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

Nightly News
did a segment on us; our supporters had

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been trying since my trial in 1998 to get national network news to report on
our story. “Let’s understand something here,” Herman’s voice came over by
phone in the report, “the SPCA would shut this prison down if they had dogs
up in here like this. It’s just cruel and unusual punishment.” Teenie Rogers
was interviewed for the NBC segment and also gave an interview to the 
Los
Angeles Times
.
As the months passed in the CCR dorm I was reminded of Herman’s
extraordinary resourcefulness. They say that necessity is the mother of
invention, and that is nowhere more true than in prison, but Herman went
beyond the norm. I once watched him fill his favorite pen with ink pulled
from another pen. He attached the two pens somehow and spun them on a
string until all the ink from one pen went into the other. He sewed pieces of
thick white athletic socks onto his regular socks at the ankle to protect his
skin from chafing when he walked in the leg irons. He made gloves out of
cut-off sweatshirt sleeves, tracing the fingers of his own hand on the sleeve
and cutting it out with a razor blade, then sewing the finger seams together
using thread from unraveling a sheet.
We were frustrated because we had no chance to talk to prisoners in the
main prison. The only time we were in the same area with other prisoners
outside CCR was when we were in the visiting room, and prisoners weren’t
allowed to talk to each other there. We discussed ways to reach them. “The
only way to make change is to get among the ‘gangsters’ and ‘gangbangers’
and to arm them with new methods of thinking,” Herman would say, quoting
Mumia Abu-Jamal. “If our young brothers are lost,” Mumia said, “then it is
our duty to find them!”
While housed in the CCR dorm we had yard every day and Herman and I
could be in the yard at the same time. We would never admit it or say it
aloud, but the punishment of 23 hours a day in the cell had taken a toll on our
health. We weren’t as fast as we used to be. We were in our sixties now. My
back stiffened on me some days and on those days I couldn’t run at all. There
were times when I suddenly felt fatigued and weak and I figured that was
from the diabetes. I was on stronger medication for my high blood pressure
now. Herman had his own aches and pains and was going deaf. He asked
people to speak up, saying, “My ears are closing.” After waiting for months
he was finally sent to the hospital in Baton Rouge to have his hearing tested.
The doctors told him he had severe hearing loss and prescribed two hearing
aids. The prison gave him only one. He said it created an imbalance in his

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head.
On July 8, 2008, I got a message to call one of my attorneys, Nick
Trenticosta. When your lawyer calls you in prison, part of you braces for bad
news. There could be a death in the family. I called him back. Nick was
joyful. He told me my conviction was overturned by Judge Brady, who had
decided to follow Magistrate Judge Noland’s recommendation of relief.
Judge Brady overturned my conviction on the grounds of ineffective
assistance of counsel and also found that prosecutors had unlawfully failed to
turn over evidence they had that would have helped my defense. The state
immediately asked Judge Brady to reconsider his decision.
On September 25, after denying the state’s motion to reconsider his
ruling, Judge Brady entered judgment, granting me habeas corpus relief. The
state had 30 days to retry me or dismiss the charges against me. Nick gave
me the news on the phone. He said, “Albert, it sounds like you’re drunk.” I
said, “I am drunk. I’m drunk on justice.” Nick made numerous attempts to
meet with Attorney General Buddy Caldwell, but Caldwell wouldn’t meet
with him. “We call on the attorney general to do the right thing,” Nick told
reporters. “To act as a reasonable public servant in the pursuit of justice . . .
to allow Mr. Woodfox to go home today.” Caldwell talked to reporters,
saying he would appeal Judge Brady’s ruling all the way to the U.S. Supreme
Court if necessary. “I oppose letting him out with every fiber of my being,”
he told the reporters, “because this is a very dangerous man.” My lawyers
filed a motion for my release on bail pending Caldwell’s appeal, and a
hearing for that motion was scheduled. At the bail hearing in October, my
brother Michael’s daughter, my niece Rheneisha Robertson (the director of a
nonprofit health organization); and her husband, former professional football
player Bernard Robertson, told the court I could live with their family in a
gated community outside New Orleans. Michael testified about my character.
Nick told the judge how my already poor health, after more than 30 years
of solitary confinement, would be jeopardized by my staying in prison and
cited my outstanding conduct record. Assistant to the attorney general Dana
Cummings argued against bail saying the state would be “irreparably injured”
if I was released. She emphasized my criminal record and that I was “twice
convicted of murder.” Judge Brady reminded her that both of my murder
convictions had been overturned. He asked her how the state would be
“irreparably injured” if I was free on bail. Cummings replied, “If he goes out
and kills one of our witnesses, we’re irreparably injured.” Burl Cain testified

