Herman Wallace, who was held in solitary confinement for more than 40 years, was told he has only a few more weeks to live
Herman Wallace, a former member of the Black Panther movement who was held in solitary confinement in Louisiana for more than 40 years, is fighting a desperate legal battle to be released from prison having been diagnosed with liver cancer and given just a few more weeks to live.
Wallace, 71, has petitioned the federal courts in Louisiana pleading with them to set him free so that he can spend his last days in hospice care. He is currently in the hospital wing of Elayn Hunt correctional center in St Gabriel, Louisiana, where his condition is reported to be weakening to the extent that some days he is unable to talk to his lawyers.
So far his request to be released has fallen on deaf ears. A federal magistrate judge in Louisiana last week recommended that despite his medical condition, which doctors have concluded is beyond hope, he should remain incarcerated and effectively die in prison.
His attorneys now have until 30 September to give their response to a federal district judge. George Kendall, Wallace’s lawyer, told the Guardian that he remains optimistic: “We are hopeful that this meritorious habeus petition will be reviewed without delay by a federal judge,” he said.
As a member of the so-called Angola Three, Wallace become a symbol of the widespread use of solitary confinement within the American penal system. Originally convicted of robbery, he formed a prison chapter of the Black Panthers along with fellow inmate Albert Woodfox. The two men were subsequently accused in 1972 of the murder of a prison guard, Brent Miller, and have spent most of the time since then in solitary.
Both men have consistently denied any involvement in Miller’s death, pointing out the dearth of forensic evidence connecting them to the murder and to the fact that fellow inmates who acted as key witnesses for the prosecution were offered inducements to implicate them.
Wallace contends that his conviction, and subsequent prolonged solitary confinement, were punishment for his political activities within the Black Panther movement in which he campaigned against racial segregation inside the prison as well as against rape and violence that were at the time rampant within the system.
Though media access to Wallace in his hospital cell is heavily restricted, the prisoner’s personal reflections on his desperate position can be gleaned from recent telephone conversations he has had with the film-maker Angad Bhalla who made a documentary on Wallace’s life in solitary called Herman’s House. Bhalla has shared a recording of his conversation with the Guardian.
In their chats, Wallace says: “I’m going through hell.” He cannot eat normal prison food, and has to rely on other inmates to buy him a special diet from the prison concession.
He believes his terminal illness is “giving people a wake-up call as to what’s going on inside these prisons. Solitary confinement destroys people, both physically and mentally. Some of them are strong, they think they can do it, but while my mind was strong enough, my body fell victim to it.”
He goes on to say that the medical services in the prison are so primitive that they failed to detect his liver tumor for six months. By the time it was diagnosed in June he had lost 50lbs. The tumor was so large it was visibly protruding from his stomach, making him, he says, look pregnant. It was also by that point at an advanced stage that can no longer be treated with chemotherapy.
Wallace has two major legal actions pending. He is pressing a lawsuit against the Louisiana department of corrections accusing it of breaking the eighth and fourteenth amendments of the US constitution by subjecting him to cruel and unusual punishment in the form of prolonged solitary confinement.
He is also pursuing a habeus petition that contends he is an innocent man wrongly convicted of murder in a trial that was prejudiced with an all-white and all-male jury.
However, the hearings are scheduled for next year and he is unlikely to live until then.
The third member of the Angola Three, Robert King, who was tangentially connected to the Miller prosecution, was released from prison in 2001 having spent 29 years in solitary confinement. Woodfox is still locked up in isolation in a 9ft x 6ft cell in David Wade correctional center in Homer, Louisiana.
In his conversation with Bhalla, Wallace says that he is now suffering growing pain from the tumor. Even so, he vows to keep protesting.
“I suck it up, because it’s all about the cause,” he says. “That’s what keeps me going: to keep on fighting.”