Louisiana Attorney General Says Angola 3 “Have Never Been Held in Solitary Confinement”

March 21, 2013 By 4 Comments
woodfox wallace 70s

Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace in the early 1970s, when they were placed in solitary confinement. (Photo from “In the Land of the Free.”)

James “Buddy” Caldwell, attorney general of the state of Louisiana, has released a statement saying unequivocally that Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, the two still-imprisoned members of the Angola 3, “have never been held in solitary confinement while in the Louisiana penal system.”

In fact, Wallace, now 71, and Woodfox, 66, have been in solitary for nearly 41 years, quite possibly longer than any other human beings on the planet. They were placed in solitary following the 1972 killing of a young corrections officer at Angola, and except for a few brief periods, they have remained in isolation ever since.

The statement from Caldwell follows on the heels of a ruling by a federal District Court judge in New Orleans, overturning Albert Woodfox’s conviction for the third time–in this instance, on the grounds that there had been racial bias in the selection of grand jury forepersons in Louisiana at the time of his indictment. Subsequently, Amnesty International, along with other activists, mounted a campaign urging the state of Louisiana not to appeal the federal court’s ruling. In the absence of an appeal, Woodfox would have to be given a new trial or released.

Caldwell’s statement–which was rather mysteriously sent out to an email list that included numerous prisoners’ rights advocates who have supported the Angola 3–begins: “Thank you for your interest in the ambush, savage attack and brutal murder of Officer Brent Miller at Louisiana State Penitentiary (LSP) on April 17, 1972. Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace committed this murder, stabbing and slicing Miller over 35 times.”

Caldwell clearly states that he has every intention of appealing the District Court’s decision to the notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit: “We feel confident that we will again prevail at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. However, if we do not, we are fully prepared and willing to retry this murderer again.” Caldwell asserts that the evidence against Woodfox is ”overpowering”: “There are no flaws in our evidence and this case is very strong.”

These statements belie the fact that much of the evidence that led to Wallace and Woodfox’s conviction has since been called into question. In particular, the primary eyewitness was shown to have been bribed by prison officials into making statements against the two men. (For more details on the case, see our earlier reporting in Mother Jones, here, here, here, and here.) The two men believe that they were targeted for the murder, and have been held in solitary for four decades, because of their status as Black Panthers and their efforts to organize against prison conditions. (The third member of the Angola 3, Robert King, convicted of a separate prison murder, was released after 29 years in solitary when his conviction was overturned in 2001).

But Caldwell’s most controversial assertion is that Wallace and Woodfox’s conditions of confinement over the past 40 years do not qualify as solitary confinement:

Contrary to popular lore, Woodfox and Wallace have never been held in solitary confinement while in the Louisiana penal system. They have been held in protective cell units known as CCR. These units were designed to protect inmates as well as correctional officers. They have always been able to communicate freely with other inmates and prison staff as frequently as they want. They have televisions on the tiers which they watch through their cell doors. In their cells they can have radios and headsets, reading and writing materials, stamps, newspapers, magazines and books. They also can shop at the canteen store a couple of times per week where they can purchase grocery and personal hygiene items which they keep in their cells.

These convicted murderers have an hour outside of their cells each day where they can exercise in the hall, talk on the phone, shower, and visit with the other 10 to 14 inmates on the tier. At least three times per week they can go outside on the yard and exercise and enjoy the sun if they want. This is all in addition to the couple of days set aside for visitations each week.

These inmates are frequently visited by spiritual advisors, medical personnel and social workers. They have had frequent and extensive contact with numerous individuals from all over the world, by telephone, mail, and face-to-face personal visits. They even now have email capability. Contrary to numerous reports, this is not solitary confinement.

Caldwell’s description does not, in fact, refute the fact that the two men are held for 23 hours a day in closed cells that measure approximately 6 x 9 feet–smaller than the average parking space. CCR, or Closed Cell Restricted, is the Louisiana prison system’s euphemism of choice for solitary confinement. [Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, featured posts, lawsuits/litigation, Louisiana, older prisoners, physical effects, political prisoners, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Hidden History of Solitary Confinement in New Jersey’s Control Units

March 13, 2013 By 4 Comments
Guest Post by Bonnie Kerness

Editor’s Note: As coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch Project, Bonnie Kerness is a leading voice for humanitarian reform of U.S. prisons, jails, and detention centers. Kerness is also a pioneer in raising awareness about the use of prolonged solitary confinement, and in uncompromisingly identifying the practice as a form of torture. Since the 1990s, she has coordinated AFSC’s STOPMAX Campaign, which ”works to eliminate the use of isolation and segregation in U.S. prisons” through “research, grassroots organizing, public education and policy advocacy.”

