Meanwhile, Herman, representing himself, tried to ferret out suppressed evidence we figured the state had about our case by filing a pro se (without a lawyer) Public Records Act request, asking for “all documents . . . pertaining in any manner to the arrest, investigation and prosecution of Herman Joshua Wallace.” On May 27, 1993, he filed another records request with the 20th Judicial District. In both cases the state refused to provide him with public records. Herman went to court and eventually both the 19th and the 20th Judicial District Courts ordered the state to provide the records he requested. The state said there were no documents pertaining to his case; a decade later we proved this was a lie. Herman then attempted to subpoena the Louisiana State Penitentiary, asking for “the entire investigative file . . . concerning the death of Brent Miller.” In response, Angola claimed “there are no record [sic] at the Louisiana State Penitentiary regarding the Investigation into the [sic] Brent Miller’s death.”
That May, Herman challenged his 1974 conviction in an application for postconviction relief, raising, among other claims, the issue that Chester Jackson’s deal with prosecutors to turn state’s evidence should have been revealed to him, his attorney Charles Garretson, and the jury. To support his allegation, Herman included an affidavit he got from an inmate who swore that in 1985 he asked Jackson why he was abusing prescription drugs. Jackson told the inmate he had testified in court to things that were absolutely untrue and that Associate Warden Hayden Dees had threatened his life if he didn’t sign a statement implicating himself, Herman, and me in the murder of Brent Miller. Herman asserted he was denied his constitutional right to due process of law. He didn’t get a response for years.
The first time Garraway and Howell visited me at Angola they asked me if I’d be willing to take a lie detector test. I think they were surprised when I said yes. They came sometime later with a tester who brought his polygraph machine with him to Angola. I passed the lie detector test, affirming that I did not kill Brent Miller. I asked Garraway and Howell if they could get me a change of venue so my trial wouldn’t be in St. Francisville, where I had been indicted twice and where a large percentage of the population either worked at Angola or were related by marriage or blood to someone who worked there.
The judge granted me a change of venue to Amite City, an hour and a half drive east of Angola and north of New Orleans. Amite was a small, white, conservative, Bible Belt community of 4,000 people located in Tangipahoa Parish, where the Ku Klux Klan had a very strong presence. I later found out that the Miller family had lived in Tangipahoa Parish, and that Brent Miller, considered a “native son,” was buried outside the city of Amite. So in effect the change of venue for my trial was from the frying pan to the skillet.
Chapter 34
My Greatest Loss
Every morning in CCR I woke up with the same thought: Will this be the day? Will this be the day I lose my sanity and discipline? Will I start screaming and never stop? Will I curl up into a ball and become a baby, which was an early sign of going insane? Every day I pushed insanity away. Every day I had to find that strength. I had to find within me the will and determination not to break. I got those qualities from my mom.
The closest I ever came to breaking in prison was after my mom died, on December 27, 1994. I used to tell myself, “If you can breathe you can get through anything.” When my mom died my breath was snatched from me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch my breath. I always thought if I lived long enough, I’d win. But now she was gone and I could never have her in my life again, no matter how long I lived. I wondered if, without my mom, I would ever be able to breathe again.
Ruby Edwards was born May 9, 1929. When she was a teenager the NAACP described Jim Crow to the Louisiana Weekly as a “modernized, streamlined slavery, that replaces shackles with ‘For White Only’ signs; that replaces slave quarters with the slum ghetto; that replaces three meals a day with the starvation wage of maids and porters; that replaces the master’s bullwhip with the torch of the mob and the policeman’s club.” This was her world, but my mom didn’t dwell on hardship. I can remember going to a department store on Canal Street with her when I was little. Black people weren’t allowed to walk in the front door of a department store in those days and they couldn’t browse in the aisles. We were allowed to spend our money at the store but not allowed the dignity of being seen in the store. We entered through the back door behind the store. She brought a picture of a dress she found in the newspaper and gave it to a white salesclerk. These young white store clerks were always rude, impatient, and disrespectful. The clerk eventually brought a dress back to my mom to look at that looked like the picture. My mom always believed life would get better though. When I was born, she was determined to make a good life for us.
The parents of my biological father, small-business owners in New Orleans, had other ideas. My father’s mother took my mom to court to get custody of me, telling the judge my mom was unfit to raise me. My mother, only 18 years old and unable to read the court documents against her, had the strength and determination to prevail. She brought neighbors and family members to court to back up her claim that she was a good mother. The judge ruled in her favor, giving her sole custody of me. He ordered the hospital to put my father’s name on my birth certificate and I became a Woodfox in name only.
The last time I saw my mom was about a month before she died. Weeks earlier, she had been in the hospital for a heart operation. Michael was visiting her when she told him she had severe pain in her left side. The pain got so bad she couldn’t stand it so he summoned the nurse; the nurse got the doctor, who, upon examining her, rushed her into surgery. Her kidney had burst and they removed it. About two or three weeks later they did the heart operation, unclogging an artery. Then her toe was turning purple because there was no circulation in her foot from the diabetes and she allowed them to cut the toe off. At some point in time she told my brother, “You need to take me to Angola to see Albert.”
