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

partner,” that “I have fifty years,” and that I was “going to fix that little
bitch,” referring to Miller. He testified it was my idea to create a kitchen
workers’ strike as a diversion for the freemen in order to pull guards away
from the walk that day so that I could kill Brent Miller. “Well, this was the
plot,” he testified, “for to get the free mens from off of the walk, for to give
him a chance to do what he have to do and bring them back to prowl.” This
testimony echoed the “theory” that Warden Henderson gave reporters the day
after Miller’s killing, nine months before Henderson got Fobb’s statement.
Sitting at the defense table everybody looked like a liar to me, but Paul
Fobb stood out as the most surreal liar. Everybody knew that man couldn’t
see. One of my witnesses would testify to that, about how Fobb was always
running into things. (Years later my attorneys had an expert review Fobb’s
eye surgeries before 1972 as well as his medical records and she said his
eyesight was so bad at the time of Miller’s killing he couldn’t have identified
a person who was 30 or 40 feet away.) He could not have identified me
running out of the Pine 1 dorm, much less tell whether or not I was wearing a
white T-shirt under the button-down prison shirt he said I was wearing. By
saying that I, alone, was the only one who ran out of Pine 1 that day he
contradicted the state’s star witness, Hezekiah Brown, and also Joseph
Richey. Fobb said I didn’t have blood on me after I supposedly just stabbed a
man 32 times by myself. The kitchen workers’ strike didn’t “pull guards”
from the walk. Standard prison protocol posted one guard from each unit in
the dining hall during meals and one on the walk, directing traffic or sitting in
the guard booth.
Paul Fobb’s testimony to the contrary, I had no beef with Brent Miller. I
knew who he was from walking past him and I knew of the Miller family, but

---

I never had a conversation with him. Prisoners weren’t supposed to enter
each other’s dorms but they sometimes went in and out for short periods of
time. Some freemen weren’t bothered by it; some were. I never got a write-up
(disciplinary report) for going into a dorm. (If the freemen were following
protocol the doors to the dorms would be locked at all times when prisoners
weren’t coming and going for work or meals, but they usually didn’t lock the
doors.) Brent Miller never talked to me. I never talked to him. He never threw
me out of a dorm. He never wrote up a disciplinary report on me.
Most illogical of all, to me, was Fobb’s testimony that I was somehow
constantly talking about a “plot” to kill a guard loud enough for him to hear
it. How was it that he happened to hear all these conversations I supposedly
had with my so-called “fall partner”? If I wanted to hurt or kill a freeman I
wouldn’t have talked about it loud enough to be heard over the banging pots
and running water in the scullery. I wouldn’t have talked about it after a shift
sitting among white and black prisoners I didn’t know or trust. I wouldn’t
have talked about it anywhere near Paul Fobb.
Also, I wanted to ask the jury, even if I did have the power to orchestrate
a kitchen workers’ strike when I wasn’t even there, how would I know in
advance that the guards who would supposedly be “pulled from the walk”
wouldn’t include Brent Miller? Guards did not hang out in prisoner dorms.
How would I have known that Brent Miller was in Pine 1? Indeed, later,
prison officials and the state of Louisiana used the fact that Miller was in the
dormitory that morning as a reason to deny his wife benefits and
compensation for his murder.
It wasn’t shocking to me that Fobb lied. What bothered me was the idea
that the jury would take him seriously. I had a similar thought about
Hezekiah Brown. Nobody in prison would be stupid enough to attack and kill
a security guard in front of one of the biggest snitches in Angola and leave
him alive.
Once I had hope. Then I saw how the contradictions of the state’s
witnesses didn’t seem to matter to the jury. I saw how everyone who