he continues to attempt to rewrite the truth. In the final analysis, he goes the way of the fool, he impales himself on his own sword.

Robert H. King, a.k.a. Robert King Wilkerson, is the only freed member of the Angola 3. Along with his comrades Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, he was targeted for his activism as a member of the Black Panther party. After 31 years in Angola prison in Louisiana, 29 spent years in solitary confinement, King was released in February 2001. Since that time he has been described as an author, a candy maker, a former political prisoner and an activist. His life’s focus is to campaign against abuses in the criminal justice system and for the freedom of Herman and Albert, who are now serving their 40th year in solitary confinement.

Bike Trip to Angola Prison Will Raise Funds for Visits by Prisoner Families

From our friends at NOLA to Angola:
Cyclists and prisoner advocates are organizing a bike ride to aid the large incarcerated population of Louisiana. Called “NOLA to Angola,” the bike ride will raise funds for the Cornerstone Builders Bus Project, a Catholic Charities-supported project. The first annual NOLA to Angola ride will take place October 14-16, 2011.

Every month the Cornerstone Builders Bus Project charters a 55-passenger coach-style bus for families of the incarcerated in the New Orleans area to visit five prison facilities around Louisiana, including Angola. Due to the long distance of each trip, the Cornerstone Builders ensure the families will have onboard bathroom facilities and comfortable seats. Each trip costs the church approximately $1,000. Currently, the bus project has no regular source of income, though some trips are underwritten by local sponsors, including church groups and the Jefferson and Orleans Parishes Sherriffs’ Offices. Organizers of the NOLA to Angola Bike Ride hope that their fundraiser will be able to pay for half a year of bus trips.

Leo Jackson, assistant director of Cornerstone Builders, said, “The more we can keep the family intact, the more we can effect positive change. We want to keep lines of communication open between prisoners and their families.”

While the primary purpose of the ride is to raise funds for the monthly bus trips, another goal of the ride is to expose riders to the history and geography of South Louisiana while they travel to the distant prison. Matt Toups, one of four ride organizers, said, “For three days in October, 25 people will ride bicycles over 160 miles across Louisiana -- to raise money, but also to make connections. We're connecting New Orleans to the levee of the Mississippi River, the cypress of Maurepas Swamp, the refineries of Cancer Alley, and the Tunica Hills. We will see, firsthand, many of the places that make Louisiana and its history unique -- and we'll also find out how far prisoners' families have to travel to maintain precious family connections.”

The bicycle ride will end at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as Angola. When the ride ends organizers will deliver a letter to the Angolite, an award-winning prisoner-run publication at Angola. Ride organizer Steve Merlan said, ”by working with the Angolite - an extremely unique magazine whose history of journalistic excellence is well established - we hope to engage in a broader dialogue with the Angola inmate community and other readers interested in criminal justice.”

As of September 20th, all 25 rider spots have been filled. However, members of the public who would like to get involved can still sponsor riders or send donations to the project. Donation checks should be made out to: Second Zion Baptist Church Bus Project. Please do not write checks to NOLA to Angola.

Checks can be sent to the below address:
NOLA to Angola
1631 Elysian Fields #117
New Orleans, LA 70117

ABOUT CORNERSTONE BUILDERS: The Cornerstone Builders Bus Project, run out of the Second Zion Baptist Church in Marrero, Louisiana, provides monthly free transportation for families of the incarcerated to visit their loved ones at five Louisiana detention centers: Louisiana State Penitentiary, Dixon Correctional Institute, Tallulah Transitional Center for Women, Avoyelles Correctional Center, and Rayburn Correctional Center. The Bus Project is part of the larger Cornerstone Builders Program that also includes mentoring for children, working to place ex-offenders in AmeriCorps Vista vocational training, reentry counseling for formerly incarcerated persons, networking between businesses run by or willing to employee the formerly incarcerated, and an annual symposium.

ABOUT INCARCERATION IN LOUISIANA: According to a 2009 study conducted by the Pew Center on the States, 1 in 55 Louisianans is incarcerated in a prison or jail, and 1 in 26 Louisianans is under correctional supervision (incarceration, probation, or parole).2 According to the same study, Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration of any state (Washington D.C. is ranked higher) in the United States3.

ABOUT NOLA TO ANGOLA: Scott Eustis, Elizabeth Lew, Steve Merlan and Matt Toups are New Orleans residents concerned about Louisiana’s high incarceration rate and about Louisiana’s environment. By organizing this bicycle ride, they hope to address both of these concerns, raising money for a crucial service for prisoners’ families while riding pollution-free bicycles across the beautiful South Louisiana landscape.

For more information on NOLA to Angola, please visit: nolatoangola.org, or email: info@nolatoangola.org.

Photo from Angola by Calhoun Photography studio.

