It has been my experience that because of institutional and individual racism

Chapter 41
Hidden Evidence
In 2000, Scott Fleming came on board and worked for us pro bono. First, he
wrote an appeal for Herman, citing the new evidence—the Brady material—
that had been kept from Herman but had come up at my second trial: that
Hezekiah Brown was paid for his testimony. After Scott wrote Herman’s
postconviction relief application (PCRA)—as my direct appeal was wending
its way through the state court system—he turned his attention to my case
and oversaw the effort that uncovered new evidence supporting our
innocence that I could use in my postconviction application. Working with
attorneys Nick Trenticosta, Mike Rocks, Susana Herrero and investigator
Gary Eldredge, Scott reinvestigated Brent Miller’s murder as thoroughly as
possible, 30 years after the fact. One of our first breaks was a statement
Howard Baker gave to Mike Rocks, recanting his testimony against Herman.
Baker was the prisoner who testified that he saw Herman run from Pine 1 the
morning of Miller’s death with blood on his shirt and pants and that he
watched Herman dispose of his bloody clothes by burning them in a furnace
in the tag plant. No longer in prison, he told an investigator he lied at
Herman’s trial to protect himself.
In a new affidavit Baker said that in 1972,
Angola was life and death, buying and selling people, and the officers knew it was happening. . . .
Weapons were everywhere. You could shake down for weapons one night and have just as many
the next. I saw as many as four stabbings a week, week after week. I was attacked and got 22
stitches in my head and only had an inmate to sew me up. . . . When Miller was killed I wasn’t
called in for questioning right away. The word went around from administration that it would be in
an inmate’s best interest to say what he knew about Miller’s killing. So I looked at the situation
like this, I got 60 something years, and I got a chance to help myself—so I was going to do
something to help me get out of this cesspool. So, I gave a statement on 10/16/72, to Warden
Dees, which was a lie. And my testimony based on that statement was a lie. I really thought this
would help me because Dees told me my statement would get my sentence commuted. . . . Dees
just wanted a statement. If they could have hung and burned the guys involved they would have.

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But there was too much light on the situation. I had heard that Hooks and Woodfox were suspects
it seemed like five minutes after Miller was killed. It was all over the penitentiary that they were
the ones that administration thought was involved. So I gave a statement. I was surprised that
anyone didn’t pick my statement apart. It was foolish to think that anyone could get to the tag
plant with blood all over them, especially that day. And there was no furnace in the tag plant to
burn clothes. There was only a heater to dry paint on the tags. You could not burn clothes in it and
Dees knew that. And Dees knows that you have to go through two manned security checkpoints to
get to the tag plant. You could not get there with blood on you. I never saw anyone come out of
Pine 1. I was not near Pine 1 at the time Miller was killed. I lied to try to help myself.
Through the Louisiana Public Records Act, Scott Fleming obtained
material that was deliberately withheld from me and my defense attorneys at
both of my trials, including the original notes that sheriff’s deputies Bill
Daniel and Thomas Guerin took interviewing prisoners after Miller’s murder
in 1972. He also obtained Julie Cullen’s trial notes, records from the crime
lab that did the forensics testing, housing records from Angola, and FBI files
on the case. He interviewed several former inmates. He met with lawyers and
investigators in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. He examined the process
used to impanel my jury and had Mike Rocks study voir dire (preliminary
jury examination) notes. Mike researched how grand juries and grand jury
forepersons were impaneled in West Feliciana Parish, which was where I was
indicted, and looked at the race and gender of nearly every grand juror who
served in West Feliciana Parish for 30 years—between 1964 and 1993—in
order to prove that, while African Americans served as randomly selected
grand jurors in rough proportion to their percentage of the general population,
they served in far lower numbers as grand jury forepersons, who were
selected, discriminatorily, by white judges. Scott studied forensics testing,
researching methods available to test blood, clothing, and fingerprints in
1973 and 1998. He got an expert to look at Paul Fobb’s medical files to
assess Fobb’s vision based on the multiple surgeries he had before 1972. He
turned over every stone to preserve every issue of ineffective counsel and
prosecutorial misconduct he could think of. It’s only because he did such a
thorough job that, over the next 15 years, I was able to keep my case before
the court.
In the 348 inmate interviews Guerin and Daniel conducted the day after
Miller’s death—interviews that the state had refused to hand over before my
1973 and 1998 trials—Scott found significant evidence that the prosecutor
was obliged to turn over to my attorneys but didn’t, the so-called Brady
material.
To try to get around it during my 1998 trial, Julie Cullen made the

