Solitary summary

Angola had once been a slave plantation. When Woodfox arrived there in 1965, it didn’t look or feel much different to one. African American prisoners worked the fields of the 18,000 acre site, while white prison guards holding shotguns yelled racist slurs at them.

After arriving, Woodfox and other new prisoners spent 30 days in a reception center. Then they were released into the prison itself. This was known as ‘fresh fish day.’ It was the day when the prison’s sexual predators identified their targets.

Back in New Orleans, Woodfox’s criminal behavior escalated to the point he was running armed robberies in stores and bars.

One crime Woodfox never committed was rape. But he was charged with it. The police arrested Woodfox for an armed robbery he’d committed, but also charged him with all the unsolved thefts, robberies, and rapes on their books. Cleaning the books like this was a common tactic at the time. The result was that innocent black men would often take a plea bargain, choosing a prison sentence for a crime they didn’t commit, rather than languishing in jail for several years just waiting for a trial.

Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were college students in Oakland, California, when they founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. The party grew out of attempts to stop police brutality in black neighborhoods.

Newton and Seale started a ‘copwatching’ program to monitor the police harassment, intimidation, beatings, shootings, and killings that were a fact of life in their neighborhood.

Back in Angola, Woodfox was determined to spread the positive approach of the Black Panthers, and to take action to improve life in prison.

Tackling rape was a priority. Along with Herman Wallace, another Black Panther among the prisoners, Woodfox set up an anti-rape group. On ‘fresh fish day,’ the group met new prisoners, told them that the Black Panther Party would protect them, and escorted them to their dorms.

In solitary confinement, Woodfox’s new cell was six by nine feet. He could take five steps up the cell, and five steps back. There was a bunk, a ceramic toilet and sink, and a metal table and bench. Across the hallway from Woodfox’s cell there was a window.

There was no outside exercise yard for prisoners in the CCR, so some prisoners hadn’t gone outside for years. Once a day, for an hour, the prisoners were allowed out of their cells, and could walk the hallway, or take a shower. There was no hot water, and no fans in summer. Rats and mice ran the halls at night.

As trial for the murder of Miller approached, local Black Panthers set up a support committee to raise funds for Woodfox’s defense. Its members included a white activist couple, Harry and Jill Schafer, who both took leadership roles on the committee.

No funds ever arrived. Inside Angola, Woodfox assumed that people had just moved on. Later he learned that the Schafers were paid $16,000 a year by the FBI to disrupt local activist organizations. FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that the Schafers had sabotaged efforts to get lawyers for Woodfox, and for Wallace, who was standing trial separately. The men were instead represented by a young, inexperienced lawyer.

As the generation of guards who had personally known Brent Miller moved on, new guards arrived. Many admitted that, during their training, they’d been told that Woodfox, Wallace and King were dangerous and militant prisoners. The new guards were surprised to discover that the Angola Three, as they’d come to be known, weren’t violent racist bullies, but polite prisoners with good records.

But there were always guards who relished their power and control. In just one of many incidents in the 1980s, a guard opened Woodfox’s cell door to allow another prisoner to beat Woodfox up. Woodfox defended himself. In an example of the system’s perversity, the state used a write-up of the incident as an example of Woodfox’s violence, and a justification for keeping him in solitary confinement.

Woodfox fought a long battle for his freedom. He and his lawyers filed many appeals, and appeared at many hearings over the course of a decade.

In one reindictment proceeding in 1993, he faced a grand jury that included amongst its members a woman called Anne Butler. Butler was the wife of C. Murray Henderson, the warden of Angola who had helped to frame Woodfox for the murder, 20 years before.

In 2016, after countless appeals and legal battles, Woodfox finally had the opportunity for a retrial. But his lawyers made a suggestion. Take a deal based on time served, they said.

Woodfox was never willing to accept guilt in return for freedom. But this time, he had the opportunity to make a no contest plea. His conviction would stand, but he could maintain his innocence. And he’d be free. The alternative of a retrial carried a chance of reconviction, and with it, the rest of his life behind bars.