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

for the
five aggravated rapes he committed
[Because I did not commit these crimes.]
 during the New
Orleans crime spree during January and February, 1969.
[There had been no crime spree and
Judge Brady saw through the lies. After looking at these charges and finding nothing that
substantiated them, he granted me appeal bail. Which, on state appeal, was blocked by the Fifth
Circuit.]

---

The arrest affidavit went on to attribute to Chester Jackson a whole new
story about the events leading up to Miller’s murder—different from
Jackson’s testimony at Herman’s trial and different from what Jackson had
said in his original statement taken in 1972. The affidavit claimed that I
showed Jackson “a letter” the night before the murder (the same letter
Warden Henderson would describe the day after Miller’s murder, a letter that
the deputy warden had no knowledge of and that was never produced at
either my or Herman’s trials).
“Upon information and belief” the affidavit accused me of writing the
letter taking credit for burning the guard in the booth, which was signed by
“The Vanguard Army.” “The Black Panther Party,” the affidavit erroneously
stated, was “also known as the Vanguard Army.” The affidavit also claimed
that Leonard “Specs” Turner “without hesitation” broke the case for
investigators, telling prison officials I murdered Brent Miller with Herman
and Chester Jackson; “armed with Turner’s statement” (a “truth” the man
who took the statement couldn’t remember at my trial), investigators then
“reinterviewed” Hezekiah Brown. “Upon hearing the details, Brown
confirmed the information Turner had provided was true.” Leonard Turner
was never called to testify at my first trial, and at my second trial he denied
making the unsigned, undated statement presented to him as his. The former
captain who allegedly took the statement from Turner testified he couldn’t
remember taking it and he didn’t remember what the statement said, which
would be highly unlikely if the statement had been real, because it would
have cracked the case for investigators.
At the time, I wasn’t aware of these new false accusations against me. All
I knew was that I was reindicted for the murder of Brent Miller. I was
transferred from David Wade Correctional Center to a jail in West Feliciana
Parish. It happened so quickly I didn’t have a chance to give my things away
to other prisoners on the tier at Wade.
The West Feliciana Parish jail is small. There were four solitary cells on my
floor. The first was a holding cell for drunks, where people were put to sober
up. I was in the second cell. The two cells on the other side of me were used
to hold prisoners for short durations, a few weeks at most. The cells had solid
steel doors. The only way I could talk to someone was if I bent over and
spoke through the food slot. There was a small TV in the cell and a window
that didn’t open that looked out on the yard. Any relief the window might

---

have provided me was counteracted by the steel door. I still got
claustrophobic attacks. When I started getting mail at my new address I
received dozens of birthday cards. I had turned 68.
Since I was no longer in state custody, my strip search lawsuit had
become moot. George Kendall wanted to continue litigating it for the CCR
prisoners at Wade and tried to find another prisoner who would take over for
me as plaintiff, but nobody wanted to do it. Meanwhile, George was also
looking ahead in my criminal case. We were still hoping Judge Brady’s
unconditional release order would hold up in the Fifth Circuit. In case we
lost, though, George brought in two new lawyers to join my legal team to
focus on my defense at trial, Billy Sothern and Robert McDuff. They started
reinvestigating the murder of Brent Miller and moved quickly to defend me
in court, filing to have the latest indictment thrown out and to get me out on
appeal bail. Meanwhile, Buddy Caldwell continued his unethical,
inflammatory campaign of lies, publicly accusing me of being a rapist (still
never pressing charges). “The facts of the case remain solid,” Caldwell told
reporters. “Despite Woodfox’s last-ditch efforts to obtain a ‘get out of jail
free’ pass on grand jury selection issues, the proof of his guilt in committing
the murder is undeniable.”
As the weeks passed I felt drained of energy. I stopped taking my hour out of
the cell. The guard would come and ask me if I wanted yard and I’d say,
“Nah, not today.” In my cell, I watched CNN. I’d been watching the news
about police shootings of unarmed black people and following the Black
Lives Matter movement. It hurt me to see organizers of Black Lives Matter
painted as being racists. It hurt me to see black people needing to state the
obvious: that we mattered. I thought of the black sanitation workers who
went on strike in Memphis in 1968; black workers wore placards that read 
I
AM A MAN.
Fifty years later, and the humanity of a black person is still in
dispute?
It didn’t make sense to me. The top 1 percent of Americans own more
wealth than the bottom 90 percent of all Americans of all races, combined.
And yet Americans believe that people of other races, religions, sexual
preferences, and cultures are the problem. An unjust economic system can
only be perpetuated if we, the majority of the population, are at odds with one
another. Black Lives Matter was formed to campaign 
against
violence and
systemic racism toward black people. How was that being racist? When you