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

newjerseystateprisonBetween the 1913 closing of Eastern State Penitentiary’s isolation cages and the 1983 lockdown of the federal facility in Marion, Illinois (recently recounted in Nancy Kurshan’s book Out of Control) is a history of struggle against the use of extended solitary confinement in New Jersey, which is little known.

In 1975, after the tumultuous years of the Civil Rights Movement, the Viet Nam War and the prisoners’ rights movement, Trenton State Prison (now New Jersey State Prison) established an administrative isolation unit for politically dissident prisoners. The warden and his staff decided to use this technique, which was modeled after a unit in Soledad Prison in California. The Management Control Unit housed those prisoners who had not broken institutional rules, but who were, as a result of their political convictions and expressions, seen to be a threat by prison administrators. Thus, the New Jersey MCU pre-dated the advent of the control unit in federal system.

Sundiata Acoli was one of the first people interred in this new unit. Sundiata writes, the warden “began rounding up prisoners, 250 all told, of which I was the first. They took me to a cell block, another guard brought my property, stopped in front of a prisoner’s cell, took him out, put me in his cell, and escorted him and his property to my old cell. They switched prisoners all night like this so the next morning they had rounded up, switched 250 prisoners to create an instant Management Control Unit. In less than a month, they had released 200 of the MCU prisoners back into population and kept the 50 prisoners in the MCU for which the roundup was actually intended.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, guest posts, New Jersey, political prisoners, race, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Tracking the Rise of Solitary Confinement in America———-and of the Struggle Against It

March 1, 2013 By 1 Comment

marion lockdown_demoThe use of long-term solitary confinement was born in the United States in the late 18th Century, at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail and later its Eastern State Penitentiary. It was largely abandoned after it was found to cause madness and death, and was used only sparingly for a century and a half. The widespread use of long-term solitary was reborn in 1983, in what came to be known as the Marion Lockdown. Following the murders of two prison guards at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, the entire prison was put on lockdown status–and never taken off. Prisoners were held in round-the-clock solitary confinement, and Marion became the model for “control unit prisons”–the supermaxes and Special Housing Units that were built in large numbers in the two decades following the lockdown.

A new book by Nancy Kurshan, published by the Freedom Archives in San Francisco, details the history of the movement that rose up in response in the form of the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown (CEML), which Kurshan co-founded in 1985 and which eventually turned into a broader campaign against isolated confinement. Out of Control: The Fifteen Year Battle Against Control Unit Prisons, is available online in an abridged version, and the book can be purchased from the Freedom Archives.

Earlier this month, Angola 3 News published a long interview with Nancy Kurshan. The first few questions and answers are reprinted below; the full interview can be read on the A3 News site.

Angola 3 News: Your new book chronicles fifteen years of organizing against control unit prisons, from 1985-2000. Can you begin the interview by explaining exactly what a control unit prison is?

Nancy Kurshan: There are at least 2 ways to answer that question. One is to describe the daily workings. The other is to elucidate the underlying dynamics.

There are variations from prison to prison, but generally speaking, a control unit prison is one in which every prisoner is locked away in their own individual box about 23 hours a day under conditions of severe sensory deprivation. The prisoner eats, sleeps and defecates in the windowless cell. Meals come through a slot in the door. In some cases the prisoner may be out of the cell a couple of times a week for exercise, but in other circumstances the exercise area is even more limited and is attached to the cell itself. Most control unit prisons have little access to education or any recreational outlets.

Usually, control units severely restrict the prisoner’s connection not just with other prisoners, but with family and friends in the outside world. At Marion, only family members could visit, upon approval, and only for a small number of visits per month. The amount of time allowed per visit was severely restricted, and there was no privacy whatsoever and no contact permitted between prisoner and visitor. Visiting took place over a plexiglass wall and through telephones. Guards were always within earshot. The prisoner had to be searched before and after, sometimes cavity searched. The visitor had to undergo a body search as well. The prisoners were brought to the visit in shackles.

