Robert Hillary King spent 29 years in solitary confinement, despite a compelling lack of evidence of his guilt of the crime for which he was convicted. He spoke to The Courier during a visit to the UK.
Robert Hillary King is one third of the Angola Three a trio of prisoners who dispute their convictions but between them have spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement in a notorious American prison.
His two friends, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, remain in prison to this day and recently entered their 39th year of solitary confinement the longest period served by any prisoners in American history.
Their story is told in a feature-length documentary narrated by Pulp Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson. In The Land Of The Free is released on DVD on Monday.
Since he was released 10 years ago, King has campaigned for the release of Woodfox and Wallace.
“I did 31 years in prison and 29 of those were in CCR,” he says. CCR stands for Closed Cell Restricted block solitary confinement, to you and me.
“So after nine years I finally saw daylight. But from May 1972 to some time around 1980, I didn’t see the yard at all.”
King (68) was born into deep poverty in Louisiana in 1942 and grew up, like many impoverished black youths of his era, with a deep-rooted fear and distrust of the police. By the age of 15 he was a hobo, and he journeyed to Chicago where he married and had a child. He became a semi-pro boxer, fighting to earn a living for his family.
He was still a teenager when he entered the penal system for the first time, sent to jail at the age of 18 for robbery. He was released on bail in 1965, but in 1970 was sentenced to 35 years in prison for armed robbery.
Although he admits to carrying out several unarmed robberies in his youth, King denies committing the crime he was convicted for. While in prison, he became a member of the militant Black Panthers and campaigned for prisoner rights and an end to prisoner brutality.
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In 1972 he was sent to the Angola Prison in Louisiana. A few weeks before King’s arrival a 23-year-old prison guard called Brent Miller was brutally killed, stabbed 32 times.
Woodfox and Wallace, fellow Black Panthers, were convicted of the murder by an all-white jury, despite a lack of evidence and a bloody fingerprint that did not belong to either of the accused, or the victim. Spoken to for The Land Of The Free, Miller’s widow says she does not believe the two men were responsible for her husband’s death.
Despite King having been 150 miles away when the murder took place, he was identified as a co-conspirator in the killing and put in solitary confinement in the same block as Woodfox and Wallace. The following year King was charged with the murder of a fellow prisoner. Despite another convict on the wing, Grady Brewer, admitting sole responsibility, King was convicted of the killing.
With the exception of a few hours in the prison’s yard, he spent the next 29 years alone in a tiny cell. While he doesn’t make light of this time two years longer than Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for he doesn’t complain and recounts his daily life in a calm, matter-of-fact tone.
“I love to think which is just as well because I had a lot of time to do it. And usually we had books. Sometimes we had more books than at other times, but over the years I did a lot of reading.
“I was in jail before they started restricting books as much as they do now. These days you wouldn’t be allowed to read the books we were. I read Harlem Renaissance stuff by writers like Frederick Douglass and W. E. B. Du Bois.
“And we did exercises. We would plan a routine of exercises and all get up at 4.30 and do them. You could pass a message from one cell to the other with what we were going to do, then we’d all do them together.
“I just used to exercise, and read, and think. I guess I educated myself to some degree.”
King was released on February 8, 2001, and last month marked 10 years of freedom.
“I pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and they let me go,” he explains. “I was upset not to be exonerated but I wanted to be free.”
Over the last 10 years King has continued to campaign for the release of his friends. He wrote an autobiography, From The Bottom Of The Heap, features in The Land Of The Free, and lectures widely.
The cause of the Angola Three has been highlighted by Samuel L. Jackson, Bodyshop founder Anita Roddick, actor Colin Firth and Mick Jagger’s former wife Bianca Jagger. Despite the attention, Woodfox, now 65, and Wallace, 68, remain in solitary confinement.
“I just want to see Herman and Albert released,” King continues. “That’s what I’ve been focusing on since they let me out.”
Whether or not King was, as he insists, innocent of the crime for which he spent so long in jail, few will argue that the manner of his incarceration was anything but inhumane.
“I think we have to revisit the concept of prison,” he says. “It’s a form of modern-day slavery. There are people in prison who are actually innocent of the crimes they’ve been convicted of.”
When he’s not campaigning, King lives a quiet life in Austin, Texas.
“I like to travel and I’m on the road most of the time. I have a dog and he keeps me company each day. When I’m home I’ve got a few friends who’ll come and visit. But mostly it’s just me and the dog.”In The Land Of The Free is released on DVD on Monday, March 28.