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I was a danger to the community, “because he is not a rehabilitated prisoner.
He will be a predator when the opportunity comes his way.” Outside the
courtroom, Buddy Caldwell painted me as a monster. He told the press I was
a convicted rapist and a serial sex offender—all lies.
While the court considered the state’s appeal of my victory, my niece was
terrorized for agreeing to take me in. We heard that the attorney general’s
office contacted the homeowners’ association where she lived and spread lies
about me. Strangers somehow got into her gated community and repeatedly
drove slowly by her house. Some neighbors received in their mailboxes flyers
about me stating that I was a rapist. “Buddy Caldwell . . . embarked upon a
public scare campaign reminiscent of the kind of inflammatory hysteria that
once was used to provoke lynch mobs,” wrote Ira Glasser, the former
executive director of the ACLU. “He sent emails to neighbors calling
Woodfox a convicted murderer and violent rapist; and neighbors were urged
to sign petitions opposing his release.”
One day Michael told me Rheneisha was home with her sick child when
the doorbell rang. She opened the door to a mob of reporters, asking to talk to
her. She didn’t know what to do; she wanted to go to her child, who was in
another room of the house, but didn’t want to close the door on the reporters
or say something that might come back to hurt me. Her neighbors stopped
waving to her. I told my lawyers to tell the judge I was withdrawing her name
as the person I would stay with on bail. I was concerned about my niece’s
family’s safety and reputation. I didn’t want to be the cause of friction
between her and her neighbors. My attorneys informed Judge Brady and told
him that they were looking for another place for me.
When I first heard about the false rape charges Buddy Caldwell was
making against me I felt sick. I had risked my life protecting men from being
raped in prison. Now I was being falsely accused of being a rapist. I called
my closest supporters and lawyers and told them I wanted to speak out
against the false accusations.
Nobody wanted me to talk publicly about the rape allegations made by
Buddy Caldwell—not my lawyers, not my family, not my closest friends and
advisers. Everybody had a different reason and begged me not to speak out.
Some thought I shouldn’t stoop to the level of Buddy Caldwell. Others
thought it would make me look guilty to defend myself, or they feared that a
“war of words” in the press would make Caldwell’s charges look legitimate.
Some thought that since the rape charges were bogus they would “die down.”

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I knew the rape charges wouldn’t die down. If you want to smear an African
American man’s reputation, all you have to do is say the word “rape.” It is a
bell that can’t be unrung. I wanted to let our supporters know I was innocent
of these accusations. For all of the people all over this country, all over this
planet who had rallied to the cause of the Angola 3, who had fought for my
freedom, I needed them to hear me say I never raped anyone. My support
committee and attorneys asked me to let them deny it for me.
Buddy Caldwell based these false rape charges on old rap sheets created
when the police emptied the books on me the night I was arrested for armed
robbery in 1969. There has never been any real charge, arraignment,
indictment, or prosecution of me for rape, ever. Caldwell was lying when he
said there were witnesses and that there was evidence. There was no way he
could prosecute me for rape. I was innocent. I knew I had comrades who
would get my statement out to the public when I was ready, even if it was
against their better judgment.
The attorney general’s office filed more than 300 pages of exhibits and
memoranda with the court to oppose my bail, documents that falsely stated
that I was a “convicted sex offender” and misleadingly suggested that I had a
number of “aggravated rape and armed robbery charges” from the late 1960s.
Louisiana claimed I was never prosecuted for the rapes because I’d already
been sentenced to 50 years for armed robbery. This was bullshit because the
night I was arrested for the armed robbery was the same night the books were
emptied on me charging me with rape. At that time rape in Louisiana carried
the death penalty. If the state could have prosecuted me for rape, it would
have. But Louisiana charged me with and prosecuted me for armed robbery,
not rape, because there was no evidence of any kind, no eyewitness, no
victim statement that supported the rape charges. And yet, Caldwell told the
court, “No community should be so endangered by this admitted career
criminal who still has outstanding, viable, unprosecuted aggravated rape
charges.”
Attorneys Chris Aberle and Nick Trenticosta responded with a
memorandum of our own, pointing out the “numerous misrepresentations,
mischaracterizations, and tenuous unsubstantiated accusations based on
patently incredible hearsay” in the state’s case. They pointed out that five of
the six rape allegations in my arrest record were generated when the police
arrested me on February 13, 1969, for armed robbery, when they emptied the
books on me. My lawyers also made clear that I was never prosecuted for any

