Angola Three

Common card · No. 264470

The Angola Three are three African American former prison inmates (Robert Hillary King, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace) who were held for decades in solitary confinement while imprisoned at Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola Prison). Woodfox and Wallace were indicted in April 1972 for the killing of a prison corrections officer; they were convicted in January 1974. They served more than 40 years each in solitary, the "longest period of solitary confinement in American prison history". Robert King was convicted of a separate prison murder in 1973 and spent 29 years in solitary confinement. Starting in the late 1990s, each case was assessed, and activists began to work to have the cases appealed and convictions overturned because of doubts raised about the original trials. King's conviction was overturned on appeal and he was released in 2001 after taking a plea deal. In July 2013, Amnesty International called for the release of 71-year-old Herman Wallace, who had been...

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