Regarding the underlying dynamics, the intent is to make the prisoner feel that his or her life is completely out of control. That is not an unintended consequence. The purpose of the control unit is to make the person feel helpless, powerless and completely dependent upon the prison authorities. The intent is to strip the individual of any agency, any ability to direct his or her own life. A control unit institutionalizes solitary confinement as a way of exerting full control over as much of the prisoner’s life as possible.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, federal prisons, political prisoners, solitary confinement, supermax prisons Tagged With: , , , ,

Bonnie Kerness: Pioneer in the Struggle Against Solitary Confinement

November 8, 2012 By 7 Comments
Guest Post by Lance Tapley

In 1986 Ojore Lutalo, a black revolutionary in the Trenton State Prison — now the New Jersey State Prison — wrote to Bonnie Kerness’s American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) office in Newark. His letter described the extreme isolation and other brutalities in the prison’s Management Control Unit, which he called a “prison within a prison.”

“I could not believe what he was telling me” about the MCU, she says. She reacted by becoming “this lunatic white lady” calling New Jersey corrections officials about Lutalo.

Kerness immediately went to work trying to stop MCU guards from harassing prisoners by waking them at 1 a.m. to make them strip in front of snarling dogs leaping for their genitals — to arbitrarily have them switch cells. She got this practice stopped.

Lutalo’s letter also began to open her eyes to the torture of solitary confinement, which in the mid-1980s was just starting to spread across the country as a mass penological practice. Coordinator of the AFSC’s national Prison Watch Project, Kerness had worked on prison issues since the mid-1970s. Now she became an anti-solitary-confinement activist. In 2012, she has been one longer and more consistently than, possibly, anyone else.

“I try not to use the word ‘pioneer’ lightly,” says David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, “but it certainly applies to Bonnie. She did the groundwork for the progress and success we are now having.”

Corey Weinstein, a California physician who also was a pioneering activist against solitary confinement, says Kerness made a huge contribution early on by bringing a human-rights vision to the effort. It provided “the intellectual framework that we could grasp onto” to understand what was happening.

Reflecting on how difficult it has been for solitary confinement to be publicly recognized as torture, Stuart Grassian, a Massachusetts psychiatrist — another trailblazer who is credited with identifying long-term isolation as the cause of a devastating psychiatric syndrome — observes: “How frightening it is to see people choose not to see what’s in front of them.”

Many years ago Bonnie Kerness chose to see what was in front of her.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, featured posts, guest posts, human rights, New Jersey, political prisoners, politics of punishment, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Voices from Solitary: Behind Enemy Lines

June 9, 2012 By 2 Comments

The artist Ojore Lutalo was released from Trenton State Penitentiary in August 2009 by way of a court order. He maxed out after 28 year. 22 of which were spent in the Management Control Unit (solitary confinement). Lutalo was imprisoned after an armed robbery conviction, but he was held in the MCU because his political beliefs–his association with the with the Anarchist Black Cross Federation and Black Liberation Army–were deemed a threat to the security of the prison. In order to keep his sanity during his internment, Lutalo says he abided by a strict regiment of physical exercise, mediation and study. He also began creating political art. Ojore Lutalo provided the following description of his artwork:

“Over the years Ojore was asked repeatedly to describe the conditions that he faced on a daily basis. These requests ranged from simple curiosity as to the physical particulars of his cell and surroundings to the profound emotional pressures and struggles associated with long-term solitary confinement. Ojore began creating his political propaganda both as a way to maintain his sanity and to more adequately convey to his friends the physical and emotional reality he experienced within solitary confinement. For the last 22 years of his confinement Ojore created a wide range of art pieces offering his unique perspective.

“Since his release is 2008, Ojore dedicates himself to assisting the American Friends Service Committee in its attempt to expose the true nature and extent of long-term isolation, its effect both on the prisoner individually as well as society at large. This outreach often involves speaking engagements in which he uses artwork to re-enforce his text, finding visuals often communicate more effectively than a purely oral presentation. Often after speaking, Ojore receives requests from individuals to purchase his artwork. The limited proceeds from the sale of these pieces allow Ojore to continue to volunteer his time to the American Friends Service Committee.”