I happened to be out of my cell on my hour and looking out the window when I saw my brother pushing a wheelchair toward the visitors’ entrance. I thought he was helping somebody. After I was taken down to the visiting room they took off my restraints. When I turned and saw it was my mom in the wheelchair I almost collapsed. She had lost so much weight. It took every ounce of my strength and willpower to hide the shock and pain of seeing a woman who had always represented the strength of our family in this condition. I teased her and picked her up, which required no effort whatsoever, and set her on my lap. She was virtually skin and bones. In spite of her physical condition I could still see my mom in her eyes. I couldn’t say anything. She told me she was tired. “Baby, these people want to cut my leg off now, and I ain’t letting these white people cut on me no more,” she said. “I’d rather die.” After about half an hour she nodded off, falling asleep with her head on my chest. I made a sign to Michael that it was time for them to go. I knew my mom had come to say good-bye.
One of the cruelties of being in prison is that you are always the last to know what’s going on in your own family. Herman learned of my mother’s death before I did. His sister got word to him somehow. A trustee brought me a letter of condolence from Herman. When I read the letter I said, “What the fuck is this?” I later found out one of my brothers had called but prison officials had failed to notify me. While the lieutenant was making his rounds I showed him the letter from Herman and asked him why I hadn’t been informed by someone that my mom had died. He said he didn’t know anything about it but I could use the phone to call home. A guard came and put restraints on me and took me to the bridge right outside the tier so I could call my sister. She was crying. My brothers were there. I asked them questions about Mama’s death and talked to them about what we had to do, which they had already done. The next day when I woke up the ceiling of my cell was an inch from my face. It was my worst episode of claustrophobia the entire time I was in solitary confinement. I closed my eyes and told myself to breathe.
Just breathe. I did that for how long I don’t know. I was soaking wet with sweat when I finally opened my eyes.
When everything in my cell was normal again I got up. I washed and changed. The grief hit me hard. I was also enraged. I wanted to hurt somebody. My emotions were all over the place. I wasn’t accustomed to feeling out of control, so I didn’t go out of the cell on my hour that day. I didn’t want to lash out at anyone. I knew it wouldn’t stop the pain and emptiness. I sat down and wrote to the warden, John Whitley, asking him to make arrangements for me to attend my mom’s funeral so that I could say good-bye to her. At Angola, it was a custom at that time to allow prisoners to attend funerals for close relatives. I was shocked and devastated when he wrote back and told me I would not be allowed to attend my mom’s funeral. He told me prisoners in solitary confinement weren’t allowed furloughs. It is a very important custom in African American families to come together to say your last good-byes. Because of the cruelty of prison officials and the state of Louisiana I was once again forced to fight for sanity over insanity. There will never be words to describe the pain of this loss.
Since then the month of December has always been difficult for me. It manifests itself in different ways. I can be moody, depressed. I can feel insecure or not whole. Once in a while I still get this tremendous ache for my mom that feels like it’s never going away. Sometimes it lasts for hours, sometimes days, sometimes weeks. Eventually it goes back inside.
A year after my mom passed away I was sitting on my bunk trying to figure something out when I heard my mom’s voice in my head. It was like her voice echoed through the years to speak to me. In that moment, I sat on my bed and wrote this poem as a tribute to the wisdom and strength of my mom.
Echoes
Echoes of wisdom I often hear,
a mother’s strength softly in my ears.
Echoes of womanhood shining so bright,
echoes of a mother within darkest night.
Echoes of wisdoms on my mother’s lips, too young
to understand it was in a gentle kiss.
Echoes of love and echoes of fear
Arrogance of manhood wouldn’t let me hear,
Echoes of heartache I still hold close
As I mourn the loss of my one true hero.
Echoes from a mother’s womb,
heartbeats held so dear,
life begins with my first tears.
Echoes of footsteps taken in the past.
Echoes of manhood standing in a looking glass.
Echoes of motherhood gentle and near.
Echoes of a lost mother I will always hear.
Chapter 35
Preparing for My Trial
In 1995 a new warden, Burl Cain, was hired at Angola. Outside the state he would go on to become known as a “great prison reformer,” who believed in “rehabilitation through Christ.” In Louisiana, he was caught up in scandal after scandal over the years, much of it having to do with “side deals” he made with contractors at Angola and the misuse of inmate labor. One of his first deals at Angola was with Louisiana Agri-Can Co., a canning company that paid prisoners four cents an hour to take the labels off rotten canned goods and relabel them so they could be sold in Latin America and other places. An Angola prisoner who worked as an inmate counsel reported it to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Federal officials seized cases of evaporated milk that were unfit for human consumption stacked “wall to wall and floor to rafters” in a building on Angola grounds. After the relabeling business at Angola was shut down Cain retaliated against the inmate lawyer who reported the operation by putting him to work in the fields.
