Herman Wallace April 2013 (Herman’s House)

Chief Judge Brian A. Jackson of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana ordered the state to “immediately release” Herman Wallace from custody, according to his legal team.

Wallace, who is dying of liver cancer and has just days to live, has served over 40 years in solitary confinement for the 1972 murder of Brent Miller, a white prison guard at Louisiana’s infamous Angola prison, formerly a slave plantation.

Wallace was convicted of the murder alongside two others black prisoners. They came to be known as the “Angola 3” and maintained their innocence, insisting they had been framed in an effort to silence their political activism as members of one of the first Black Panther Party chapters.

Over the decades of their incarceration in conditions that amount to torture, the case against the three men fell apart. Nevertheless, only one of them, Robert King, has been released, but not before spending 31 years in solitary confinement.

Wallace’s legal team released the following statement in response to Judge Jackson’s decision:

With today’s ruling, at long last, Herman Wallace has been afforded some measure of justice after a lifetime of injustice. We ask that the Department of Corrections honor Judge Jackson’s order and immediately release Herman Wallace so that he can spend his final days as a free man.

In addition, litigation challenging Mr. Wallace’s unconstitutional confinement in solitary confinement for four decades will continue in his name. It is Mr. Wallace’s hope that this litigation will help ensure that others, including his lifelong friend and fellow ‘Angola 3’ member, Albert Woodfox, do not continue to suffer such cruel and unusual confinement even after Mr. Wallace is gone.

There is no doubt that solitary confinement constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In 2011, UN Special Rapporteur on torture Juan Méndez concluded that solitary confinement for just 15 days or longer amounts to torture and can result in permanent psychological damage. Imagine what decades in such conditions does to one’s sanity.

The treatment of the Angola 3 is just one of the many cruel stories that make the US criminal justice system a pariah in the international community.

After a lifetime of torture, Wallace is finally going to be released. But under the circumstances, this cannot be considered justice given that he has just days to live. Furthermore, it’s likely his liver cancer, which is treatable if caught in time, could have been prevented had prison officials provided him with basic medical care.

As his legal advocates explained to me in an email:

In summer 2013, after Mr. Wallace lost 40 – 50 pounds, he was given a medical assessment and found to have advanced and terminal liver cancer. Even after this diagnosis, it took over a month for Mr. Wallace to get chemotherapy treatment. That’s why an oncologist and a specialist in internal medicine and geriatric patients have submitted sworn affidavits recommending that Mr. Wallace should be immediately released for medical reasons, so that he can receive adequate medical and palliative care.

I hold the US prison system responsible for the slow and torturous murder of Herman Wallace. Too bad we can’t put IT on trial.