Last ‘Angola 3’ inmate ordered released

NEW ORLEANS – The last of the “Angola Three” inmates, whose decades in solitary confinement on a Louisiana prison farm drew international condemnation and became the subject of two documentaries, was ordered released Monday.

The ruling would free 68-year-old Albert Woodfox after more than 40 years in solitary.

U.S. District Judge James Brady of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, ordered the release of Woodfox and took the extraordinary step of barring Louisiana prosecutors from trying him for a third time.

A spokesman for the Louisiana attorney general said the state would appeal Brady’s ruling to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals “to make sure this murderer stays in prison and remains fully accountable for his actions.”

Woodfox was placed in solitary confinement in 1972 after being charged in the death of a Louisiana State Penitentiary guard in April of that year. The prison farm is more commonly known as the Angola prison and it is Louisiana’s only maximum-security prison.

Woodfox and two other state prisoners became known as the Angola Three because of their long stretches in solitary confinement at Angola. Other members of the Angola Three were prisoners Robert King and Herman Wallace.

Woodfox has been tried and convicted twice in the guard’s death, but both convictions were overturned.