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 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 Herman’s House. “I get to the front gate,” he says, “and there’s a whole lot of people out there and, you ain’t going to believe this but”—Herman laughed—“I was dancing my way out. I was doing the jitterbug. And I was doing all kinds of crazy stupid-ass shit, you know. And people were just laughing and clapping until I walked out that gate. And . . . I look and there are all the brothers in the window waving and throwing a fist sign, you know.”
Carine told me the sun was setting when Herman was brought out of prison on a stretcher and put in the ambulance. He was conscious but very weak. After he was put inside the ambulance he asked, “Is everybody smiling?” Many of his friends had gathered outside the prison and called out to him, shouting words of support. Herman’s fiancée, Maria Hinds, and friend Ashley Wennerstrom were in the ambulance with him. Carine and Katherine drove behind the ambulance, following it to a New Orleans hospital emergency room. After they arrived, Carine walked up to Herman as he lay in a hospital bed. He looked at her and smiled. “Now I’m free,” he said.
That night, George released a statement: “Tonight, Herman Wallace has left the walls of Louisiana prisons and will be able to receive the medical care that his advanced liver cancer requires. It took the order of a federal judge to address the clear constitutional violations present in Mr. Wallace’s 1974 trial and grant him relief. The state of Louisiana has had many opportunities to address this injustice and has repeatedly and utterly failed to do so.”
On the drive back to Wade, my hands were numb and in pain from the black box. I was numb and in pain too. I was elated that Herman was getting out, but the miracle I ached for now was his life. The next day Herman was taken from the hospital to the home of Ashley Wennerstrom and her husband for hospice care. I called the house and spoke to several old friends and comrades who had gathered. They told me Herman was resting and in and out of consciousness, but he knew where he was. He knew he was in Ashley’s house. He knew his family, supporters, lawyers, and friends were around him, coming and going. They played music for him, took turns reading to him and holding him. Ashley brought him flowers to smell.
On the next day, October 3, District Attorney Samuel D’Aquilla had Herman reindicted by a West Feliciana Parish grand jury for the murder of Brent Miller. East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney Hillar C. Moore III asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to return Herman to prison. The vengeance by the state of Louisiana against us had long been incomprehensible to me, but this move pushed at the boundary of sanity. Herman was dying. Nobody ever told him he was reindicted. If he’d known there is no doubt in my mind he would have begun to mentally prepare the way he did for every battle, without hesitation.
On October 4, I woke up around four a.m. with a very strong urge to call Ashley. When I got through to her she told me Herman had died in the night. He went to sleep and never woke up. He was 71. I sat on my bunk and wrote a statement for our supporters.
The old man has decided to leave us. I am sure it was a very hard choice for him, Who will I serve? The ancestors who have called me home, or humanity who I love so much?
“Old man” was my term of endearment for him—it had to do with the age of everything—his heart and his soul. Herman “Hooks�
� Wallace was not a perfect human being, and like all men, he had faults and weaknesses, but he also had character. He could make me so mad that I wanted to rip his head off. Then he would melt my heart with a word, or an act of kindness to another human being.
On October 1 sitting in a hospital room, with the other part of my heart, Robert King, I tried to will a miracle and a miracle was granted, not the miracle of life that I wanted for Herman, but the miracle of freedom. After 42 years of tireless struggle against evil, he was a free man.
I had a chance to say good-bye to my comrade in the struggle, my mentor in life, my fellow Panther, and most of all, my friend. Herman taught me a man can stumble, even fall, as long as he gets up. That it’s OK to be afraid, but hold on to your courage. To lose a battle is not the loss of a war.
Herman Wallace’s greatest pride was joining the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. He believed in duty, honor, and dedication. He never broke the faith of the party, his comrades, or the people. As I bent to kiss his forehead, my heart said good-bye—I love you forever. My soul said—separated but never apart; never touching but always connected. He was the best of us. As long as we remember him, he lives on.
In Washington DC that day, Rep. John Conyers read a tribute to Herman on the floor that would go into the Congressional record.
Mr. Speaker, we rise to commemorate and celebrate the life and contributions of Herman Wallace, one of the bravest champions for justice and human rights whom we have ever met. Nicknamed “The Muhammad Ali of Justice,” Mr. Wallace was a member of Louisiana’s “Angola 3” who spent 41 years in solitary confinement. Mr. [Cedric] Richmond and I had the opportunity to visit Mr. Wallace at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, justifiably called “the Alcatraz of the South” several years ago. I was impressed by his courage, determination, and dignity. We received word that Mr. Wallace passed away earlier this morning, only three days after he was freed pursuant to a federal judge’s ruling that he had not received a fair trial in 1974. . . .
Mr. Speaker, it was with great sadness that we learned of Mr. Wallace’s passing earlier this morning, nine days shy of his 72nd birthday. Mr. Wallace’s personal fight against injustice and the inhuman plight that is long term solitary confinement has ended for him. The larger fight against that injustice must go on, however, and his legacy will endure through a civil lawsuit that he filed jointly with his fellow Angola 3 members, Albert Woodfox and Robert King. That lawsuit seeks to define and abolish long term solitary confinement as cruel and unusual punishment.
Mr. Speaker, we ask my colleagues to join me in honoring Mr. Wallace for his many-decades-long fight for the humane treatment of prisoners. We, and all of us, owe Mr. Wallace a debt of gratitude.
Three days later, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, called on the United States to immediately end the indefinite solitary confinement imposed on me. “This is a sad case and it is not over,” he said. “The co-accused, Mr. Woodfox, remains in solitary confinement pending an appeal to the federal court and has been kept in isolation. . . . Keeping Albert Woodfox in solitary confinement for more than four decades clearly amounts to torture and it should be lifted immediately.”
