was “conspiracy to commit murder.” I believe the prosecutors used the lesser
plea to lure him to court before they gave him the plea they planned to give
him all along. It was a deliberate and duplicitous ploy to get King to the
courthouse, where his family and friends were outside, waiting to bring him
home. He’d already gone through the soul-searching required to take the first
plea. Now this was a different lie. He was innocent. In the end King chose
freedom over justice. Standing at the defense table he was told to raise his
right hand to be sworn in. King raised his left hand. He took the plea. After
court he was taken back to Angola to get the paperwork for his release and
pick up his property. Herman was living on his tier and they said their good-
byes. The tier sergeant allowed King to come onto my tier to say good-bye to
me. King and I had lived on the same tier for 17 years. He had always been a
stabilizing force for me. Most guys only talked about what was going on in
prison; they couldn’t see any further.
King and I had wide-ranging
conversations about philosophy and life, our political beliefs, world events,
books we’d read, Supreme Court rulings,
presidential elections, sports. We
knew each other’s weaknesses and strengths, our habits and ways. When he
got to my cell door we hugged through the bars.
If King had started a new life—a life he deserved—and never looked
back, Herman and I would have been happy for him. But he did something
else. He met with our grassroots support committee and planned actions. He
traveled with former Panther Althea Francois to universities to talk about us
and speak out against solitary confinement. He planned a trip to speak in
Europe with former Panther Marion Brown. Within three months of being
locked in a cell 23 hours a day for 29 years,
King was in New York City,
telling our stories at the Black Panther Film Festival. Later that month he was
back at the front gates of Angola, this time shouting through a megaphone,
surrounded by supporters protesting solitary confinement and the injustice
that Herman and I were facing.
On June 28, 2001, Scott Fleming argued Herman’s PCRA before
Commissioner Rachel Morgan of the 19th Judicial
District Court in East
Baton Rouge. In Louisiana, appeals in state court can go before a
commissioner who reviews the case and writes a preliminary opinion before a
judge gets the case. King was there with two busloads of supporters. He held
a press conference on the steps of the courthouse, explaining to reporters how
the state suppressed evidence that could have proved Herman’s innocence.
The commissioner recommended Herman get an evidentiary hearing with
respect to the suppressed exculpatory and impeachment material that had
come to light at my trial—the fact that Hezekiah
Brown was paid for his
testimony, among other things. He would have to wait years for that hearing.
That summer, using the recipe he perfected in prison, King started
making bulk orders of his praline candy to raise money for A3 campaigns and
for his travel. He called the candy Freelines. A friend donated large cooking
pots for him to use; another friend created a package label that included the
message
FREE THE ANGOLA
3.
King would spend the next 15 years in courtrooms, at press conferences,
on the state capitol steps, at hearings, in lecture halls, at protests and marches,
in bookstores, at radio stations, at universities, and in the British Parliament,
telling people about me and Herman, standing against the abuses of solitary
confinement, and fighting for our freedom. “I am free of Angola,” he often
said, “but Angola will never be free of me.” Wherever King went, support for
us grew; people got involved. At every event
people who were desperate
about their own loved ones in prison or in solitary confinement approached
him. He always took the time to talk to them. He perceived each family’s
struggle, each prisoner’s struggle, as if it were his own. King always said
being in prison was like being in a tunnel and freedom was the light at the
end of the tunnel. Once he got out of prison, he told me, he discovered he was
in a new tunnel and there was another light in the distance. “I think the
struggle is unending,” he told a reporter. “Actually, it’s always beginning.”
