The torture of prisoners in US custody is not only found in military
prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. If President Obama is
serious about ending US support for torture, he can start here in
Louisiana.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is already notorious for
a range of offenses, including keeping former Black Panthers Herman
Wallace and Albert Woodfox, in solitary for over 36 years. Now a death
penalty trial in St. Francisville, Louisiana has exposed widespread and
systemic abuse at the prison. Even in the context of eight years of the
Bush administration, the behavior documented at the Louisiana State
Penitentiary at Angola stands out both for its brutality and for the
significant evidence that it was condoned and encouraged from the very
top of the chain of command.
In a remarkable hearing that explored torture practices at Angola,
twenty-five inmates testified last summer to facing overwhelming
violence in the aftermath of an escape attempt at the prison nearly a
decade ago. These twenty-five inmates - who were not involved in the
escape attempt - testified to being kicked, punched, beaten with batons
and with fists, stepped on, left naked in a freezing cell, and
threatened that they would be killed. They were threatened by guards
that they would be sexually assaulted with batons. They were forced to
urinate and defecate on themselves. They were bloodied, had teeth
knocked out, were beaten until they lost control of bodily functions,
and beaten until they signed statements or confessions presented to
them by prison officials. One inmate had a broken jaw, and another was
placed in solitary confinement for eight years.
While prison officials deny the policy of abuse, the range of
prisoners who gave statements, in addition to medical records and other
evidence introduced at the trial, present a powerful argument that
abuse is a standard policy at the prison. Several of the prisoners
received $7,000 when the state agreed to settle, without admitting
liability, two civil rights lawsuits filed by 13 inmates. The inmates
will have to spend that money behind bars -more than 90% of Angola's
prisoners are expected to die behind its walls.
Systemic Violence
During the attempted escape at Angola, in which one guard was killed
and two were taken hostage, a team of officers - including Angola
warden Burl Cain - rushed in and began shooting, killing one inmate,
Joel Durham, and wounding another, David Mathis.
The prison has no official guidelines for what should happen during
escape attempts or other crises, a policy that seems designed to
encourage the violent treatment documented in this case. Richard
Stalder, at that time the secretary of the Louisiana Department of
Public Safety and Corrections, was also at the prison at the time. Yet
despite - or because of - the presence of the prison warden and head of
corrections for the state, guards were given free hand to engage in
violent retribution. Cain later told a reporter after the shooting that
Angola's policy was not to negotiate, saying, ''That's a message all
the inmates know. They just forgot it. And now they know it again.''
Five prisoners - including Mathis - were charged with murder, and
currently are on trial, facing the death penalty - partially based on
testimony from other inmates that was obtained through beatings and
torture. Mathis is represented by civil rights attorneys Jim Boren (who
also represented one of the Jena Six youths) and Rachel Connor, with
assistance from Nola Investigates, an investigative firm in New Orleans
that specializes in defense for capital cases.
The St. Francisville hearing was requested by Mathis' defense
counsel to demonstrate that, in the climate of violence and abuse,
inmates were forced to sign statements through torture, and therefore
those statements should be inadmissible. 20th Judicial District Judge
George H. Ware Jr. ruled that the documented torture and abuse was not
relevant. However, the behavior documented in the hearing not only
raises strong doubts about the cases against the Angola Five, but it
also shows that violence against inmates has become standard procedure
at the prison.
The hearing shows a pattern of systemic abuse so open and regular,
it defies the traditional excuse of bad apples. Inmate Doyle Billiot
testified to being threatened with death by the guards, "What's not to
be afraid of? Got all these security guards coming around you everyday
looking at you sideways, crazy and stuff. Don't know what's on their
mind, especially when they threaten to kill you." Another inmate,
Robert Carley testified that a false confession was beaten out of him.
""I was afraid," he said. "I felt that if I didn't go in there and tell
them something, I would die."
