Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

After Woodfox and Wallace were already in solitary confinement,
eyewitnesses started popping up. Each testified with a wildly different story,
and it has recently been verified through prison documentation that each
was handsomely rewarded for their statements with cigarettes, cushy jobs
and pardons. Every living eyewitness has now recanted their testimony and
provided an affidavit saying they were pressured to lie.
Two days after the prison guard’s murder, a man with a reputation with
activism and a friend of Woodfox and Wallace, Robert King Wilkerson,
arrived at Angola. He was immediately placed under suspicion for the
killing even though he could not have participated in it and sent to his own
solitary cell.
A year later, he was charged with the murder of a fellow inmate despite
no physical evidence and the repeated confessions of another inmate
who insisted he had acted alone. A Louisiana state judge ordered that
Wilkerson be shackled and his mouth covered with duct tape during his
trial. He was also convicted of murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to
life imprisonment.
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Wilkerson’s conviction was overturned in 2001, and after spending almost
30 years in solitary confinement he walked out of Angola into a throng of
supporters who had gathered around the gates of the remote prison.
Addressing them, he said simply: ‘I may be free from Angola, but Angola
will never be free from me.’ It was his vow to work on behalf of the release
of his friends. It is a vow that he has kept and it has earned him a bevy of
human rights honours.
NOVEMBER 2016