Prosecutors oppose new trial for Angola inmate, ex-Black Panther

Prosecutors oppose new trial for Angola inmate, ex-Black Panther

By DOUG SIMPSON
Associated Press Writer

ANGOLA, La. (AP) -- A former Black Panther convicted of killing a Louisiana prison guard in the 1970s deserves a new murder trial because prosecutors withheld key evidence that could have won him an acquittal, his lawyer argued in a prison courtroom on Tuesday.

Herman Wallace, one of a trio of prisoners known as the "Angola Three," has spent most of the past three decades in solitary confinement at the state's top-security prison after his conviction in the stabbing death of guard Brent Miller.

His lawyer argued that the warden had essentially bribed a witness into identifying Wallace as one of the killers - and that prosecutors knowingly kept the deal secret from jurors.

"Jurors would have dismissed (the witness') testimony as hogwash" if they had known, lawyer Nick Trentecosta said.

Prosecutors, fighting Wallace's efforts at a new trial, said no proof exists of that deal - an alleged promise from the warden to help the witness get a pardon and eventual release from prison. The warden and the witness are dead.

"I haven't seen anything to say that there was a promise given," prosecutor Dale Lee said. "There's nobody here to disprove what actually happened in 1972 - they're all dead."

Trentecosta said Hezekiah Brown, the witness who testified against Wallace, received a weekly carton of cigarettes as a payoff for his testimony. The cigarettes amounted to valuable currency - "a prison pension" - that Brown could spend on gambling, alcohol, drugs or sex, Trentecosta said. After the trial, he was transferred to a private house with his own room and television set, a former guard, Bobby Ovileaux, testified.

Lee said the prison was right to segregate Brown from the general prison population because he would be in danger of being attacked or killed by other inmates who were angry that he had testified against a fellow prisoner.

Trentecosta also produced several documents from then-Warden C. Murray Henderson in which Henderson referred to commitments and promises he had made to help Brown get a pardon.

Court commissioner Rachel Morgan said she will issue a recommendation to the trial judge, probably within a month, on whether Wallace should get a new trial. District Judge Michael Irwin could accept or reject her recommendation, or order another evidentiary hearing in his courtroom, she said.

Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert Wilkerson are known as the "Angola Three," considered by prisoners' rights groups to be wrongly held in solitary confinement because of their political activity with the now-defunct Black Panthers.

Wilkerson was released in 2001 after a judge overturned his conviction for killing another inmate. Prison officials have said Wallace and Woodfox are in solitary because they would be endangered if returned to the general prison population.