Cain made other changes at the prison. He had razor wire wrapped in coils around the barbed wire that ran across the top of all the chain-link fences. He had time clocks installed at the end of every tier in CCR to guarantee guards made a count of inmates every 30 minutes. We heard the guards stamp their cards at the end of the tier every half hour. Cain replaced the leather restraint that went around our waists with a chain.
I sent my lawyers Bert Garraway and Richard Howell detailed notes about what happened during my 1973 trial, describing the witnesses, summarizing what they had said, and pointing out the contradictions in their testimony. I gave them lists of questions for each witness. For Joseph Richey alone I sent them 30 questions. I asked them to find experts that could discredit the charges against me: a blood-spatter expert who could explain the inconsistencies of the state’s theory, a fingerprint expert to identify the bloody fingerprint that was found on the door of the dorm, an eye doctor who could look at Paul Fobb’s medical records. I asked them to get the interview tapes that Anne Butler and C. Murray Henderson used to write the chapter in their book about Brent Miller’s murder.
During my attorneys’ attempt to review court records for my case we had a big break. In a box containing all of my court records, my attorneys found documents that had been withheld from my defense attorney during my first trial and had been placed under seal by the court. These documents showed that Warden Henderson and other prison officials paid Hezekiah Brown for his testimony against me during my trial. There was proof that Henderson agreed to pay Brown a carton of cigarettes every week; this was the highest form of currency in prison, used for gambling, sex trade, and day-to-day living, and the weekly payment was maintained for years by wardens after Henderson left Angola—until Brown’s release. There were copies of letters written by Henderson in 1974 to a judge and to the director of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, asking them to support a pardon for Hezekiah Brown, less than eight years into his sentence for aggravated rape. There was even a letter from Henderson asking the prison to pay the cost of the advertisement used for Brown’s clemency request. In those days, requests for pardons by prisoners had to be advertised in local papers so the community and victims of the felon’s crimes could weigh in.
In a 1975 letter to the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Parole purporting to be from Hezekiah Brown, correctional officer Bobby Oliveaux, correctional officer Bert Dixon, Associate Warden for Custody Hilton Butler, district attorney for West Feliciana Parish Leon Picou (who prosecuted me at my 1973 trial), and former warden C. Murray Henderson were listed as “persons interested in appearing on [Brown’s] behalf.” Brown was released from prison in June 1986. His sentence of death, which had been switched to “life in prison” for aggravated rape in 1972 (when the U.S. Supreme Court found the death penalty unconstitutional), was commuted to time served. We could use all this to impeach Brown on the stand, because he testified in 1973 that he hadn’t been paid anything or promised any favors in exchange for his testimony. I sent the copies of the letters that had been hidden from us to Herman. He could use them to appeal his conviction. We never had a chance to question Hezekiah Brown about his lies. He died before my trial began.
Anne Butler refused to provide copies of the taped interviews she used to write the chapter in her book about the Brent Miller murder, forcing my attorneys to go to court to obtain copies of these tapes. At an evidentiary hearing Butler argued that the reason she didn’t want to turn the tapes over was that they could be damaged or destroyed. The court ordered her to turn the tapes over to it, stating that the court would make copies of them and return the originals to her. On the tapes prison officials must have been feeling overconfident since Herman and I had already been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for Miller’s murder. They spoke openly and freely, not realizing that by doing so they were exposing their plot against me and Herman. During his taped interview former captain Hilton Butler said, “Hezekiah was one you could put words in his mouth. . . . Hayden kind of put those words in his mouth,” thereby revealing that Brown was not a reliable witness. They also admitted Gilbert Montegut was framed because Hayden Dees wanted him to be framed.
Since Hezekiah Brown died before my trial, we asked presiding judge Bruce Bennett to block Brown’s testimony from being read to jurors because we had no way to confr
ont him with this new information—not only that he lied when he said he wasn’t paid for his testimony but that he lied when he said he saw Gilbert Montegut stab Brent Miller. The judge denied our request. Brown’s testimony would be read to jurors. (Judge Bennett would also allow John Sinquefield, who prosecuted me in 1973, to testify on the sincerity, honesty, and demeanor of Hezekiah Brown when Brown testified.)
Since Judge Tanner had overturned my murder conviction in 1992, my sentence at Angola went from life in prison back to the 50-year sentence I was serving for armed robbery. On April 29, 1996, I was discharged from Angola on that original 50-year sentence, having done 25 years—half the time, which was all that was required. If I hadn’t been framed for Miller’s murder I would have gone home that day. Instead, I packed up my possessions. I was to be transferred to a jail in Tangipahoa Parish, where I’d be held during my second trial.
The day before I was to leave, a young white prison guard came to my cell and told me I should get in touch with my family, my lawyer, and anyone else I could because he heard through the grapevine that the Millers would be waiting for me at the front gate when I was discharged and “it was decided” that the ranking officers in the building would not be there that morning. I immediately called my brother Michael, my sister Violetta and her husband, and both my attorneys. Each of them called the prison and the sheriff’s office at St. Francisville and they were all guaranteed nothing was going to happen to me, that I would be OK. I called Michael later that day and he told me Burl Cain assured him I would be safe and there would be no problems.
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