What follows is a small sample of Ojore Lutalo’s work. His collages are for sale on the website www.ojorebehindenemylines.com, and he is available for art showings: e-mail kerness.b@verizon.net.    –Jean Casella and James Ridgeway

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, human rights, media, New Jersey, political prisoners, psychological effects, race, retaliation, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture, Voices from Solitary Tagged With: , , , ,

Torturous Milestone: 40 Years in Solitary for the Angola 3

April 17, 2012 By 1 Comment

Today marks 40 years in solitary confinement for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Our article on the Angola 3 appears today on MotherJones.com.

On the world stage, Guantanamo may well stand as the epitome of American human rights abuses. But when it comes to torture on US soil, that grim distinction is held by two aging African-American men. As of today, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox have spent 40 years in near-continuous solitary confinement in the bowels of the Louisiana prison system. Most of those years were spent at the notorious Angola Prison, which is why the pair are still known as members of the Angola 3. The third man, Robert King, was released in 2001—his conviction was overturned after he’d spent 29 years in solitary.

Wallace and Woodfox were first thrown into the hole on April 17, 1972, following the killing of Brent Miller, a young prison guard. The men contend that they were targeted by prison authorities and convicted of murder not based on the actual evidence—which was dubious at best—but because they were members of the Black Panther Party’s prison chapter, which was organizing against horrendous conditions at Angola. This political affiliation, they say, also accounted for their seemingly permanent stay in solitary.

For four decades, the men have spent at least 23 hours a day in cells measuring 6 x 9 feet. These days, they are allowed out one hour a day to take a shower or a stroll along the cell block. Three days a week, they may use that hour to exercise alone in a fenced yard. Wallace is now 70; Woodfox is 65. Their lawyers argue that both have endured physical injury and “severe mental anguish and other psychological damage” from living most of their adult lives in lockdown. According to medical reports submitted to the court, the men suffer from arthritis, hypertension, and kidney failure, as well as memory impairment, insomnia, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression. Even the psychologist brought in by the state confirmed these findings.

Read the rest of the article for updates on the Angola 3′s legal challenges to solitary confinement, as well as to their convictions. We also cover the latest from the two men who are determined to keep Wallace and Woodfox in prison and in solitary: Angola Warden Burl Cain, who says the two men are too “militant” to be in the general population, and Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, who has said he opposes releasing them “with every fiber of my being.”

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox in the 1970s, with Angola prison in the background. From the film "In the Land of the Free."

Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, Constitution, Eighth Amendment, featured posts, human rights, lawsuits/litigation, Louisiana, older prisoners, physical effects, political prisoners, politics of punishment, psychological effects, race, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

83-Year-Old Activist Priest Held in Solitary Confinement in Federal Prison

January 23, 2012 By 35 Comments

Jesuit priest and peace activist Father Bill Bichsel is reportedly being held in solitary confinement at SeaTac Federal Detention Center south of Seattle. According to friends, Bichsel has not eaten solid food since January 10 in protest of his treatment.

Fr. Bichsel, known to friends and colleagues as “Bix,” is a member of the Disarm Now Plowshares group. He has been arrested several times in connection with nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases, nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the School of the Americas. Most recently, he served a three-month sentence at SeaTac for a July 2010 action at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, future site of a new nuclear weapons plant.

On January 10, Bichsel was moved to a halfway house in Tacoma. According to the Disarm Now Plowshares blog, he was told that the facility had a rule prohibiting visitors for the first 72 hours of residency.  But on the evening of his arrival, a pair of Buddhist monks and a small group of students, on their way to a local protest, “made a small detour and stopped by the house Bix was in, to drum and pray for him outside the building for a few minutes.” The blog continues:

Bix was very happy to see and hear all who came to visit and wanted either to invite everyone in or go out and be with them. He had a strong sense they were angels, which gave him intense joy. He went onto comment that “it was so right they should be there.”

His captors on the other hand had a slightly different experience. First reprimanding him for being out of compliance (whatever that meant), he was told he was going to be “written up” and what happened was to be “reported.” The rest is history – in early morning he was suddenly awakened, grabbed out of bed, shackled, and returned to SeaTac by the marshals.