---

see organizations like Black Lives Matter under attack for being “racist,” you
are seeing the agenda of an unjust economic system at play—a system that
seeks to separate groups of people within the majority to benefit the top 1
percent. If we can’t allow diversity, if we can’t accept our differences, if we
can’t see one another as equal, if every race can’t begin to function on an
equal footing with every other race in this world, we will never be able to
unite, which means we will never be able to demand economic justice for all.
We won’t be able to advance as a species. Capitalism can’t be “fixed” or
made to be fair or just; it must be destroyed. The very nature of a capitalistic
economy prevents unity and fosters class struggle. Under capitalism there is
division in labor and division among the workers themselves because they are
taught to look out for the individual and not for their fellow workers. There is
no equal distribution of the wealth of the nation under a capitalist system. We
have to come together and look out for one another. In 1968, Martin Luther
King spoke before a mixed-race crowd who had gathered to support the
striking black sanitation workers, honoring the unity of the group. “You are
demonstrating that we can stick together.” King said, “You are demonstrating
that we are all tied in a single garment of destiny, and that if one black person
suffers, if one black person is down, we are all down.”
I had no energy at the parish jail, but I would always leave my cell to meet a
visitor who came to see me, even though it required a lot of effort to be
positive throughout the visit. The visits were keeping me connected to the
world, and I loved the people who came. The room where we met was
antiquated. I had to sit in a booth and look through a window to see my
visitor. I put my head down to the mesh screen beneath the window to speak
and to hear what was being said. Most of the time they kept handcuffs on me,
but sometimes they didn’t. It depended on the personnel working. My most
regular visitors were old friends: Maria Hinds, Professor Rebecca Hensley,
and Jackie Sumell. Michael came every month. He begged me to go out on
the yard. I told him I would, but I didn’t feel like it. George and my other
lawyers got on my case too, pressing me to get out of the cell for my hour
and exercise. When I did go out on the yard I didn’t feel like running.
Sometimes I walked. Sometimes there was a deputy working who was up on
current events and we talked about politics or whatever was in the news.
Almost all of the guards at the jail used to work at Angola. Sometimes we
talked about Angola.

---

George set up an attorney-client visit with me and King at the West
Feliciana jail to talk about our civil case. I was looking forward to it. King
was a stabilizing force for me. When he arrived for the visit, they told him he
couldn’t enter the prison visiting room unless they strip-searched him. He
allowed the strip search. He didn’t tell us about it until the end of our
meeting. He wanted to brush it off because he knew if he didn’t submit to a
search, this would be our last visit. I wanted to see King. I needed to see him.
But not at the expense of his dignity. “I don’t want you to be strip-searched
anymore,” I told him. George said that we would fight it in court. I told King,
“If we can’t stop the strip searches, don’t come back.”
I met my daughter in person for the second time since she was a baby at
the West Feliciana jail. She came to visit with my grandson and three of my
great-grandchildren. It was strange looking at my great-grandchildren
knowing they were a third generation removed from me, that no matter what
the system did to me my legacy was still moving on. I appreciated the visit so
much; it was another step in building a bond with my family and it supported
my ongoing effort to preserve my humanity.
In June, Judge James Brady issued my habeas corpus writ. To ensure justice
for me, and my freedom, he went beyond my wildest expectations, issuing
what’s called an “exceptional writ,” an extremely rare, unconditional writ that
orders the state to release a habeas petitioner from prison and bars the state
from retrying him.
“The Supreme Court has long instructed that habeas corpus relief must be
applied with an eye toward ‘the ends of justice,’” Judge Brady wrote. “The
Fifth Circuit has identified two categories of rare and extraordinary cases
where ‘law and justice’ require the permanent discharge of a petitioner: either
the circumstances of the case involve a ‘constitutional violation [that] cannot
be remedied by another trial’ or ‘other exceptional circumstances [must] exist
such that the holding of a new trial would be unjust.’” Judge Brady listed five
“exceptional” circumstances that justified his decision: “Mr. Woodfox’s age
and poor health, his limited ability to present a defense at a third trial in light
of the unavailability of witnesses, this Court’s lack of confidence in the State
to provide a fair third trial, the prejudice done unto Mr. Woodfox by spending
over forty-years in solitary confinement, and finally the very fact that Mr.
Woodfox has already been tried twice and would otherwise face his third trial
for a crime that occurred over forty years ago.”