Amnesty International Launches Campaign to Free Remaining Angola Three Prisoners

From our friends at Amnesty International and International Coalition to Free the Angola 3:
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.

"We are not aware of any other case in the USA where individuals have been subjected to such restricted human contact for such a prolonged period of time."

Over the course of decades there has been no meaningful review of the men's designation to CCR. The only reason given for maintaining the men under these conditions has been due to the "nature of the original reason for lockdown."

Both men were originally arrested for armed robbery.

The men are confined to their cells, which measure 2 x 3 metres, for 23 hours a day. When the weather permits, they are allowed outside three times a week for an hour of solitary recreation in a small outdoor cage.

For four hours a week, they are allowed to leave their cells to shower or walk, alone, along the cell unit corridor.

They have restricted access to books, newspapers and television. For the past four decades they have never been allowed to work or to have access to education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.

They have also been denied any meaningful review of the reasons for their isolation.

The men's lawyers have told Amnesty International that both are suffering from serious health problems caused or exacerbated by their years of solitary confinement.

Amnesty International has also raised questions about the legal aspects of the case against the two men.

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.

Over the years of litigation on the cases, documents have emerged suggesting that the main eyewitness was bribed by prison officials into giving statements against the men and that the state withheld evidence about the perjured testimony of another inmate witness. A further witness later retracted his testimony.

Apart from ongoing legal challenges to their murder convictions, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace are suing the Louisiana authorities claiming that their prolonged isolation is "cruel and unusual punishment" and so violates the US Constitution.

"The treatment of these men by the state of Louisiana is a clear breach of US commitment to human rights," said Guadalupe Marengo.

"Their cases should be reviewed as a matter of urgency, and while that takes place authorities must ensure that their treatment complies with international standards for the humane treatment of prisoners."

To sign the petition from Amnesty, go to this link.

New Paralegal Training Provides Ray of Hope for Formerly Incarcerated People in New Orleans, By Rosana Cruz

From our friends at Bridge The Gulf:
Drive down this short stretch of St. Bernard Avenue, and you will see signs of a struggling neighborhood in despair. Bars, blighted homes, metal-grated storefronts, and the still-shuttered Circle Food Store tell the story of this strip. Here in New Orleans’ 7th ward, hope and sustenance have been drained by Katrina’s floodwaters, and by decades of racism’s insidious trend of sapping vital resources from a community.

But there is vitality too. Fresh vegetables are sold on the sidewalk outside Circle Foods. A few new, small businesses are slowly gaining a foothold. The surviving barrooms, central institutions to the music and culture of New Orleans for generations, are gathering places for local politicians, community advocates and neighbors from diverse class backgrounds.

This ironic mix of vitality and despair isn’t unique in New Orleans, but the small beacon of hope in the middle of the 1200 block is. Within the walls of a small storefront, The RAE House (pronounced “ray”) hosts an innovative new class that’s beginning to resurrect hope.

 Resurrection After Exoneration’s (RAE’s) brother organization, VOTE (Voice of the Ex-offender) holds its Paralegal Training Class here twice a week. The class is unique in that it trains Formerly Incarcerated Persons (FIPs) and their loved ones about the law and legal system. The hope is to create a new team of paralegals, legal secretaries and community legal advocates, made up of the people most impacted by Louisiana’s failing criminal justice system. The charter class began in November.

Seeds for legal training planted in Angola

The vision for the Paralegal Training Class began more than 20 years ago in the Louisiana State Penitentiary (better known as Angola). Two men serving life sentences, Norris Henderson and Kenneth “Biggy” Johnston, became legal scholars in the prison’s law library, logging long hours studying rows and rows of case law and reviewing the individual cases of their fellow prisoners. It was through the knowledge they gained by reading, exploring, and working on other prisoners’ cases that they were able to eventually win their own freedom through the courts.


Their knowledge and experience helped make them respected leaders in the prison. Mr. Henderson and Mr. Johnston became inmate counsels, representing prisoners who went up before the disciplinary board. They then founded the Angola Special Civics Project, to activate a politically engaged block among the prisoners. This block was able to change prison policy and lobby legislators. Ultimately they even changed laws. Their efforts helped passed the so-called “old timer’s act.” Also know as the 20-45 law, this law created parole eligibility for prisoners sentenced to life for heroin distribution who were over 45 and had served 20 years or more. Middle-aged men who had gone into prison as mere youth were now gaining freedom, thanks to the advocacy and knowledge of the law of these “jailhouse lawyers.”

Now, Voice of the Ex-Offender (VOTE), the organization founded by Mr. Henderson years after he left Angola, is trying to accomplish the same thing on the outside. The Paralegal Training Class equips Formerly Incarcerated Persons and their loved ones with enough legal knowledge to serve their broader community. Students attend the free classes two evenings per week, three hours per class. They are instructed by Mr. Henderson, Mr. Johnston and Calvin Duncan, who was exonerated recently from serving over 28 years for a crime he did not commit. Together these three have over 60 years of legal studies and practice. They teach constitutional law, criminal procedure, legal research and basic analytical skills to the eager students, who deftly apply the lessons to their own lives and experiences.

