Twists and Turns after Decades in Solitary
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: justice or miscarriage? After 43 years in solitary confinement, freedom for Albert Woodfox could be just hours away -- or not, if the state has its way. His friend and former inmate describes life inside.</s>ROBERT KING, FILMMAKER: . when they brought your tray, they set it down on the floor and you would have to get down on the floor and pull your tray through the bars to eat the food.</s>AMANPOUR (voice-over): Also ahead, the world-renowned Israeli artist, Michal Rovner, gives me a tour of her extraordinary London exhibit. Look closely: it tells the story of our times.</s>AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour. The twists and turns of the American justice system never cease to amaze. In this story, we're at 43 years and counting, as the clock ticks down on Louisiana state inmate Albert Woodfox, who's believed to be the longest-serving solitary prisoner ever. Mind you: he has twice been tried and convicted and twice those convictions have been overturned. This week a judge finally ruled that he had to be released immediately. But the state won't budge. The Louisiana attorney general's office would only send us a statement saying, quote, "We look forward to demonstrating to the court why this man should remain incarcerated and be held fully accountable for his crimes." Woodfox was convicted of a 1972 prison guard murder at the Angola State Prison but always maintained his innocence, saying that he was unfairly targeted because he was a Black Panther, part of a militant civil rights group. Three men were caught up in this case; one has died and the other, Robert King, my guest tonight, had his conviction vacated after spending 29 years in solitary confinement. I spoke to him as he was preparing to drive to Louisiana to welcome his old friend to freedom -- or so he hopes.</s>AMANPOUR: Robert King, welcome to the program.</s>KING: Thank you.</s>AMANPOUR: This is a truly inexplicable story for our international audience. You are on the way to try to see whether your friend, your cohort, Mr. Woodfox, will be released from where he is now in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Do you think it's going to happen or not?</s>KING: Wow. Yes, I am thinking that it could happen and -- but will it happen at the time? We don't know and we are trying to be cautiously optimistic because we have been here so many times before.</s>AMANPOUR: Is he in solitary?</s>KING: Well, he's in isolation, which is the same. I think it's the equivalent. In this area here, he is in a -- being held in a -- sort of like a tank by himself. And he don't come into contact with a lot of people.</s>AMANPOUR: So it's --</s>KING: So for him, it's a little worse.</s>AMANPOUR: -- even worse since his convictions have been overturned.</s>KING: Yes, that is correct. Even though his convictions have been overturned and it's 43 years and counting since, you know, all of this stuff happened, he still remains isolated, in prison and even though he's no longer convicted.</s>KING: You know, it's a -- it's a -- it's a contradiction. It's a major contradiction. It's kind of hard to conceive.</s>AMANPOUR: You yourself spent, I believe, 29 years in solitary confinement; finally your conviction was overturned. Describe for me what it was like, being deprived of not just your liberty but any contact with anyone for 29 years.</s>KING: Being in a cell 23 hours a day, you don't come in physical contact with anybody unrestrained. We learned how to communicate. We did communicate. We did some sacrificing and we continued to communicate with, despite the fact that we were subjected to disciplinary action as a result of it --</s>AMANPOUR: How did you communicate if you were in solitary, how?</s>KING: Well, solitary confinement is, you're in a cell, Christiane, that is 6'x9'x'12. But there is a opening the front of the cell. And we are able to communicate.</s>AMANPOUR: You describe, for instance, being served your meals; sometimes they would hand them to you. Sometimes they would fling them at you. Sometimes they would fling them through the -- through the bars. Tell me about that.</s>KING: Well, it was a practice, a common practice. When they brought your tray, they set it down on the floor and you would have to get down on the floor and pull your tray through the bars to eat the food. A lot of time the food would fall off or if you got something big on there, would get caught in the door or something like that. We saw that as being sort of dehumanizing and we decided to sort of do something about it. We entered a passive protest. We ceased to eat. And they called it a hunger strike.</s>AMANPOUR: What do you think Mr. Woodfox, Albert, is feeling right now, given that he's been in a dozen years longer than you, that despite two overturned convictions, he's still in there and that the judge has said he cannot even be retried because there's no way he'd get a fair trial? Just about everybody connected is dead. Even the DNA evidence that could exonerate him has been lost.</s>KING: He's -- when I spoke with Albert yesterday, I believe, he called me and we spoke. And I think he's -- it's -- he's -- it's one of a euphoric. But he is cautiously, you know, optimistic because, you know, we've been here before. And we've been let down.</s>AMANPOUR: What about the murder of the prison guard? Who did that? What do you think you know about that?</s>KING: I have no idea. I don't know nothing about it. I was 150 miles away, never met the man in my life. But I was placed under investigation. Matter of fact, 500 inmates were, you know, initially placed under investigation and locked into cells. And I was investigated for this crime that allegedly was committed by people whom I knew. I was investigated for 29 years for the -- for a crime that I knew nothing about and I still know nothing about it.