---

Brady agreed with my claim that the state’s conduct demonstrated
extreme prejudice against me. “Additionally, Mr. Woodfox has served over
forty years in solitary confinement,” he wrote. “The Court agrees with Mr.
Woodfox that the time involved here results in extreme prejudice. The State
understates the extent of the prejudice done to Mr. Woodfox. . . . A habeas
court must consider all of the circumstances involved when defining relief.
The prejudice of an unconstitutionally obtained indictment is only one of the
relevant circumstances.”
Brady also cited the evidence of my innocence in favor of an
“extraordinary” remedy and noted the Fifth Circuit had said before that it
failed to see the “overwhelming evidence” the state claimed to have against
me. “There was an abundance of physical evidence available at the crime
scene in 1972,” Brady wrote, “but not one piece of physical evidence
incriminated Mr. Woodfox.” He cited the following indications of my
innocence that were raised in my writ: “(1) a statement from State’s key
witness Leonard Turner admitting Mr. Woodfox was not involved in Miller’s
murder; (2) statements from two women with whom Chester Jackson . . .
spoke about Woodfox’s actual innocence upon his release; (3) a reliable
scientific review of the bloody print at the scene, exculpating Woodfox; (4)
evidence that severely undermines the credibility of State’s three prisoner
witnesses; and (5) a polygraph examination indicating that Woodfox
truthfully denied involvement in the crime.”
He noted the hardship of my continued solitary confinement even after
I’d “demonstrated an ability to live peacefully with others,” writing, “Mr.
Woodfox has remained in the extraordinary conditions of solitary
confinement for approximately forty years now, and yet today there is no
valid conviction holding him in prison, let alone solitary confinement. Last
year a unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit observed: ‘[C]onsidering the
duration of the solitary confinement, the severity of the restrictions, and their
effectively indefinite nature, it is clear that Woodfox’s continued detention in
CCR constitutes an “atypical and significant hardship on the inmate in
relation to the ordinary incidents of prison life” according to any possible
baseline we consider.’” In conclusion, Brady wrote, “The only just remedy is
an unconditional writ of habeas corpus barring retrial . . . and releasing Mr.
Woodfox from custody immediately
.
”
The state immediately appealed Judge Brady’s decision to the Fifth
Circuit. A three-judge panel from that court issued a temporary stay that