Inmate Kenneth "Geronimo" Edwards testified that the guards "beat us
half to death." He also testified that guards threatened to sexually
assault him with a baton, saying, "that's a big black...say you want it."
Later, Edwards says, the guards, "put me in my cell. They took all my
clothes. Took my jumpsuit. Took all the sheets, everything out the
cell, and put me in the cell buck-naked...It was cold in the cell. They
opened the windows and turned the blowers on." At least a dozen other
inmates also testified to receiving the same beatings, assault, threats
of sexual violence, and "freezing treatment."
Some guards at the prison treated the abuse as a game. Inmate Brian
Johns testified at the hearing that, "one of the guards was hitting us
all in the head. Said he liked the sound of the drums - the drumming
sound that - from hitting us in the head with the stick."
Solitary Confinement
Two of Angola's most famous residents, political prisoners Herman
Wallace and Albert Woodfox, have become the primary example of another
form of abuse common at Angola - the use of solitary confinement as
punishment for political views. The two have now each spent more than
36 years in solitary, despite the fact that a judge recently overturned
Woodfox's conviction (prison authorities continue to hold Woodfox and
have announced plans to retry him). Woodfox and Wallace - who together
with former prisoner King Wilkerson are known as the Angola Three -
have filed a civil suit against Angola, arguing that their confinement
has violated both their 8th amendment rights against cruel and unusual
punishment and 4th amendment right to due process.
Recent statements by Angola warden Burl Cain makes clear that
Woodfox and Wallace are being punished for their political views. At a
recent deposition, attorneys for Woodfox asked Cain, "Lets just for the
sake of argument assume, if you can, that he is not guilty of the
murder of Brent Miller." Cain responded, "Okay. I would still keep him
in (solitary)...I still know that he is still trying to practice Black
Pantherism, and I still would not want him walking around my prison
because he would organize the young new inmates. I would have me all
kind of problems, more than I could stand, and I would have the blacks
chasing after them...He has to stay in a cell while he's at Angola."
In addition to Cain's comments, Louisiana Attorney General James
"Buddy" Caldwell has said the case against the Angola Three is personal
to him. Statements like this indicate that this vigilante attitude not
only pervades New Orleans' criminal justice system, but that the
problem comes from the
very top.
The problem is not limited to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola
- similar stories can be found in prisons across the US. But from the
abandonment of prisoners in Orleans Parish Prison during Katrina to the
case of the Jena Six, Louisiana's criminal justice system, which has
the highest incarceration rate in the world, often seems to be
functioning under plantation-style justice. Most recently, journalist
A.C. Thompson, in an investigation of post-Katrina killings, found
evidence that the New Orleans police department supported vigilante
attacks against Black residents of New Orleans after Katrina.
Torture and abuse is illegal under both US law - including the
constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment - and
international treaties that the US is signatory to, from the 1948
Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights (ratified in 1992). Despite the laws and
treaties, US prison guards have rarely been held accountable to these
standards.
Once we say that abuse or torture is ok against prisoners,the next
step is for it to be used in the wider population. A recent petition
for administrative remedies filed by Herman Wallace states, "If
Guantanamo Bay has been a national embarrassment and symbol of the U.S.
government's relation to charges, trials and torture, then what is
being done to the Angola 3... is what we are to expect if we fail to act
quickly...The government tries out it's torture techniques on prisoners
in the U.S. - just far enough to see how society will react. It doesn't
take long before they unleash their techniques on society as a whole."
If we don't stand up against this abuse now, it will only spread.
Despite the hearings, civil suits, and other documentation, the
guards who performed the acts documented in the hearing on torture at
Angola remain unpunished, and the system that designed it remains in
place. In fact, many of the guards have been promoted, and remain in
supervisory capacity over
the same inmates they were documented to have beaten mercilessly.
Warden Burl Cain still oversees Angola. Meanwhile, the trial of the
Angola Five is moving forward, and those with the power to change the
pattern of abuse at Angola remain silent.
