The longest-serving prisoner to be held in solitary confinement in US history has been freed.
Albert Woodfox spent most of his 43 years behind bars in a 6-by-9-foot cell in Louisiana's notorious Angola prison.He was released on Friday after pleading no contest to manslaughter following the death of a prison guard.
Woodfox was convicted of killing white prison guard Brent Miller at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola in 1972.
The
black inmate and his co-defendant, Herman Wallace, said they were
charged in retaliation for founding a prison chapter of the Black
Panther Party.
They and a third inmate came to be known as the Angola 3.
Woodfox,
who turned 69 on Friday, maintains his innocence, but said concerns
about his health and age "caused me to resolve this case now and obtain
my release."He said his first actions as a free man will be to visit the gravesites of loved ones.
Woodfox
addressed a crowd that included Robert King, the third member of the
Angola 3, who also said he was targeted for his activism with the Black
Panthers.
"I need
to go say goodbye to my mother," Woodfox said. "I wasn't allowed to go
to her funeral when I was in Angola, and my sister as well."
Miller family members told the Louisiana Advocate newspaper that they were not allowed to be involved in the deal.
"I don't feel the Miller family had any choice in it," Wanda Callender, the guard's younger sister, told the newspaper.
"We feel this was slammed in our face."
In addition to manslaughter, Woodfox pleaded no contest to aggravated burglary.
The deal with prosecutors came together on Thursday night, Woodfox's attorney said.His brother picked him up on Friday from the West Feliciana Parish Jail.
A civil
claim on Woodfox's behalf related to the more than four decades he
spent in prison in isolation is set for trial in June and will continue
to move forward, attorney George Kendall said.
"There's nobody else who's been through what he's been through," Kendall said.
Of the two other men known as the Angola 3, Wallace was released from prison in 2013 and died three days later.
King
had been placed in solitary confinement for a crime unrelated to
Miller's killing. He was released from prison in 2001 after 29 years.
Woodfox had legal proceedings pending in state and federal courts, his lawyers said.
He was convicted twice of Miller's murder, but both convictions were ultimately thrown out in court.
Louisiana
State Penitentiary was once a part of a Deep South plantation and was
known for seething racial tensions and harsh treatment of inmates.
dailymail.co.uk cullage.
Please can the Lawyers in the house explain what NO CONTEST means?I honestly do not understand this case!
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