---

would keep me in prison until a more permanent ruling would come down,
within the next four days. Representative Cedric Richmond (of the U.S.
House) released a statement calling for my release. Of Buddy Caldwell, he
said, “This is an obviously personal vendetta and has been a waste of tax
payer dollars for decades. The state is making major cuts in education and
healthcare but he has spent millions of dollars on this frivolous endeavor and
the price tag is increasing by the day.”
Four days later, on June 12, Carine Williams came for a lawyer’s visit to
keep me company while we waited to hear if I’d be released from prison that
day or not. We were in a ground-floor room that had a window looking out
on the parking lot. There were some reporters and a film crew outside. The
visit started around ten a.m. and the court had said it would rule before one
p.m. We sat together at a table, talking. We both watched the clock on the
wall. The later it got, the more hopeful we became. If they were going to rule
against me, why would they wait until the last minute?
In my cell that morning, I’d made a list of what I’d do when I got out of
prison. I’d never done that before. “Visit Mama’s grave. Spend time with my
daughter. Learn how to live in society.” As the hour hand moved closer to the
deadline I saw outside the window, over Carine’s shoulder, that one of the
reporters who had been standing with the others was leaving. He got in his
car and drove away. I knew then that the Fifth Circuit would not grant my
release. I didn’t have the heart to tell Carine. I thought of all the hard work
she had done, along with my other attorneys, and felt a wave of sadness come
over me. Some of the most difficult times for me in prison were moments like
these, when it wasn’t only a loss for me, but for everybody who worked so
hard on my behalf and who cared about me. The guards brought her a
cordless phone, which rang shortly afterward. George was on the line. He
gave her the news: the Fifth Circuit decided to leave the stay in place and to
keep me in jail pending the state’s appeal of Judge Brady’s exceptional writ.
Carine and I put a brave face on for each other. We said our good-byes.
Carine walked out of the jail to give a statement to the reporters. I was taken
back to my cell.
In his exceptional writ Judge Brady wrote that I would not be able to get a
fair trial anywhere in the state of Louisiana. My arrest affidavit alone was
proof of that. That summer we got further corroboration. The foreperson on
the grand jury that indicted me in February came forward with concerns
about the grand jury hearing; she had misgivings about the process. A white,

---

Christian, lifelong conservative Republican, Deidre Howard, a dental
hygienist for 41 years, didn’t know anything about me before the prosecutors
made their case against me. She trusted Assistant Attorney General Kurt
Wall, Special Assistant Attorney General Tony Clayton, and West Feliciana
Parish district attorney Samuel D’Aquilla, who she knew personally. The
prosecutors told the grand jurors my conviction was overturned on a
“technicality” and made the case for my indictment. The grand jury indicted
me. Deidre signed the indictment and gave it to the judge and was dismissed.
She believed I was guilty. But something felt wrong. One day she was
working as a dental hygienist and the next day she was deciding the fate of a
man’s life. She felt unprepared to do what she had just done.
She talked to her twin sister, Donna, stating she didn’t want to be in that
situation ever again. She had taken an oath not to reveal details of what
happened in the grand jury room but when my indictment was reported in the
newspaper the next day Donna knew that was Deidre’s case. In the following
weeks Deidre had trouble sleeping. Out of concern for her sister, Donna and
her husband typed my name into a search engine online and found out I could
be innocent and that I’d been kept in solitary confinement for 40 years. On
Deidre’s next visit to Donna, her sister told her, “The whole world has been
trying to get him out.” Deidre Howard’s knees gave out and she fell to the
floor. She felt betrayed and used because she had trusted the attorney
general’s office to be honest and now she knew she didn’t get the whole
story. She felt the weight of the world was on her now. Her first reaction was
to try to undo the indictment, which, she learned later, could never be
undone.
Deidre hired a lawyer because she wasn’t sure how to proceed with a
complaint about the grand jury and still comply with the grand jury secrecy
she swore to at the time. She wrote a personal letter to Judge William
Carmichael of the 20th Judicial District Court, who oversaw the grand jury
hearing and would be the judge on my third trial. Her attorney mailed her
letter to Judge Carmichael and Judge Brady, with a letter of his own, stating
that his client “has had serious misgivings about that process from the date of
the jury’s decision.” Judge Carmichael informed my attorneys about it and
put the letter under seal. When Deidre didn’t hear back she wrote to the
special assistant attorney general, Tony Clayton; and to the West Feliciana
Parish district attorney, Samuel D’Aquilla. “In my opinion, after reading
everything I can get my hands on, articles, books, trial transcripts, visual and