Their actions and manner of treatment made it known to him how he would proceed. Upon his arrival at SeaTac he made it clear he intended to be in complete non compliance with their demands; their recourse, which was to be expected, would be to place him in “protective custody or the special housing unit (SHU)”…“the hole”!

Bichsel, who suffers from circulation problems as well as a heart condition, reported to friends that it was “very cold for me all of the time” in his SHU cell at SeaTac, and that he was going “24 hours a day without sleep, fighting off the chill. I have asked for a jacket or a pillow or a mattress; they do not comply.” After supporters held a candlelight vigil outside of the prison last week, he was provided with additional blankets.

According to an article in the National Catholic Reporter, “A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said that while he couldn’t comment on the case of a specific inmate, he did say that the ‘typical issue’ for all inmates in the federal system is a blanket and sheet, and that there is a ‘full health services staff on duty at all of our facilities.” A public information officer for the BOP told the paper: “’If we receive information either from the inmate or the inmate’s doctor on the street that there was some sort of pre-existing condition that was being treated, obviously we would pick up the ball from there.’”

Several other religious peace activists have been held in solitary confinement at the SeaTac SHU in recent years. They include members of a group of others (all of them over 60 years old) who in 2009 broke into the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Seattle, where nuclear submarines are kept. At their trial for trespassing and conspiracy, the judge criticized the defendents’ “lack of remorse” and called their protest “a form of anarchy” that could lead to a “breakdown in the social order.”

According to fellow activist Blake Kermer, who visited Bichsel on Saturday, “Bix wants everyone to know that as he continues on his fast – yesterday was his eleventh day – that he feels stronger and more confirmed in his resolution…Bix says that Christians can unite in conscience where God speaks to all of us, to abolish nuclear weapons and to oppose those policies of the US that are without conscience. This was a point that Bix was reminded of when he was taken back to the BOP and told by his jailer that his re-arrest was a matter of policy, not of conscience.  Bix talked about how policy without conscience reminded him…of the White Rose and their courage in protesting Nazi policies without conscience, even though they were beheaded for their resolve.”

Disarm Now Plowshares has provided addresses for public officials to whom supporters can write, as well as the prison address of Fr. Bichsel.

Update, January 28: Disarm Now Plowshares and the Seattle Times have reported that Fr. Bichsel has broken his fast after two weeks of subsisting on two pints of milk a day:

 A Tacoma priest and peace activist best known for breaking into a nuclear submarine base in Kitsap County has ended a two-week fast that drew sharp concern from some in the local faith and peace communities.

Father William “Bix” Bichsel, a Jesuit priest based at St. Leo’s Parish, had been fasting to protest “nuclear weapons, inhumane treatment at prisons and the separation of policy from conscience,” according to his attorney Blake Kremer.

The ailing 83-year-old broke his fast Wednesday, according to portions of a letter from him published in the Disarmnowplowshares’s Blog, because he felt himself weakening…

Bichsel began his partial fast, taking only 2 pints of milk each day, to protest what he saw as the arbitrarily inhumane and harsh treatment of his fellow prisoners as well as to draw attention to his opposition to nuclear weapons and the existence of policies “divorced from conscience,” Kremer said.

News of Bichsel’s sanction, and subsequent fast, sparked outrage and a flurry of letters and phone calls to the prison and the media from members of the faith and peace communities. A vigil was held for him outside the detention center last Sunday…

In his letter last Tuesday, Bichsel said he has now received additional clothing and blankets. In addition, he has been so encouraged by the support from well-wishers and by “a real sense of God’s presence” that he no longer seeks release from the Special Housing Unit.

Update, February 9: Disarm Now Plowshares reports that Fr. Bichsel was released from SeaTac prison today after four weeks in solitary confinement.

While he was in prison, local Tacoma cartoonist R.R. Anderson designed a Bix “nonviolent action figure.”

Filed Under: federal prisons, older prisoners, political prisoners, solitary confinement Tagged With: ,

New from Solitary Watch: Original Videos on Solitary Confinement

August 16, 2011 By 5 Comments

Today marks the launch of a Solitary Watch video channel on YouTube. The channel will feature original video interviews with former prisoners, family members, and advocates, as well as a collection of other videos on solitary confinement. We begin with three short video interviews  shot by Valeria Monfrini, a student at Corcoran College of Art + Design who is completing an internship as a reporter and videographer at Solitary Watch.