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of those charges except armed robbery.
The State first notes that Mr. Woodfox was arrested six times for aggravated rape in 1967 and
1969. Later in its memorandum, the State purports to list all of the crimes committed by Mr.
Woodfox and includes six instances of aggravated rape so as to leave this Court with the false
impression that Mr. Woodfox had been convicted of those offenses. What the State does not make
clear is that the sole source of information regarding five of those six rape allegations is their
appearance as unadorned charges in three arrest registers, each generated after the police arrested
Mr. Woodfox on February 13, 1969, for the robbery with which he was ultimately charged and
found guilty.
Mr. Woodfox avers, on information and belief, that during that period in history, New Orleans
police routinely charged arrestees with unsolved crimes in the hope that the defendant could be
connected to the crime. Such a practice would explain why those five capital offenses appear on
the arrest registers, notwithstanding that the State never charged Mr. Woodfox with a single one of
those aggravated rapes. One must assume that the State’s decision not to prosecute Mr. Woodfox
for any of those crimes arose from the lack of any evidence connecting Mr. Woodfox to any of
those crimes.
The State also grossly misleads this Court regarding the sixth rape charge, alleged to have
occurred in 1967. On page 15 of its memorandum, amid what purports to be a list of all of the
crimes Mr. Woodfox has committed, the Attorney General avers that on 11/20/67, Mr. Woodfox
committed the “aggravated rape of J.C.” Following that entry, the State purports to allege another
crime. Specifically, on 2/28/1968, Mr. Woodfox committed aggravated battery, a crime for which
he pleaded guilty and received a 15-month sentence. According to the State, Mr. Woodfox
admitted that “he and his girlfriend got into a fight.” What the State conceals from this Court is
that the battery offense described by the Attorney General is the same crime originally charged as
the “aggravated rape of J.C.” Although the Attorney General is in possession of an FBI document
that makes this clear, he has chosen not to include it in the exhibits to his memorandum. If the
State could not show that Mr. Woodfox committed aggravated rape 40 years ago, it surely cannot
do so now. Hence, the Attorney General’s repeated attempts to cast Mr. Woodfox as a serial rapist
and a sex offender are baseless and grossly unfair. Such argument and allegation have no place in
these proceedings.
Another shockingly false statement made by Louisiana that Nick and
Chris addressed in our memorandum was that I was somehow linked to a plot
to murder former warden C. Murray Henderson and “other Angola officials”
so they couldn’t testify at my 1998 trial. All I can say is we needed
Henderson at my trial. We needed to put Henderson on the stand to ask him
about how he paid Hezekiah Brown for his lies against us back in 1973—how
he wrote letters to get Hezekiah Brown a pardon, how he had cartons of
cigarettes delivered weekly to Brown, how he told inmate Leonard Turner he
would lose his parole if he didn’t give a statement against us. The “evidence”
they had that I was allegedly connected to this plot to kill the former warden
was an unauthenticated, unsigned memorandum based on triple hearsay,
sourced by an unidentified confidential informant. In another false charge,
Warden Burl Cain spouted a claim during a deposition that I also threatened

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the lives of Brent Miller’s brother and prosecutor John Sinquefield, but he
eventually had to admit this was not true, because he had no personal
knowledge whatsoever to support the claims he made. There was, of course,
no truth to what he said, therefore no evidence, no proof.
Caldwell continued to slander me in the press as my attorneys tried to get
me bail. Herman was spared from Caldwell’s lies—for the moment—because
his case was still in state court. My conviction had just been overturned, so I
was the target of Caldwell’s campaign to destroy my reputation and justify
keeping me in prison. Caldwell told National Public Radio that fall that I was
“the most dangerous man in America,” all while dodging questions about the
weakness of Louisiana’s case against me. In a three-part series on our case,
NPR reporter Laura Sullivan asked Caldwell about the bloody fingerprint that
was left at the scene of Miller’s killing and was never identified. Caldwell
responded, “A fingerprint can come from anywhere. We’re not going to be
fooled by that.”
On Saturday, November 1, 2008, I was reading on my bunk when
Herman got word there was an article about me in that day’s Baton Rouge