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Cullen:
All right, did you ever talk to [Angola officer Carl] Kimble about
what you saw in the Pine 1 dormitory?
Turner:
Not that I remember.
Cullen:
Okay. You’re not denying that you said—that you told him that, you
just don’t remember?
Turner:
Told him what?
Cullen:
That you saw Albert Woodfox kill Brent Miller? Let’s cut to the
chase Mr. Turner.
Turner:
Let’s see, I never—
Cullen:
You know what we’re talking about.
Turner:
I never told him that.
* * *
Cullen:
All right. Do you remember giving that statement to C. Ray Dixon?
Turner:
No, I don’t remember givin’ that statement to anyone.
Cullen:
All right. Do you deny giving that statement to C. Ray Dixon?
Turner:
I really do.
C. Ray Dixon testified he didn’t remember taking Turner’s statement and
that he didn’t remember what the statement said, but when shown the
statement, he recognized it was in his own handwriting. The judge allowed
him to read portions of the statement aloud to the jury—sections that
implicated me in Miller’s murder. He instructed the jury that the statement
was only admitted to attempt to “discredit the witness [Turner],” not to show
that the contradictory statements were true. But how does a jury unhear
something? (Even if Turner had made the statement, it should have been
discredited by former warden Henderson’s testimony. Henderson pointed out
that Turner was due to leave on parole two days after Miller’s killing and that
he told him, as Henderson testified, “If you don’t give me some information,
I’m going to call the parole board and see that you do the rest of your eight
years, flat.”)
I had three witnesses in 1973 who testified they saw me in the dining hall
at the time of Miller’s murder, and two witnesses who were in or near Pine 1
that morning and said I wasn’t there. I assumed my attorneys would either get
them all to appear in court to testify or at least make sure their testimony
from my first trial would be read to the jury. They only found one of my alibi
witnesses to testify in person and could only prove they had searched for one
more. The judge wouldn’t allow us to read the testimony of anyone unless
my lawyers could prove they had searched for that witness.
As the names of my missing alibi witnesses were discussed in open court,
Violetta’s husband, Michael Augustine, and our old childhood friend Ernest
Johnson recognized the name Herbert “Fess” Williams. They heard he had
died in New Orleans, and they thought they could get proof of his death so
his testimony could be read. Williams was the inmate who was in front of the
Pine 1 dorm at the time of Miller’s killing and testified I wasn’t there and
Joseph Richey (who claimed he saw me run out of the dorm) wasn’t there.
Williams never changed his original statement, even after he was put in the
dungeon and injured there, then housed in a cellblock. Michael and Ernest
left the courthouse that day, drove the 74 miles back to New Orleans, and
confirmed Williams had passed away by talking to his family. They
contacted the coroner’s office, obtained Williams’s death certificate, and
were back in court by noon the next day. In a small break, the court allowed
the transcript of Herbert Williams’s testimony to be read to the jury.
Sheriff Bill Daniel testified he never threatened me in the clothing room
when I was being interrogated, saying, “At no time did I go in that
penitentiary and interview inmates with a gun. I would always check my gun
at the front gate.” Years later, my attorneys found witnesses who gave
statements that Daniel did not always “check his gun at the front gate” in
those days. One of them said that when they were questioning prisoners,
sheriff’s deputies Bill Daniel and Thomas Guerin “were very agitated; they
were armed.”
My defense attorneys didn’t call any expert forensics witnesses to dispute
the state’s case against me. My lawyers did not consult forensic experts who
could have shed light on the sequence of events in Miller’s murder by
analyzing blood drops, spatters, and trails; they didn’t talk to fingerprint
experts. They didn’t force the judge to require that the bloody fingerprint left
at the scene of the murder be tested against other prisoner fingerprint files.
They didn’t have anyone review Miller’s autopsy. They hadn’t even ensured
that all the alibi witness testimony from my first trial could be read to jurors. I
was frustrated.
When I took the stand, I testified that I didn’t know Miller except by
sight; I had no altercations with him; and Miller had never written me up for
misconduct, which was corroborated by prison records. On cross-
examination Julie Cullen kept pushing me, asking if I was a racist. “In a letter
to Sister Diane, why did you write AMERIKKKA?” she asked, “Are you a
racist?” “Did racism give you the right to pull a gun on guards to escape from
parish prison?” “Did being a victim of racism cause your armed robbery
conviction?” “Were you a victim back when your raised your hands in the
courtroom and shook your shackles and complained about white racist
fascists?” I was getting tired of her innuendos and her deliberately twisting
my words. At one point, she asked what I was wearing. Garraway asked what
time she was referring to and she responded, “When you were killing Brent
Miller.”
I said, “Ms. Cullen, you know I didn’t kill Brent Miller because you
know I passed a lie detector test.” It was not premeditated. I knew the results
of polygraph tests were not admissible in court, because they are considered
unreliable. I had no intention of saying it. I spoke out of frustration. The
judge admonished the jury to disregard the statement.
Later, when a reporter interviewed jurors at my trial one of them told her
I should have “known better” than to “slip” that in. “I think his slipping that
information in may have turned the jury off,” she said. “It did me. I believe
that Albert Woodfox knew that that was not admissible, that we weren’t
supposed to hear it.” The truth of my statement was less important to this
juror than me knowing my place.
The trial lasted nine days. On the last day, the courtroom was packed with
white-gloved, uniformed police officers, prison guards, and sheriff’s
deputies. It had been difficult for me to watch my family get their hopes up,
even when I knew deep in my soul what the end was going to be. I was
worried about my brother Michael. He’d been so hopeful before my trial and
even throughout it, whereas a lot of people in the courtroom knew my best
chance was a hung jury. The jury deliberated for about five hours. When they
read the guilty verdict, I turned to my brother and sister first. Violetta’s eyes
were filling with tears. I looked at her and met Michael’s eyes. “They will
never break me,” I told them. “They will never break my spirit.”
After the trial Bert Garraway told a reporter, “Basically, the state put the
Black Panthers on trial, and the state convicted the Black Panthers.” Ramsey
Clark issued a statement calling what happened at my trial an example of
“egregious prosecutorial misconduct.” Stan Miller, Brent Miller’s brother,
told the Baton Rouge
Advocate
, “This is like an early Christmas present for
our family.”
WBAI–Pacifica Radio in New York City interviewed me the night after I
was convicted. “I don’t blame the jurors,” I said. “They didn’t have all the
information.” At the end of the interview I was asked what I believed in. “If
you are not willing to struggle,” I said, “if you are not willing to sacrifice,
then you can never change things. Struggle is the essence of change and
that’s how I try to live my life. I’ve paid a heavy toll for it but I don’t have
one regret. If I knew everything that was going to happen to me and I could
turn back the hands of time, I would not change one thing about my life—not
one moment of dedication, not one moment of struggle, not one moment of
physical pain that I’ve suffered from beatings by prison people in New York
and in Angola.”
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