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Bonnie Kerness, whose wealth of hands-on involvement with prisoners held in solitary has inspired and informed so much of the movement against prison isolation, comes out of the civil rights movement. As she describes it, “Since 1975, I have been a human rights  advocate on behalf of prisoners throughout the country. Currently, I coordinate the Prison Watch Project for the American Friends Service Committee  (AFSC).” Kerness works out of the AFSC office in Newark, and on a June day this year, she shared her own analysis before  introducing us to two people who experienced solitary confinement firsthand.

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Munirah El-Bomani spent time in New Jersey women’s prisons in the late 1990s. She landed in solitary, she says, because she stood up for herself and was branded a troublemaker. Today she fights for a living as a street vendor and civil rights activist in Newark. More than a decade after her release, she remains haunted by her prison experiences, and by the fear of going back.

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Ojore Lutalo was imprisoned in 1982 on an armed robbery conviction, and released in 2009. He spent the majority of his 26 years behind bars in isolation because of his associations with the Anarchist Black Cross Federation and Black Liberation Army. For much of this time, he was in the Management Control Unit at Trenton State Prison. The MCU, one of the earliest units of its kind, was known for using solitary confinement to isolate prisoners who held unsavory political beliefs or sought to organize other inmates. Here Lutalo describes his time in solitary, including an incident in 2005, when he was summarily thrown into what the prisoners call the “boom-boom room”—formally referred to as mental health unit 1-C, where “I was not allowed to shower, change my clothing, have soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, washcloth or towel. I was not allowed to make telephone calls, send out or receive personal or legal mail. I was also not allowed to receive personal or legal visits or take part in any inside or outside recreational activities.” Lutalo also guides viewers through his artwork, which he says helped him remain sane and strong while inside.

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Filed Under: corrections industry, human rights, media, New Jersey, political prisoners, psychological effects, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , , , , , ,

“God’s Own Warden”: Inside Angola Prison

July 28, 2011 By 6 Comments

Editor’s Note: The latest issue of Mother Jones magazine includes James Ridgeway’s long article on Burl Cain, warden of the nation’s largest prison, and possibly its most notorious. The former slave plantation is known for the fact that 90 percent of its more than 5,000 prisoners will die behind bars, and also for holding two members of the “Angola 3″ in solitary confinement for nearly 40 years. More recently, it has also become known for the “miracle” wrought by its controversial warden, who is said to have transformed the prison with the help of Christianity.

It took the threat of an ACLU lawsuit for James Ridgeway to gain access to Angola. The resulting article offers an alternative narrative on the miracle at Angola. The opening section of the article follows; the full article can be read on MotherJones.com.

It was a chilly December morning when I got to the gates of Angola prison, and I was nervous as I waited to be admitted. To begin with, nothing looked the way it ought to have looked. The entrance, with its little yellow gatehouse and red brick sign, could have marked the gates of one of the smaller national parks. There was a museum with a gift shop, where I perused miniature handcuffs, jars of inmate-made jelly, and mugs that read “Angola: A Gated Community” before moving on to the exhibits, which include Gruesome Gertie, the only electric chair in which a prisoner was executed twice. (It didn’t take the first time, possibly because the executioners were visibly drunk.)

Besides being cold and disoriented, I had the well-founded sense of being someplace where I wasn’t wanted. Angola welcomes a thousand or more visitors a month, including religious groups, schoolchildren, and tourists taking a side trip from their vacations in plantation country. Under ordinary circumstances, it’s possible to drive up to the gate and tour the prison in a state vehicle, accompanied by a staff guide. But for me, it had taken close to two years and the threat of an ACLU lawsuit to get permission to visit the place.

I was studying an exhibit of sawed-off shotguns when I heard someone call my name. It was Cathy Fontenot, the assistant warden in charge of PR. Smartly dressed in a tailored shirt and jeans, a suede jacket, and boots with four-inch heels, she introduced me to a smiling corrections officer (“my bodyguard”) and to Pam Laborde, the genial head spokeswoman for the Louisiana department of corrections who had come up from Baton Rouge to help escort me on my hard-won tour of Angola.