---

audio interviews,” she wrote, “I believe Mr. Woodfox is innocent of the
murder.” When she didn’t receive any response, she wrote to the assistant
attorney general Kurt Wall. When no response came, she wrote to Attorney
General Buddy Caldwell and then, after hearing nothing back, Deidre wrote
to Governor Bobby Jindal. “I wish that I could go back and redo that morning
but sadly I cannot,” she wrote. “I decided that I could cry and hurt, or take
action, because as his plight goes so does mine. . . . Please, can you do
anything? When the dust settles one day on this case, it is going to be one of
the darkest chapters in our state’s history.” Later she would say she kept
thinking to herself, “How did Louisiana hold a man in a cell for over 40 years
on the word of an eyewitness who was given free cigarettes for years? Didn’t
anybody wonder why?”
With nobody responding to Deidre, her sister Donna wrote a heartfelt
letter of her own, describing Deidre’s experience and “begging for help,” to
every member of the Louisiana legislature, members of the media, and others
in influential positions who she thought could help. Before it was over, she
had sent more than 500 letters.
In June 2015, I once again applied for pretrial bail. As usual, the state
fought back, starting with delaying tactics. First, prosecutors claimed that my
case was a capital case and therefore my right to bail was limited. My
lawyers Robert McDuff and Billy Sothern actually had to cite case law that
made it clear beyond question that my case wasn’t a capital case and that I
was, therefore, eligible for bail. In the end, though, I wouldn’t get bail.
The first time I heard about Deidre Howard was in July. At that point,
because her correspondence had been placed under seal, I didn’t know her
name. But Billy told me he was going to file a motion to be allowed to read a
sealed letter written by a woman who was the foreperson at my grand jury.
He told me the woman had raised issues about the actions of the grand jury.
In September, my attorneys were able to view the letter and filed a new
motion to quash my indictment on the grounds of prosecutorial misconduct.
That motion was eventually denied. Still, the integrity and courage that
Deidre Howard displayed in coming forward to speak out about her
experience, even early on, before she knew if I was innocent or guilty, were
so noble and rare. I am grateful to this day. Later, Deidre would say it took
months for her to process everything that happened. “As a citizen, I was
taught to respect those in authority,” she said. “I was not prepared to second-
guess them. A citizen coming from [her] own job doesn’t walk into the

---

courthouse with the mind-set that the prosecutors are not going to be honest,
or that they would knowingly leave out facts that would change the whole
story. I felt completely disillusioned, because the rules that I, and most
citizens, try to live by were not the ones that I found the officials lived by.”

---

That summer my criminal defense attorneys Billy Sothern and Rob McDuff
filed a motion to dismiss my case, as key prosecution witnesses had died
since my 1998 trial. With so few still alive, it would be impossible for me to
exercise my constitutional right to confront witnesses and cross-examine
them about information we had uncovered since 1998. (Many of those who
led the investigation had also died, meaning we couldn’t question them on
why they didn’t pursue other leads revealed in the deputy’s notes or the
bloody tennis shoe that was found near the scene of the crime.) That motion
was denied.
Billy and Rob filed 33 pretrial motions that would be ruled on in coming
months, most of them seeking fairness, such as asking for a change of venue
so I wouldn’t be tried in St. Francisville, in West Feliciana Parish, where I’d
had two or possibly three unconstitutional grand juries; asking the court to
compel the state to allow modern DNA testing on all remaining physical
evidence and to compare the fingerprints from the crime scene against
Angola’s fingerprint archives from the 1970s as well as the FBI’s recently
expanded Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS)
database; asking for blood testing; and asking for a unanimous jury. They
filed to exclude the impeached, discredited testimony of state’s witnesses
Joseph Richey, Hezekiah Brown, and Paul Fobb, all deceased.
Billy and Rob also reinvestigated Brent Miller’s murder. In part, they
looked at several statements former prisoners had given our investigators
over the years—statements about who killed Brent Miller. Their investigation
got yet another statement—sparking a new theory.
This first account we got of Brent Miller’s murder, though, came years
before, from Billy Sinclair, who had been a longtime editor of the prison
magazine