Man gets new trial in guard’s death

• By BILL LODGE
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jun 11, 2008 - Page: 3B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Thirty-five years after Angola prison inmate Albert Woodfox was convicted in the murder of a prison guard, a federal jurist has recommended he receive a third trial.

Woodfox is in the maximum security dorm at the Louisiana State Prison at Angola. He spent the first 36 years after the 1972 murder in solitary confinement.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Christine Noland concluded Tuesday that Woodfox did not receive effective legal counsel during a 1998 re-trial that again resulted in his conviction.

She recommended that U.S. District Judge James Brady return the case to state district court for a third trial.

Noland noted that several key witnesses died before the second trial.

Their 1973 testimony was read before the second jury, but Noland said Woodfox’s defense attorney should have objected.

She said that was because the original jury did not know that state officials had promised one inmate witness their help in obtaining an early release.

That witness was Hezekiah Brown, who was serving a life sentence at Angola when he testified in 1973 that he saw Woodfox and three other inmates stab Miller to death.

Brown also testified he first told prison officials that he was not at the scene of the murder.

Prison officials lobbied for Brown’s release after the 1973 trial, and he was pardoned in 1986. Brown died before the 1998 trial.

The magistrate judge also said defense objections should have been made in 1998 to the reading of a forensic expert’s testimony about blood spatters on clothing alleged to have been worn by Woodfox at the time of the stabbing death of 23-year-old prison guard Brent Miller.

Noland said the expert died before the second trial and that state officials reported the clothing had been lost.

She said modern forensic equipment possibly could have determined whose blood was on those clothes and who actually wore them.