Lessons hit students close to home

Vernon went to prison when he was 17 years old. Laverne's husband spent 18 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, 14 of those years on death row. Ms. Betty's son has been in prison for over 20 years. Mr. Chopin volunteers as a Muslim Chaplin to hundreds of inmates and detainees in Orleans Parish Prison. Their motivation to study law and participate in the training programs stems not only from their personal experience, but also from the countless people that they know are in need of support. “I know that with what I learn in this class, I might be able to do something meaningful for all the people I left back there [in Angola],” says Eugene Dean, a student and long time member of VOTE.

Ms. Elois Reed takes an even broader view. “The class is energetic. We love to be in class, we love to learn all this. It is like this because it is bottled up inside the people…. Things are hard, people are struggling. They have our backs up against the wall. But this knowledge can make a difference…. I really believe we are a sleeping giant. And this class, this knowledge, this is what it is taking to wake us up.”

The intense interest from the students has already had an impact: the class is being extended from the originally envisioned 10 weeks to 14. A new term for incoming students is projected to begin this summer. The current students are beginning to discuss next steps. Some want to pursue careers as paralegals, to work on their loved ones’ cases, and to become legal resources to community members who can scarce afford access to most legal advice. But they also want to do more. The long term vision is to create a policy think tank that can study, change and make policy, with the ultimate goal of creating a public safety system that works and that focuses on the root causes of crime.

This is the beacon of hope shining across the dim stretch of St. Bernard Avenue. Every week, it gets a little bit brighter.



Rosana Cruz is Associate Director of VOTE (Voice Of The Ex-offender). Previously Rosana worked with Safe Streets/Strong Communities and the National Immigration Law Center. Prior to joining NILC, she worked with SEIU1991 in Miami, after having been displaced from New Orleans by Katrina. Before the storm, Rosana worked for a diverse range of community organizations, including the Latin American Library, Hispanic Apostolate, the Lesbian and Gay Community Center of New Orleans, and People's Youth Freedom School. Rosana came to New Orleans through her work with the Southern Regional Office of Amnesty International in Atlanta.

The Angola Project Presents Art, Prerformance and Symposium

From our friends at Resurrection after Exoneration:
The Angola Project
Produced by the Early Childhood & Family Learning Foundation and Prospect New Orleans, at the Mahalia Jackson Center, 2405 Jackson Avenue, 504.359.6802.

The Angola Project consists of a series of programs exploring the social issues surrounding crime and the penal system through art, featuring exhibitions, a visit to the Angola Prison for area school children and other activities produced in collaboration with schools in Central City, and a free two-day public event with a performance by members of Resurrection after Exoneration and a symposium.

November 22 – December 31, 2010: Art Exhibition
Mon – Fri 10:00am - 5:00pm (Please check with the Center for Holiday hours)
The exhibition, installed in the Early Childhood & Family Learning Foundation premises on the second floor of Building C of the Mahalia Jackson Center, features Prospect New Orleans artist who have developed work in and about Angola State Penitentiary, presented alongside a selection of art by Angola prisoners.

Friday, December 3, 6:00pm – 8:00pm, Mahalia Jackson Center, Auditorium: Theatre Performance by Resurrection after Exoneration
Presentation of Voices of Innocence, a stage performance by four exonerees, who collectively spent 54 years in prison, 33 of them on death row. The production gives voice to each man’s struggle to survive wrongful conviction, a long prison sentence and, ultimately, exoneration and their return to a changed, often-unwelcoming world. The performance will be followed by a question-and-answer session and refreshments.

Saturday, December 4, 3:00pm – 5:00pm, Mahalia Jackson Center, Auditorium: Symposium
Moderated by David Johnson of the Louisiana Endowment for Humanities, the panel will include artists, representatives from Innocence Project and RAE, and other community members who will address the difficult ethical, social and legal questions surrounding imprisonment, as well as how we treat the past, how we address the future, and what role art plays in dealing with these issues. Featured artists include Willie Birch, Bruce Davenport Jr, Jackie Sumell and Lori Waselchuk.

Thursday, January 13 - Sunday February 13, 2011, Thursday-Sunday 10:00am - 5:00pm: Children’s Art Exhibition at Ogden Museum of Art, 925 Camp Street
Following their visit to Angola Prison, and the participating artists’ talks at their schools, students will create their own work reflecting on the experience. The Early Childhood & Family Learning Foundation and Prospect New Orleans have partnered with the Ogden for the presentation of this special exhibition.