</s>AMANPOUR: Was it the politics of the time? Was it because you were in the Black Panthers? How do you account for why they came after you guys?</s>KING: It was the politics at the time and plus there was some things that were taking place in prison in which, when Herman and Albert went to prison, they brought that ideology or ideology of a Black Panther Party into the prison equation because it was like -- in Angola, it was considered the worst prison in the nation at that -- at that time. And they brought a human factor into it. We did passive protests in order to upgrade some of the dehumanizing practices that were taking place during that time. So we were doing things that we felt were just and righteous. And for that, you know, we didn't mind being persecuted or prosecuted for it, because we felt it was the right thing to do.</s>AMANPOUR: Well, you've paid for all of that with so many years of your life and Albert is still paying with so many years of his life. We thank you very much, Robert King, thank you for joining me.</s>KING: You're welcome. Thank you.</s>AMANPOUR: Now I want to turn to Woodfox's lawyer, Carine Williams. She's on the phone from Louisiana as she makes her way to visit Albert. Carine Williams, thank you for joining us. We've been here, you've been here so many times before, as Robert King just said. Do you think this time it's going to happen?</s>CARINE WILLIAMS, WOODFOX'S ATTORNEY: Certainly I'm hopeful and I think this time, you know, it should happen. It's under the applicable law and the facts that we have in this case. It's the right outcome. So we're very hopeful.</s>AMANPOUR: Except that you have been here before; you've had two overturned convictions. He still hasn't been out and the attorney general's office seems to be absolutely determined that he doesn't get out, that he continues to pay his debt to society, as they say. What is it about the attorney general, do you think, that just doesn't want to let go of this particular case?</s>WILLIAMS: Yes, it's sort of inexplicable at this point, to try to understand the amount of resources that Louisiana has exhausted to keep someone who is elderly, infirm and who has already given over 40 years of his life on a sentence that did not have a valid conviction to support. It's pretty remarkable.</s>AMANPOUR: You --</s>WILLIAMS: -- have been here before and I have been hopeful before. The attorney general's office would realize that, you know, enough is enough in this case. So at this stage we can only look to the courts and hope that they're going to come through and see that.</s>AMANPOUR: Enough is enough, you say; but the attorney general's office adds that the perception of solitary confinement is not what everybody thinks it is. But it is pretty brutal and we know that many people suffer depression and harm and all sorts of other issues. How has Robert's health and mental state been affected?</s>WILLIAMS: You know, there's been -- it's hard to capture all the different effects that happen at -- when someone is put under solitary confinement. This has been an interesting and trying week for a lot of reasons. But one of them is because it started out on Monday with a young man in New York named Kalief Browder, who has gone to jail allegedly for stealing a backpack as a teenager and who served three years in solitary confinement in a New York prison and then never had a trial, never had a conviction, eventually was released and struggling to deal with that experience, unfortunately, Monday, he took his own life. And that story, his story has haunted me since I first learned about it and has been top of mind all week. It's hard to explain what it does to someone. And certainly I haven't experienced it personally. But the resilience of my clients, of Mr. King, of Mr. Woodfox is nothing short of inspiring since I started working on this case seven years ago.</s>AMANPOUR: And Carine, you have been working on it a long time. And we know that for many, many years the widow of the prison guard in question has herself said she does not believe that Albert or Robert or any of those convicted of his murder actually did it. But you know also that the convictions were overturned and not declaring the inmates innocent. It was for racial bias or lack of evidence, suppression of evidence, et cetera. What do you say to people who still believe that it hasn't been proven that they didn't do it?</s>WILLIAMS: We just don't operate under a system where someone has to prove their innocence. It's really the state's burden to prove that somebody is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And we have certain safeguards to make sure that they do so fairly, so that they can't railroad someone and to mitigate against the risk of putting someone behind bars and taking time away from their lives as much as possible. So the idea that these are just procedural issues or technicalities really misses the point. These procedural issues, these quote-unquote, "technicalities" are actually constitutional rights that exist to safeguard against the potential of this happening. And so when those safeguards are not in place, we can't have</s>AMANPOUR: It really is incredible, Carine Williams, thank you for joining us. And we'll be waiting to see if indeed after 43 years in solitary, a record amount of time in solitary confinement, Albert Woodfox is freed finally on Friday, now crammed with his other friends in little boxes for all these decades. And up next, a vision of endless motion, portraits of humanity on the move, the dynamic work of the artist, Michal Rovner, after this.