Herman was buried on October 12. Friends and loved ones visited me and told me about Herman’s memorial service and funeral, held in a community center in the Treme, a block from where I grew up. People sent me photographs. Somebody had made a light blue tapestry with a large black panther across it that was draped over Herman’s coffin. Six former Panthers were pallbearers, including King and Malik Rahim, all wearing blue shirts and black ties—Panther colors—and black berets. There were drawings and paintings of Herman, me, and King on the walls. Herman’s sister sang. Many friends and family members spoke, remembering Herman’s spirit, his commitment, his humor, his courage, his heart. How he never gave up. Carine held up her phone and played a recording of one of Herman’s favorite songs, Etta James singing “At Last.”
I looked at the photos from Herman’s funeral and memorial service several times in the following weeks. I told myself, and everyone, “Don’t think of what we lost, remember what we had.” The day Herman died I felt a great pain and sense of loss that is still with me, and I will carry it to my grave.
Two weeks after Herman died, Amnesty International tried to deliver yet another petition to Governor Bobby Jindal. This one requested that the state drop its appeal to keep me in prison. Fifty thousand people signed it. The governor was not in his office so it was left with his staff.
It was strange: this time instead of demanding our freedom, Amnesty was demanding my freedom. I had never felt more alone. Before they delivered the petition, our supporters held a press conference on the state capitol steps. They had spread calendar pages on the steps to represent the time I had spent in solitary confinement and held signs that said REMEMBER HERMAN WALLACE and FREE ALBERT WOODFOX. Malik spoke, demanding that state legislators get involved in ending my confinement in solitary, calling it a human rights issue. King spoke, saying we would never stop pushing for justice. Billie Mizell read a statement for Teenie Rogers: “Each time I look at the evidence in this case, I remember there is no proof that the men charged with Brent’s death are the ones who actually killed him. It’s easy to get caught up in vengeance and anger, but when I look at the facts, they just do not add up.” Rogers said she hadn’t been planning to sign Amnesty’s petition, but after Herman was reindicted on his deathbed she changed her mind. “That’s not anything I want to be a part of, and I don’t think it’s something Brent would have done,” Rogers said. “If the state had a strong case, I might feel differently. But I have not seen anything yet that proves to me these men murdered Brent.”
My brother Michael read the statement I gave him, “On good days I am allowed, at most, an hour of exercise in a cage outside. I do not have the words to convey the years of mental, emotional, and physical torture I have endured. I ask that for a moment you imagine yourself standing at the edge of nothingness, looking at emptiness. The pain and suffering this isolation causes go beyond mere description.”
The next month I was in federal court, testifying about the strip searches and visual cavity searches that were still going on at Wade. My attorney, Sheridan England, asked me how having multiple strip searches a day made me feel. I told him the visual anal cavity inspections were humiliating and stressful. They made me feel hopeless and helpless.
Richard Curry, representing Louisiana prison officials, argued that strip searches were necessary in maximum-security prisons to prevent prisoners from having contraband, like drugs or razor blades. “Weren’t you once found guilty of having a handcuff key in your possession?” Curry asked me. “No,” I said. Curry showed me a disciplinary order that was issued 36 years earlier at Angola, in 1977, stating that a handcuff key had been found in my cell. I told him if I had a handcuff key in my cell in 1977, it was planted in my cell. Especially back in those years many guards hated me. “You were never found innocent of this charge,” Curry countered. No contraband had been found on me or in my cell since I’d been at Wade, I pointed out. The warden at Wade confirmed that.
Back in my cell, I was feeling out of balance. It was December. Most years run into the next when you are locked down 23 hours a day. A few years stand out for being worse than others. The year my mom died. The year I lost my sister. That year, 2013, was one of those years. Herman was gone. The degrading strip searches continued. I was being slandered in the press by the attorney general’s office—again. The state of Louisiana, which had already spent millions of dollars to defend my wrongful conviction and to keep me in prison, was now expending considerable resources to fight to restore my conviction—again. I was reminded of a valuable lesson I’d learned, and relearned, many times before. Whenever you don’t think you can take another step, the human spirit keeps going, even when you don’t want to.
Chapter 51
The Ends of Justice
Would the loss of Herman fin
ally tip the scales of sanity against me? Would this be the year of justice and freedom or another year of the same? My habeas case was before a three-judge panel of the most conservative judges on the Fifth Circuit. Two of them were appointed by President Ronald Reagan. The third was appointed by President George W. Bush. I didn’t have a lot of hope for justice and freedom. But I was feeling the support of the people. I was receiving thousands of letters from people through Amnesty International. And that gave me strength. I wanted to write back to each and every person who wrote to me, but it wasn’t physically possible. In January 2014, I released a statement, which Amnesty distributed. “To the many people around the world who have taken us into your lives and your hearts, who have told us ‘I know you, and what you have given to this world,’ who have taken the time to write to me and to Louisiana State officials, you have no idea what a source of strength and courage you have been in my darkest moments. It is impossible for me to personally respond to the 1000s of letters and cards that encourage me to stay strong, don’t give up, don’t lose hope and to fight on. Thank you. The message is heard. I ask that this letter feels as if I am reaching out to you personally and saying, in solidarity and struggle, All Power to the People!”
On January 31, 2014, eight months after the strip searches at Wade began, my attorney Katherine Kimpel called me to say Judge James Brady had issued a preliminary injunction against them. In his ruling Judge Brady wrote that routine searches were not shown to be necessary or justified for security “as is required constitutionally of such policies. Therefore,” he wrote, “Woodfox’s human dignity [as] protected by his fourth Amendment rights” outweighs the “legitimate penological interest. In this circumstance.”
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