Due to endless litigation, conflicting legal
technicalities, or inadequate transitional facilities, prisoners who are
innocent may find themselves behind bars indefinitely. (Photo: Peter MacDiarmid
/ Getty)
Former Black Panther Albert Woodfox, convicted of
murdering a prison guard with two other inmates, has spent the last 35 years in
prison, most of it in solitary confinement. Last month, Woodfox’s conviction
was overturned by a federal judge. However, despite being cleared of charges,
Woodfox remains incarcerated, as the Louisiana attorney general’s office
persists in challenging the judge’s decision.
After repeated reexaminations of his case and an
intervention by US House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, who called
Woodfox’s continued incarceration a “tragic miscarriage of justice,” evidence
against Woodfox is practically nonexistent. Nevertheless, he remains embroiled
in litigation, and until the prosecutors have had their fill, he will stay
behind bars.
Pam LaBorde, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department
of Corrections, told Truthout that the attorney general would be appealing
Woodfox’s exoneration. She said that she does not know when a trial will take
place, adding, “We’re very early in the process.”
“He has to remain in prison until the new trial takes
place,” LaBorde said.
Woodfox’s case brings to light the startling reality
that defendants who have been declared innocent may languish in prison
indefinitely, due to endless litigation or conflicting legal technicalities. An
overturned conviction is often countered by prosecutors with a “stay the
mandate” motion, requiring prisoners to remain incarcerated until appeal. Due
to poor lawyers, influential prosecutors and ever-changing legal statutes, the
motion is often granted.
Woodfox’s lawyers have called upon the state of
Louisiana to drop its attempts at retrial, arguing that an immediate release is
the only humane option.
“How can Louisiana continue to imprison a 61-year-old
man after a federal judge has ruled that he shouldn’t have been convicted in
the first place?” Nick Trenticosta, one of Woodfox’s attorneys, told the San
Francisco Bay View in July. “The state needs to move forward. Albert must be
released.”
However, according to a spokeswoman for the Louisiana
attorney general’s office, a motion for reconsideration has been filed, and the
state could even take the case to the Supreme Court, leaving Woodfox
incarcerated for the foreseeable future.
“I don’t think we have a timeline,” the attorney
general’s spokeswoman told Truthout.
The situation is not atypical, according to Kerry Max
Cook, who spent 22 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. He
recently published the book “Chasing Justice,” which details his battle to
prove his innocence and gain his freedom. Cook, who was declared innocent in
1999, cites his own case as an example of post-exoneration incarceration.
“The mandate [for release] had been issued and I
still remained on death row, though I had no more conviction,” Cook told
Truthout. “I myself had to petition the state district judge and demand the
Constitution be followed and I be removed from death row. Some lawyers won’t
fight for their clients, and the client has to fight for themselves like I did.”
For clients who do not or cannot “fight for
themselves,” an open-ended prison sentence may be inevitable, hinging on the
whims of prosecutors and judges.
Another reason prisoners may stay incarcerated when
they should be released: Legal statutes on sentencing change often and quickly,
and sometimes a prisoner’s release date is simply computed wrong, according to
Rene Aucoin, a New England journalist who has followed the matter closely.
“Say you were arrested in 1993 and the statutes
mandated that you serve 75 percent of your sentence. Say the statutes were
changed and/or new statutes created so that the law mandates inmates serve 85
percent of their sentence. By the time your release/parole date is near, the
statutes have been changed again, and since you were convicted so long ago and
have been incarcerated through several changes in legal statutes, no one
remembers how the original law worked,” Aucoin told Truthout.
When prisoners are not properly represented and are
not advised on sentencing policy, such breaches slip by unnoticed. Cook
partially attributes illegal extended incarceration to “laziness and unconcern”
on the part of judges and the prison system.
In the Woodfox case, judges and defendants alike
cited another culprit: discrimination. Before they were charged with murder,
Woodfox and his two co-defendants - now dubbed the Angola 3, after the Angola
Penitentiary where they were incarcerated - were engaged in rallying other
inmates to participate in nonviolent protests against the prison’s segregated
quarters and ingrained racial violence.
Last year, a magistrate judge noted in her findings
for Woodfox’s case, “Punishment for crimes committed 35 years ago, for
political beliefs, for religious beliefs, and for leadership qualities are not
legitimate penological interests.” Judges’ opinions since have indicated that
Woodfox’s conviction may well have been prompted by political and racial
discrimination.
In a column for The Guardian UK, Helen Kinsella notes
that 36 years later, that same motivation may well be driving Woodfox’s
continued incarceration. She notes that some of the same players may even be
involved.
“The attorney general’s second-in-command, John Sinquefield,
who is helping to preside over the decision to continue fighting the case, is
implicated in some of the wrongdoings referred to in the magistrate’s June
report,” Kinsella writes.
The attorney general’s office did not return requests
for comment on Sinquefield’s connection to the case by press time.
According to Cook, who is gay, discrimination played
a direct role in his own past-due incarceration.
“As a convicted homosexual I always struggled to get
basic human rights in Texas,” Cook said, noting that he was unable to use those
civil rights violations to defend himself in court and in his petitions for
release.
A host of other impetuses may result in prisoners
staying in jail past their release dates. For example, in some states, if an
inmate is eligible for parole but has nowhere to “parole to,” he or she must
remain in prison.
Illinois mother Carleen Cross is currently
experiencing that phenomenon firsthand. Her son completed his sentence last
October, but due to the nature of his crime and the effect it’s had on their
family, Cross and her relatives could not take him in during his parole period.
Since there is no approved public facility in Cross’s area that houses sex
crime parolees, her son was denied release.
“We had 48 government-approved beds in the state for
sex offenders and that’s been cut to 28, so he won’t ever get one of those,”
Cross told Truthout.
Therefore, her son is serving out his parole time in
prison. He will not be released until October 2010 - two full years after his
intended release date.
“There is no one to help him at all or even visit but
me,” Cross said. “He made the statement to me last week that he knows what it
feels like to be dead.”
No comments:
Post a Comment