WASHINGTON – U.S. Judge James Brady has ordered the release of Albert Woodfox, a member of the Black Panthers who has been held in solitary confinement for the past 43 years, accused of killing a prison guard.
Woodfox, 68, who always said he was innocent, could be freed immediately, since the judge decided that, given his age, his poor state of health and doubts that the state would provide “a fair third trial,” the best option was to set him free, according to local media.
The inmate had been tried and found guilty on two previous occasions, along with another two prisoners, for the death in 1972 of corrections officer Brent Miller at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, commonly known as Angola.
The three prisoners, all blacks and members of the Black Panthers, were known as the “Angola Three,” and only Woodfox is still in jail, since the other two, Robert King and Herman Wallace, were released in 2001 and 2013, respectively.
When Miller was killed, Woodfox was in jail accused of armed robbery, and during those years he always said he was falsely accused in retaliation for his activism with the Black Panthers “aimed at improving conditions inside Louisiana’s notorious prisons.”
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