Wilkerson of Angola 3
Survivor of hell tours country to free comrades
By Brenda
Sandburg
San Francisco
Few people make it out of Louisiana's Angola State Prison
alive.
Robert King Wilkerson is one of the survivors. After 31
years--29 in solitary confinement--Wilkerson was set free in
February. But his long battle for justice is not over. He is
fighting to free the other members of the Angola 3.
"When I was released I made a commitment that with whatever
time I had left I would try to free my two comrades," Wilkerson
said at a public meeting in San Francisco April 25. "We're
still the Angola 3."
Wilkerson, along with Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace,
fought to end the rape and torture of prisoners and establish
solidarity between Black and white prisoners at Louisiana's
Angola state penitentiary.
Woodfox and Wallace founded a prison chapter of the Black
Panther Party in 1971, which Wilkerson joined the following
year. In retaliation for their political views, prison
officials framed Woodfox and Wallace in 1972 for murdering a
prison guard and in 1973 charged Wilkerson with the killing of
a fellow prisoner.
In a quiet voice, Wilkerson recounted the harrowing details
of his case. The audience barely moved, overcome by what
Wilkerson endured and by his indomitable spirit.
Soon after he entered solitary confinement, a prisoner on
his tier was killed in a knife fight. Prison officials
initially issued a blanket indictment against all the men on
that tier. A few days later, however, they coerced two other
prisoners to implicate Wilkerson and another man in the
killing. During their trial, the two were shackled, handcuffed,
and their mouths covered with adhesive tape.
"We couldn't open any defense and as a result we were both
found guilty," Wilkerson said.
'The ripple spread'
The state Supreme Court subsequently overturned this
conviction, saying Wilkerson should not have been gagged since
there was no indication he would disrupt the trial. He was
retried. Based on one prisoner's testimony, he was found guilty
and given a life sentence again.
A turning point came in 1987 when the two prisoners who had
testified against him recanted. One of the men said guards had
threatened to pin the killing on him if he didn't testify
against Wilkerson.
Despite clear evidence of Wilkerson's innocence, the courts
would not set him free. In 1991 a three-judge panel offered him
a new trial--not based on his innocence but because no woman
had been on the grand jury that indicted him. The full appeals
court overturned that decision, however.
As a result of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, his case
went before the appeals court again in 2000 and a two-judge
panel found that his constitutional rights had been violated.
That ultimately led to his release.
But Wilkerson said it was the support of people who packed
the courtroom during his last trial that won his freedom. As a
result of this pressure the court looked at evidence that it
had previously rejected, Wilkerson explained.
In particular, Wilkerson cited the work of the International
Action Center on his behalf. "Without the IAC this couldn't
have happened," Wilkerson said. "They threw the first pebble
into the pond and the ripple spread."
Richard Becker, co-director of the IAC's West Coast office,
said the Angola 3 are real heroes. "I don't know how many
people could have endured what they did for three decades and
held to their beliefs," Becker stressed. "They were persecuted
barbarically by the prison system for fighting against the most
corrupt and inhumane conditions."
Others at the San Francisco meeting cited the horrific
conditions within Angola, an 18,000-acre complex of former
slave plantations purchased by Louisiana around the turn of the
20th century.
"Eighty-five percent of those who go into Angola die there,"
noted Marina Drummer, an organizer of the Angola 3 Defense
Committee.
Luis Talamantez, an organizer with the IAC and California
Prison Focus, read a moving poem about the Angola 3 and the
prison "where slavery never died."
Corey Weinglass of California Prison Focus said prison
conditions have become worse over the past 30 years. In
California the number of prisoners has grown from 19,000 to
164,000, he said.
Wilkerson is devoting his life to ending this slavery. "I am
committed to the struggle against the prison-industrial complex
and the exposure of it," Wilkerson concluded.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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