Judge orders last Angola 3 inmate freed

The last of the Angola 3 inmates, whose decades in solitary confinement on a Louisiana prison farm drew international condemnation and became the subject of two documentaries, was ordered released Monday.

The ruling would free 68-year-old Albert Woodfox after more than 40 years in solitary confinement, which human rights experts have said constitutes torture.

U.S. District Judge James Brady of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ordered the release of Woodfox and took the extraordinary step of barring Louisiana prosecutors from trying him for a third time.

Tory Pegram of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, who is working with Woodfox's lawyers on his release, said they are all "thrilled that justice has come for our innocent friend."

Woodfox is in solitary confinement at a prison in St. Francisville, Louisiana, awaiting trial. His lawyers were headed there to seek his release.

Aaron Sadler, a spokesman for Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, said the state was seeking an emergency stay of Brady's ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

Woodfox was placed in solitary confinement in 1972 after being charged in the death of a Louisiana State Penitentiary guard in April of that year. The prison farm is more commonly known as the Angola prison, and it is Louisiana's only maximum-security prison.

He and two other state prisoners became known as the Angola 3 because of their long stretches in solitary confinement at Angola. The others were prisoners Robert King and Herman Wallace.

Woodfox and Wallace, who were both serving unrelated armed robbery sentences, had said they were singled out for harsh treatment, including isolation, because of their political activism.

The two were Black Panthers and helped establish a prison chapter (PDF) of the Black Panther Party at the Angola prison in 1971, set up demonstrations and organized strikes for better conditions.

Wallace, convicted with Woodfox of murder in the death of guard Brent Miller, died days after a judge freed him and granted him a new trial in 2013. King was released in 2001 after his conviction in the death of a fellow inmate in 1973 was reversed.

Woodfox has been tried and convicted twice in the guard's death, but both convictions were overturned. Brady said the "exceptional circumstances" of the case had led him to bar the state from seeking a third trial. In his ruling, he cited doubt that the state could provide a "fair third trial," the inmate's age and poor health, the unavailability of witnesses, "the prejudice done onto Mr. Woodfox by spending over 40 years in solitary confinement" and "the very fact that Mr. Woodfox has already been tried twice."

The Associated Press