Published time: October 07, 2013 17:38
Herman Wallace (AFP Photo / Herman’s House)
Herman Wallace’s 41 years in solitary confinement came to an end last week when a federal judge overturned a decades-old murder conviction on Tuesday. Wallace, 71, died hours later Friday morning after losing a fight with liver cancer.
Wallace was already serving time for armed robbery when he and
two other prisoners at Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known
as Angola Prison, were accused of murdering a guard in 1972.
The “Angola 3”— Albert Woodfox, Robert King and Wallace —
maintained their innocence for the last several decades. Woodfox
and Wallace have insisted that they were implicated solely for
their involvement in a prison chapter of the Black Panthers.
King’s conviction was overturned and he was released in 2001, and
Woodfox’s case is currently pending before the Fifth US Circuit
Court of Appeals.
On Tuesday, US District Chief Judge Brian Jackson in Baton Rouge
overturned Wallace’s murder conviction and allowed him to be
released hours later.
The murder conviction, Judge Jackson said, “violated the
Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of ‘the equal protection of the
laws’” because the grand jury that indicted Wallace was
absent of any women, “thereby rendering his conviction and
resulting sentence unconstitutional.”
Wallace spent nearly 42 years in solitary confinement, which
according to his legal team is among the lengthiest of such
stints in US history. A Louisiana grand jury re-indicted Wallace
on his death bed on Thursday, though he passed away before be
brought back to trial.
“It is Mr. Wallace’s hope that this litigation will help
ensure that others, including his lifelong friend and fellow
Angola 3 member, Albert Woodfox, do not continue to suffer such
cruel and unusual confinement even after Mr. Wallace is
gone,” his attorneys wrote this week.
In solitary, the Angola 3 reportedly spent around 23 hours a day
in a cell that measured only two-by-three meters.
Less than three full days after being released from confinement,
Wallace died at a friend’s home surrounded by loved ones early
Friday. He had been receiving care for terminal, advanced-stage
liver cancer, but was told he had only two months to live after
treatment stopped on August 31.
According to friends of Wallace, his last words early Friday were
“I am free. I am free.”
“He completed that mission,” longtime friend Parnell
Herbert told the Times Picayune. “And he was able to see
himself a free man. He passed away peacefully in his sleep.”
Even still, though, supporters of Wallace say they will press on
ensure the freedom for Woodfox and reform to the American prison
system.
“Nothing can undo the authorities’ shocking treatment of
(Wallace), which led more than 200,000 people to act on his
behalf,” Amnesty International USA Executive Director Steven
Hawkins said Friday, referring to a petition that asked for
Wallace’s release. “The state of Louisiana must now prevent
further inhuman treatment by removing Wallace’s co-defendant
Albert Woodfox from solitary confinement.”
“This was never just about Herman or just about Albert,”
friend Ashley Wennerstrom told the Times-Picayune. “This is
about a much larger movement to make the criminal justice system
actually just.”
On Monday, the United National special rapporteur on torture
urged authorities to release Woodfox, the last imprisoned Angola
3 member, and said his confinement clearly amounts to torture and
it should be lifted immediately.”
A statement released by the UN’s Juan Mendez said the Angola 3’s
cases “clearly show that the use of solitary confinement in
the US penitentiary system goes far beyond what is acceptable
under international human rights law.”
Copyright: RT