Judge Orders Last Remaining Angola 3 Member Albert Woodfox Freed After 43 Years of Solitary Confinement, Only to Be Blocked By Louisiana AG

Albert Woodfox is the only of the long-suffering political prisoners known as the Angola 3 to still be incarcerated. He has been held in solitary confinement – which UN experts insist is a form of torture – for an unconscionable 43 years. Following the overturn of his conviction in a federal court in November, a Louisiana Judge ordered in June that the now-elderly Woodfox, whom evidence suggests was never guilty of the crime for which he was given a life sentence, be released immediately. The Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has no intention of following this order however. After his conviction was overturned, Woodfox was charged once again in February and has yet to be released. The conviction of one of his fellow members of the Angola 3, Robert King, was overturned in 2001. Herman Wallace, the other of the three founding members of the Angola Chapter of the Black Panther Party, was finally released on October 1, 2013 only to die three days later of advanced liver cancer on October 4.