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

Q.
Yesterday you were asked a series of questions about what it was like for
you in CCR. Do you remember those questions?
A.
Yeah.
Q.
I believe Mr. Curry asked you a number of questions regarding whether
you had volunteered to go back to CCR and things of that nature. Do you
remember those questions?
A.
Yes.
Q.
Can you please describe again how CCR affected you as you lived there?
A.
CCR, you’re asking me a question that when I think of CCR, it takes me
into a cave. It takes me into a place where—where I don’t want to be.
Q.
Is it hard for you to talk about your time at CCR, Mr. Wallace?
Curry:
Objection.
A.
Oh, yeah. Yes, it do.
Q.
And why is that?
A.
As I just said. CCR, it’s a place where—it’s like a killing machine,
mentally and physically. It’s not a place where I can sit and isolate my
thoughts, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
Louisiana prison officials wanted to cancel my next meeting with Herman
and King at Hunt. They said Herman was too sick to be moved from his
prison hospital room to a visitation room and expressed some made-up
security concerns. George Kendall and Carine Williams refused. Not wanting
to go to court, Wade’s warden finally said that if I agreed to wear the black

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box over my restraints the whole time, they would allow the joint attorney-
client visit to proceed in Herman’s prison hospital room. The black box is
usually used only during transport. It is worn with a waist chain, leg chain,
and leg irons and covers the keyhole to these restraints so that the lock cannot
be picked. A chain runs through it that is used to tighten a prisoner’s wrists
against his stomach. Because the black box cuts off circulation in the hands,
wearing it for just one or two hours can be extremely painful. Keeping one on
during the entire attorney-client visit meant I’d be wearing the black box for
15 or more hours: on the five-hour drive to Hunt and back, as well as during
the meeting. Prison officials obviously didn’t think I’d accept their terms.
What they didn’t know was that nothing short of death would have prevented
me from seeing Herman again. I didn’t care if my hands fell off. On October
1, 2013, I was put in the black box and driven down to Hunt prison to see
Herman.
While I was in the van, Carine Williams was driving King and attorney
Katherine Kimpel up to the prison for our meeting from New Orleans when
George called her on her cell phone with news: U.S. Middle District chief
judge Brian A. Jackson had issued his decision that morning as to Herman’s
pending petition for habeas review. George read the decision over the phone,
skipping over much of the legal analysis to get to the ruling: Judge Jackson’s
decision granted Herman full habeas relief because in violation of the 14th
Amendment, women had been wrongfully excluded from the West Feliciana
Parish grand jury that indicted him in 1973. Judge Jackson had taken the
unusual step of not only granting habeas relief but also ordering Herman’s
immediate release.
We gathered around Herman in his hospital bed before telling him. He
was curled up in a ball and extremely weak. He had stopped taking food and
fluids days before. I sat on one side of his hospital bed and could just reach
him with my hands in the box. I put my hands on his arm. King sat opposite
me on the other side of him. At first, when Carine told him that habeas relief
had been granted, Herman thought she said I was the one who had won. He
smiled and pointed to me, nodding his head. When we clarified that 
his
conviction had been overturned, it took a moment for him to process.
“Herman, this is your case,” Carine said. He looked at her and said, “My
conviction?” It was extremely difficult for Herman to speak. Struggling, he
said, “If he only knew,” pausing. “If Judge Jackson only knew what it was
like in that cell,” he said.

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Carine got up to call George back so they could discuss next steps. As she
opened the door to leave the room, someone told her George was on the line
to speak with her. They needed to act quickly, before Louisiana filed an
appeal of the judge’s ruling. To put pressure on the prison to comply with
Judge Jackson’s order, George arranged for a private ambulance to pick
Herman up. After hanging up with George, Carine went straight to Warden
Howard Prince’s office to tell him an ambulance was on the way and to ask
him to process Herman’s release. The warden had heard the order from the
state’s lawyers but refused to see Carine. His assistant told her that, since he
didn’t have a copy of the order, he couldn’t know if what he was being told
(by the state’s own lawyers) about the decision was actually true. The warden
wouldn’t release Herman, Carine was told, before he saw a copy of the
decision ordering release.
Carine got in her car and drove until she found a local library that let her
access the court’s electronic database. She printed out copies of Judge
Jackson’s decision. When she got back, the ambulance was parked at the
curb, some distance away from the prison security gates. The warden was
also outside, parked in his pickup truck at the security gates, with his
windows up and engine running. Carine went up to him to tell him she had a
copy of the order for him. The warden wouldn’t roll down his window to talk
to her. She placed the document facedown on his windshield so he could see
it and spoke to him through the glass, telling him the judge had ordered
Herman’s immediate release and that he would be in contempt of a federal
court order if he failed to comply. She then went back into the prison and left
a copy of the order with the warden’s secretary and brought another copy of
it back into the room with us. She held it up to show Herman. “Herman,
here’s the order,” she said. “You’re free.” Herman made like he was looking
around the room and said, “Girl, I still know where I am. I’m not free.”
I didn’t say much. My communication with Herman was mostly silent. I
didn’t know how much time he had left. I silently told him how much I loved
him, and that when we didn’t have his back anymore, the ancestors would.
My heart was breaking. I think of these hours I had with Herman and King
together in the same room. It was a surreal coincidence that the three of us
were all together on the day that Herman would get this momentous news.
That we could share in this victory with him. That he would go home. My
memories of that day are always a reminder to me of how our lawyers went
above and beyond to help us, how they never failed us. The same way our

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supporters came through for us, above and beyond. I didn’t know how we
could be so lucky. Herman asked if we could pray. We all held hands. Carine
said a prayer, then Katherine said a prayer. I looked at King. Tears were
steadily falling down his face.
In Herman’s ruling, Judge Jackson wrote, “The record in this case makes
clear that Mr. Wallace’s grand jury was improperly chosen in violation of the
Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of ‘the equal protection of the laws,’ . . .
and that the Louisiana courts, when presented with the opportunity to correct
this error, failed to do so. . . . Our Constitution requires this result even
where, as here, it means overturning Mr. Wallace’s conviction nearly forty
years after it was entered.”
Our visit ended as scheduled, around three p.m. King left the building.
Carine and Katherine stayed with Herman. The transport officers who were
taking me back to Wade led me to a room on the hospital tier for a while, as a
favor, so I could be in the prison when Herman left. A lot of the guys in the
hospital were rooting for Herman. One of them asked me, “If Mr. Herman is
going home now, how do you feel?” I said, “Well, I’m at peace. Whatever
happens from now on, I’m at peace.” After about an hour the lieutenant
escorting me told me we had to get on the road. No one was moving to
prepare Herman to leave. I figured they were delaying his release, stalling to
give Buddy Caldwell time to file a motion to stay Judge Jackson’s ruling.
That turned out to be true—Louisiana filed a motion for a stay of the
decision. When we pulled away from the prison grounds, I saw the
ambulance at the curb, waiting for Herman. Later I learned the warden had
left the prison; the rumor was he went to dinner, thinking if he left prison
grounds he wouldn’t have to release Herman.
George and Carine thought Judge Jackson and his law clerks might soon
leave chambers for the day and called to see whether the judge might stay late
so that they could file a response to the stay motion. They didn’t get an
answer, but very shortly after that Judge Jackson issued another order. This
decision denied Louisiana’s request for a stay and ordered the prison to
release Herman immediately or be held in contempt. Warden Prince returned
to the prison. He knew if he didn’t he could be in front of the judge’s bench
the next day himself, possibly in handcuffs.
Herman had a dream once about leaving Angola. He described it in the film