Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

However, with the complexities of appeal and counter-appeal and the
determination of strong opponents of the inmates’ release it wasn’t until 1
October 2013 before Wallace was released. Louisiana’s Attorney General,
James Caldwell, had stated that he opposed releasing the two men ‘with
every fibre of my being,’ and added, rather unconvincingly, that they have
never been held in solitary confinement but are in ‘protective cell units
known as CCR [Closed Cell Restricted]’. The warden of Angola and Hunt
prisons, Burl Cain, repeatedly suggested that Woodfox and Wallace had to
be held in solitary because they subscribed to ‘Black Pantherism’.
10
Tragically, when eventually released from prison on 1 October 2013,
71-year-old Herman Wallace, who had advanced liver cancer, was reindicted
in ugly vengeful righteousness on 3 October 2013. He died on 4
October 2013, before he could be re-arrested – so, in theory, he died a
free, but destroyed, man.
Meanwhile Woodfox was still running the gauntlet of US injustice. On 20
November 2014, Woodfox had his conviction overturned by the US Court
of Appeals. The three-judge panel found unanimously that the selection of
the grand-jury foreperson in the 1993 trial formed part of a discriminatory
pattern in that area of Louisiana. Concluding that it amounted to a
violation of the US Constitution, the judges struck down Woodfox’s
conviction. The state of Louisiana refused to release him, however, and his
guards refused to unshackle him or release him from solitary confinement.
On 12 February 2015, Woodfox was re-indicted.
On 8 June 2015, U.S. District Judge James Brady ordered the release of
Woodfox and overturned the second conviction for the killing of the guard.
SHEEP IN THE ROAD : NUMBER 17