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deputies’ notes available “in camera,” meaning only the judge could see the
notes. Judge Bruce Bennett stated that he would “give it a shot” and read the
notes but warned, “I’m not sure that I would recognize what you would
perceive to be exculpatory information . . . and I hate to be placed in the
position of being the—the gate keeper of exculpatory information. . . . It’s a
very uncomfortable position to be placed in.” The judge reminded Cullen,
“. . . if I miss something that is exculpatory, then you all are going to have to
live with that.” Cullen responded by stating, “I fully accept that
responsibility, your Honor.” After the in camera review, the prosecution
agreed to turn over only the notes of the sheriff’s interviews with me, Chester
Jackson, and Gilbert Montegut. The notes took up half a page.
We learned a great deal of information from the other 345 interviews that
would have been favorable to my defense, important leads that the state’s
investigators ignored, leads that didn’t point to us. It was as if prison officials
and the sheriff’s deputies were so determined to pin the blame on me and
Herman that they knowingly and willingly ignored evidence and other leads,
which could have proved who really killed Brent Miller. Two of the inmates
interviewed by the deputies actually had blood on their clothes when
questioned, according to the deputies’ notes, and yet clothing from these
inmates was not sent to the crime lab.
Based on their notes, Deputies Daniel and Guerin never questioned
Hezekiah Brown, the principal witness who claimed to have seen Brent
Miller’s murder. Also, the deputies only questioned 14 prisoners who lived in
Pine 1, where Miller’s body was found. They interrogated three times as
many prisoners—47—who lived in Hickory 4, where I lived. (Out of all the
white prisoners who lived in the Oak dormitories, directly next to the Pine
dorms, only seven were interviewed.)
The deputies’ notes also revealed one prisoner had scratches on his “left
back, near his shoulder blade”—a finding that deputies and prison officials
apparently never followed up. (Forensics reports showed Brent Miller had
skin and blood scrapings beneath his fingernails that were never tested.)
There was a notation next to one prisoner’s name that said he “heard talking
the day before about something. G.K. [the initials of a prisoner] was one in
the group talking.” Next to this deputy Guerin wrote a single word—“plott
[
sic
]”—which was never followed up by investigators.
When the deputies interviewed Joseph Richey after Miller’s killing he
first told them both that he went to Hickory 4 the morning of the murder and

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gave an inmate named “Crutches” cigarettes. Daniel wrote: “P-4 [Pine -4]
72037 [Joseph Richey] went to chow then went to hic-4 and gave Crutches
some cigs came back to dorm.” Guerin wrote: “Joseph Richey—Pine 4—
72037—Gave Crutches cigarettes.” At my trial both Richey and Daniel
testified that Richey gave only one statement. By examining prison housing
records Scott learned Richey was put in a cellblock after making his initial
statement about giving Crutches cigarettes. After a month in the cellblock he
gave a second statement, saying he saw me run from the Pine 1 dorm, after
which he was moved out of the cellblock and back into a dormitory. From the
housing records Scott also discovered that every prisoner who testified
against me got better housing afterward. Every inmate who testified on my
behalf was put in more restrictive housing.
In Julie Cullen’s pretrial notes Scott found even more proof that Cullen
knew Joseph Richey was lying when he testified he saw me run out of Pine 1
after Miller was killed: he told her he hadn’t “heard” my name associated
with the murder until he overheard Chester Jackson’s family talking. The file
contained her personal typed note summarizing a conversation she had with
Richey, who also went by the name Joseph Bowden. The note read: “When
CJ [Chester Jackson] getting ready to testify and JB [James Bowden aka
Richey] heard CJ’s family talking was first time really realized that AW
[Albert Woodfox] was involved in the murder.” Years later two of Jackson’s
sisters would say Chester told them Herman and I had nothing to do with the
murder.
In another unbelievable display of deliberate incompetence, Scott found a
memo from Warden C. Murray Henderson to the FBI stating investigators
found “a pair of bloody tennis shoes” in the area of the dormitory where
Brent Miller was killed. Prison officials never sent the shoes to the crime lab;
the blood on the shoes was never tested; the shoes were never entered as
evidence at my trial or Herman’s. And yet, at one time, the warden must have
believed the shoes were key evidence in Miller’s murder because the deputies
asked prisoners their shoe size.
The day of Miller’s murder I was wearing a gray sweatshirt, a pair of
jeans, and rubber boots. The state always maintained I was wearing a green
army jacket, jeans, and a pair of brown shoes that Bill Daniel claimed he
seized from me the day of Miller’s murder. Scott discovered from crime lab
records that the clothes Daniel claimed he took from me were not submitted
to the crime lab until a week after the murder and a week after all of the other

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evidence in the case had already been submitted and analyzed.
None of the above evidence was turned over to my defense. We never
had a chance to investigate any of it. No jury ever heard any of it. We could
never follow up the leads that might have shed light on what happened. To us
this was clearly prosecutorial misconduct. But Julie Cullen got away with it
the same way all prosecutors do. There is no oversight of prosecutorial
conduct in this country, even though reckless and irresponsible actions by
prosecutors, who are out not for justice or truth but only for their own careers
and to win, have enormous lifelong consequences on people’s lives that can
never be undone.
In my application for postconviction relief Scott also made note of what
the sheriff’s deputies’ file did not contain: the names of police personnel who