A day trip to Angola Prison

Reprieve volunteer James Cross visits the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary

It takes some two and a half hours to make the drive there. Very quickly, you leave the urban sprawl behind you and hit the countryside. There is an odd sensation experienced by all who travel to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, aka Angola. You are, more often than not, looking forward to seeing your client. But the thought that you are about to see him under such circumstances is chilling.

When you pull off the main highway, it is still 20 minutes or so, meandering down another road, before you even hit the front gate. Security is tight, as would be expected from the largest maximum-security prison in the US. Angola, originally a plantation for slaves from southwest Africa – hence the name – is, at 18, 000 acres, bigger than the island of Manhattan. With its natural defences – it is bordered by the Mississippi on three sides, and thick woodland on its fourth, and is home to alligators, a panther and a bear, not to mention the Warden’s bloodhounds – it would be a mad man who tried to escape. But then, being incarcerated here is enough to drive one mad, and so attempts have been made.

Beyond the front gate, it is then another 15 minute drive before you reach the death row unit. On my first visit, the land and its trees exuded a warm autumnal glow and the barbed wire coils at the top of the fences, rendered almost inconspicuous against these rich hues of the landscape, reflected the sunlight with a strange beauty.

On my entering the death row unit, the guards were most pleasant. I had a chat with one, a Miss Peters, and she said I could call her MP if I didn’t mind her abbreviating my own name from James to Jam. We bantered away whilst my client was being ‘pulled’ from his cell to the visitation room. She told me about the horses she owns back home. The deep southern drawl concealed some of her intended meaning but I established that she loves to care for these animals. All of a sudden, I am told that my client is ready, and that I can go through to the room to meet him.

Regardless of how much work you may have done on a client’s case back in the office, nothing can quite prepare you for the first meeting. You see someone, 29 years your senior, having to embarrassingly kneel as his handcuffs and leg-irons are removed through a slot in the door through which he has just come. He doesn’t entirely meet your gaze. He is obviously as nervous as you but, when you smile, he smiles back, and tells you, over the phone, that he thinks you have a spiritual connection. You quickly forget about the glass partition. He begins to warm to you, to tell you of his childhood growing up, and then about the crime of which he is accused.

This particular man has always maintained his innocence. And, what is more, my office believes there is a good chance he may be innocent, too. ‘So why hasn’t he been exonerated yet?’, I ask my colleagues. The reply: ‘It doesn’t work like that here’.

This man, with whom I built up a rapport throughout my time in the States, and with whom I continue to correspond since my return to the UK, has spent some 32 of his 55 years incarcerated. And yet he is of such a positive and hopeful mindset that I cannot help but feel admiration for him. This admiration also extends to those attorneys, investigators and support staff with whom I was working in the capital defence office.

In the face of such adversity – an arguably old-fashioned system, whose processes are often further undermined by the corruption of the very people supposed to uphold the law – they work tirelessly to stop their clients from being executed, with remarkable dedication and passion. It is because of such people that no one has been executed in Louisiana for six and a half years. Long may this break from state killing continue! In fact, the 88 inmates on the state’s death row stand a greater chance of being taken off it than they do of being executed. Surely such a statistic alone bears testament to the crazy arbitrariness of capital punishment.

My final trip to Angola was just before Christmas. Surreally, outside the death row unit had been placed a large, inflatable Father Christmas and Rudolf. The guards this time around weren’t as welcoming as those on my first visit. Apparently, they didn’t usually work at this unit but rather at another camp holding some of the general population, and it was perhaps the discomfort this change in location had caused that was behind the more abrupt treatment I received. But, strangely enough, I felt relaxed as soon as I got into the visitation room to see my client again. He put me completely at ease with his smile and animated conversation. Although you wouldn’t perhaps guess it, he had been experiencing the holiday blues prior to my visit, a sensation he tells me he always gets at Christmas, but was so pleased to have company now. I imagine life by yourself in a cell 23 hours a day must get so lonely, whatever the time of year.

Fortunately, this visit, I even had some good news for him. The Director at my office had given me the honour of telling the man that his representation would be taken over by the legal defence fund at another office, whose team’s success rate is well-known and whose reputation is accordingly much revered. This was big news indeed. And their taking on the man’s case would not only mean it would receive more attention now but also that resources at my own office would be freed up somewhat, so my colleagues could better represent some of the other 88 on death row. When I told my client, he couldn’t contain his joy, and started to cry. ‘You’ve brought tears to my eyes, James. This is the best news I have had since I have been on the row.’

I feel so privileged to have shared such a moment in this man’s life with him and indeed, more generally, to have had the experience of working for a capital defence office in the American deep south. It reiterated to me the sheer breadth of the law and how it may be used as a tool for real change in people’s lives. It also affirmed for me that there is goodness in humanity and that, no matter what troubles the world may face today, there are always going to be people out there fighting for a better tomorrow.