Cruel, Unusual, and Unjust Punishment

By: Raymond

David Sweat, the prisoner who recently escaped from New York, has something waiting for him when they put him back in prison: cruel, unusual, and unjust punishment.  The guards are going to take turns on him.  He was probably shot unjustly but they’re not going tell us about that.  You know you can’t trust the media.  This guy probably told on all the guards for drugs; the guard’s buddies are just waiting at the doors for him.  21 days this man was free, and just two miles from the Canadian border.  Now he’s going to be put in a cell that he’s going to be in more like 24 hours a day than 23. They ain’t going to give him recreation every day. 

Now about the Angola Three in Louisiana, my home state.  It all starts in 1972 at the Louisiana State Prison at Angola with three innocent convicts.  Somebody killed one of the free guards during the riot.  [Editor’s note:  there are free guards who are not in jail and convict guards who are inmates].  The guard was 23 years and was stabbed 65-70 times, might have been a lot more than that. They put it on a man who wasn’t even involved in it, then they locked him in a 6 by 6 cell, although they’ll tell you 6 by 9.  They welded his cell shut for almost 30 years, and fed him 3 meals a day, or so they say.  He got two pieces of bread and all the water he could drink.  In 1975 the US Supreme Court said bread and water was cruel, unusual, and unjust punishment, the same year they had to get rid of the convict guards. 

People don’t realize back in those days the convict guards were in the red hatch.  The red hatch was the worst place I’ve ever been in.  If they didn’t feel like feeding you, you didn’t get fed.  And don’t expect a clean uniform.  They beat a guy to death.  The doctors said he died of spinal injuries, thank God for State Representative Dorothy Taylor.  She made them give him an autopsy or they would have gotten away with it. 

Dorothy Taylor and the state people closed the hatch for two weeks, cleaned everyone out, and then opened it right back up.  Now they got a guy who spent 42 years in the red hatch, that’s also the death chamber. When you’re talking about cruel, unusual, and unjust punishment, picture sitting in a cell, no sunshine, no air for 42 years for killing a guard that he didn’t even kill.

 Editor’s Note:  Three men were convicted of the crime of killing guard, Brent Miller.  Robert Hillary King (born Robert King Wilkerson), Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace were placed in solitary confinement in 1973.  Wallace was released in October 2013 and died four days later.  In March 2008, Woodfox and Wallace were removed from solitary, and in June 2015 Woodfox was ordered released after his conviction was overturned.  Louisiana has appealed this decision and has not released him.  King spent 29 years in solitary and his conviction was overturned.  He was released from Angola after his conviction was overturned.  The author does not believe that the three were guilty of the original murder as he was in Angola at the time of the crime.  He claims that there was another man who committed the crime and was never charged for killing the guard.   

  Copyright Cleveland Street Chronicle September 2015 in Cleveland Ohio All Rights Reserved