Sign petition for Angola 2!

Albert Woodfox, now 64, and Herman Wallace, 69, have been held in solitary confinement in Louisiana State Penitentiary for 40 years. That’s being in a 6 1/2-by-9-foot cell for more than 23 hours a day, 365 days a year, for 40 years. They are allowed out of their cells for only four hours a week.

LSP is a modern version of the chain-gang prisons so notorious in the South. The vast majority of those held behind bars are African American, as are Woodfox and Wallace. And although solitary confinement was ruled ineffective and cruel in the U.S. as long ago as 1913, it has been restored today, with more than 80,000 men and women suffering the torture of prolonged isolation.

Known as the Angola 2, Woodfox and Wallace are suing the penitentiary, saying their imprisonment is “cruel and unusual” and therefore violates the U.S. Constitution, as well as international law.

Amnesty International has recently opened a petition drive to get the two out of solitary, calling their conditions “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” Go to amnesty.org and click on How You Can Help to sign the petition.

Their lawyers say the two should never have been convicted of the murder of a prison guard in the first place: “No physical evidence linking the men to the guard’s murder has ever been found; potentially exculpatory DNA evidence has been lost; and the convictions were based on questionable inmate testimony. Over the years of litigation on the cases, documents have emerged suggesting that the main eyewitness was bribed by prison officials into giving statements against the men and that the state withheld evidence about the perjured testimony of another inmate witness. A further witness later retracted his testimony.”

End solitary confinement!

Free Woodfox and Wallace!