Everyone was there except the person I had come to see: Warden Burl   Cain, a man with a near-mythical reputation for turning Angola, once   known as the bloodiest prison in the South,  into a model facility. Among  born-again Christians, Cain is revered  for delivering hundreds of  incarcerated sinners to the Lord—running the  nation’s largest  maximum-security prison, as one evangelical publication put it, “with an  iron fist and an even stronger love for Jesus.” To Cain’s more secular  admirers,  Angola demonstrates an attractive option for controlling the  nation’s  booming prison population at a time when the notion of  rehabilitation  has effectively been abandoned.

What I had heard about Cain, and seen in the plentiful footage of  him, led me to expect an affable guy—big gut, pale, jowly face,  good-old-boy demeanor. Indeed, former Angola inmates say that prisoners  who respond to Cain’s program of “moral rehabilitation” through  Christian redemption are rewarded with privileges, humane treatment, and  personal attention. Those who displease him, though, can face harsh  punishments. Wilbert Rideau, the award-winning former Angolite  editor who is probably Angola’s most famous ex-con, says when he first  arrived at the prison, Cain tried to enlist him as a snitch, then sought  to convert him. When that didn’t work, Rideau says, his magazine became  the target of censorship; he says Cain can be “a bully—harsh, unfair,  vindictive.”

“Cain was like a king, a sole ruler,” Rideau writes in his recent memoir, In the Place of Justice.  “He enjoyed being a dictator, and regarded himself as a benevolent  one.” When a group of middle school students visited Angola a few years  ago, Cain told them that the inmates were there because they “didn’t  listen to their parents. They didn’t listen to law enforcement. So when  they get here, I become their daddy, and they will either listen to me  or make their time here very hard.”

Another former prisoner, John Thompson—who spent 14 years on death  row at Angola before being exonerated by previously concealed  evidence—told me that Cain runs Angola “with a Bible in one hand and a  sword in the other.” And when the chips are down, Thompson said, “he  drops the Bible.”

Who is the man who wields so much untempered power over so many human  beings? I wanted to find out firsthand—but when I requested permission  to visit the prison and interview Cain, back in 2009, Fontenot turned me  down flat. Cain, she said, was not happy with what I had written about  the Angola Three, a trio of inmates who have been in solitary longer  than any other prisoners in America. Two years and much legal wrangling  later, I was here at Fontenot’s invitation, ready to see the Cain  miracle for myself…

Read the rest on MotherJones.com.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, corrections industry, cost/budget issues, death row, Eighth Amendment, lawsuits/litigation, life without parole, Louisiana, media, older prisoners, physical effects, political prisoners, politics of punishment, popular culture, psychological effects, race, retaliation, sentencing, solitary confinement, torture Tagged With: , , , ,

Native American Activist Leonard Peltier “in the Hellhole” of Solitary Confinement

July 19, 2011 By 13 Comments

American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier has been removed from general population and placed into solitary confinement at USP Lewisburg since June 27th. The 66-year old inmate has been ordered to spend 6 months in solitary stemming from various petty infractions, according to his attorney, Robert R. Bryan.

Peltier, in a letter to his attorney, described the cell as a “cement steel hotbox” with little ventilation (a 1.5 inch slot under the door is the primary source of cool air). Due to the lack of suitable ventilation coupled with the heat of the summer, he has been “drenched in hot sweat” and indicated he had to stop many times while writing the letter due to difficulty concentrating in the cell. “My client has been put in the hellhole,” said Bryan.

Allotted five one-hour periods of exercise, Peltier spends 23 hours in a cell five days a week. The exercise is “in a cage” where water isn’t allowed. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, he is allowed to shower. For the other two days, he is in his cell 24 hours. He is not allowed any personal visits.

According to a note that Peltier had written at the time, he had been preparing to eat breakfast the morning of June 27th when guards entered his cell and began “disrespecting my religious items” and “threatened to lock me into solitary.”

According to the prison’s first incident report, dated 06/27/2011:

 [T]his officer reviewed a letter being sent by inmate Peltier…In this letter, inmate Peltier has enclosed a bank note of 20 pounds, in Scottish currency. In the enclosed letter, inmate admits to receiving the bank note in the mail. It is obvious that inmate Peltier was in possession of money that was not authorized.

Peltier received a letter the previous day from a supporter in Scotland that contained a 20-pound note and had been inspected by the mailroom. Peltier had asked the mailroom to send back the enclosed money, but this request wasn’t followed up. He then addressed a letter to a friend and enclosed the note so as to send the money out of his cell and out of the prison, knowing that possession of unauthorized money was a violation of prison rules. This letter was intercepted at 8:00 a.m., prompting guards to search his cell at 9:45 a.m.

According to a second prison incident report, written the same day by a guard who searched Peltier’s cell:

[W]hile performing a search…I observed two wires protruding approximately 2 inches from the wall of the cell….The wires were located on the wall above the corner post of the upper bunk.. I attempted to pull the wires out of the wall. …As I attempted to pull the wire out of the wall my grip failed, my fingers slipped on the wire and contacted the bare ends of the wire. At that time I received an electrical shock through my right hand and forearm.

Peltier was deemed guilty of “destroying, altering or damaging government property having a value in excess of $100.” Peltier, however, did not sleep on the top bunk and the wiring was manipulated by a former cellmate. In addition, because of the guard’s decision to attempt to pull the wires out of the wall, Peltier was found to have engaged in “conduct which disrupts or interferes with security or
orderly running of the institution (Most Like) assaulting any person.” “Most Like” is a provision in the Federal Bureau of Prisons Program Statement that reads: “This charge is to be used only when another charge of greatest severity is not accurate. The offending conduct must be charged as ‘most like’ one of the listed greatest severity prohibited acts.”

Prison officials deemed Peltier responsible for the shock the guard received while pulling out the exposed wires, and deemed it an act “most like” an act of assault committed by Peltier. This is a “greatest severity level” violation,  meaning an inmate can be placed into segregation for up to a year. The charge of destruction of property is a “high severity level” act which can result in up to six months in segregation, and the possession of unauthorized money is a “moderate severity level” violation and could result in up to three months in segregation.

Peltier’s punishment for possessing money he had refused and attempted to send away, for being deemed guilty for the actions of a prior cellmate, and for “assaulting” a guard who chose to touch live wires is only the latest of the injustices that Peltier has faced.

Peltier was convicted of the 1975 killing of two FBI agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which took place at the height of the American Indian Movement’s efforts to gain public attention regarding the plight of Native American tribes, the abuses of the United States government against Native Americans, and a wave of unsolved murders in tribal territories. The subject of a 1992 documentary and a European Parliament resolution of support, Peltier has always maintained his innocence. Critics have raised serious questions about the fairness of his trial, and he is considered by many to be a political prisoner.

The United States Penitentiary at Lewisburg is the oldest prison in the federal system, and one of the most notorious. Since 2009, it has also been one of the most heavily locked-down. In the words of the Bureau of Prisons, Lewisburg is now being “run entirely as a Special Management Unit (SMU) institution to operate as a more controlled and restrictive environment for managing the most
aggressive and disruptive inmates from USP general population.” Peltier was sent there in 2008 not for any disciplinary infractions, but
because he was the victim of a beating by younger prisoners at another federal  facility. “They’re hoping he’ll die there, that he’ll be forgotten there,” maintains his attorney.”

Peltier has been in poor health in recent years, suffering from hypertension, diabetes, and exhibiting symptoms of cancer. This is of particular concern given the vast literature pointing to significant detrimental effects of solitary confinement on both psychological and physical health, particularly when there are pre-existing conditions.

Peltier’s attorney has indicated that the placement into solitary confinement has slowed correspondence. A legal call has been delayed for several days and the prison has been slow to providing Peltier with the instruments necessary to write and send letters necessary for his legal proceedings.

Says attorney Bryan: “Prison officials are using this as an excuse to punish and torture my 66-year-old client. His health is poor because of decades of imprisonment. He needs to be placed back into the general population.”

More information on Leonard Peltier can be found on the Facebook page run by Peltier attorney Robert R. Bryan.

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Filed Under: civil liberties/civil rights, federal prisons, older prisoners, Pennsylvania, physical effects, political prisoners, politics of punishment, psychological effects, retaliation, solitary confinement, supermax prisons, torture Tagged With: , ,
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