Speaker 1: I walk straight line, shackle change, Oh someome gird.
Speaker 2: It's calling by the name. There is no Mercy and.
Speaker 1: It's been a tentery juice as the huge stream game
Rango the three, I'm.
Speaker 3: Here be.
Speaker 2: By Meda dies inside these walls, inside the Wild and
went the girl as I'm.
Speaker 3: Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola, a podcast
one d and forty two years in the making, the
complete story of America's bloodiest prison. Jim Chapman and if
you listen to Real Life, Real Crime Daily this week,
I'm recording this on a Monday and what are you
Everton unfortunately could not be with us today. He had
some sort of family issue he had to deal with.
So we're gonna move right on and look with this
episode of Bloody and Goalie, y'all, I have a backstory
on this I want to tell you, and it brings
me all the way back to one of our first
few seasons of Bloody and Golin.
Speaker 4: We had a guest on.
Speaker 3: A couple of episodes on those early releases and his
name was Andrew Hundley and he was actually the first
juvenile lifer released when Louisiana changed the law regarding inmates
who were sentenced as juveniles to life in prison, and
it offered them the opportunity to at least have a
shot at parole. You weren't guaranteed to get your life
sentence committed, but you had a shot at it. Before that,
you had no parole opportunity, even as a juvenile. So
he came on the show, and as he was leaving,
we were discussing just ideas for future episodes. Obviously, with
him being in Louisiana State Penitentiary, he had a lot
of contacts and people that we may or may not
want to talk to, and we were just discussing those
ideas and he mentioned we ought to do one on
the Ten six Lifers. And I looked at him with
a really confused look, and I said, I've never heard
of him. And y'all, I am a research freak. Y'all
know that it's what I love to do. And I
thought I knew everything there was to know about Louisiana
State Penitentiary and in Gola, but I didn't know this story.
I didn't know anything about.
Speaker 4: The Ten six Lifers. So what did I do? Well?
Speaker 3: I start digging, of course, and to my surprise, there
was not much online regarding the Ten six Lifers and
it kind of went in my back pocket, and as
I was researching another episode, I came across what I
think is probably one of the best article I've ever
come across on any subject as it relates to prison.
And surprisingly enough, it is on the Ten six Lifers.
So I'm going to tell you all about them today.
And what I'm gonna do is I'm going to reference
that article. And it was put out by Jessica Sholberg
of The Huffington Post on December thirtieth of twenty twenty one,
and I promise you, when I'm done with this story,
it is going to blow your mind. So here's how
it reads. Lee Ry Grippin thought he was going to
prison for ten years and six months. That's what his
lawyer told him. And that's how it went. When you
were sentenced to life in Louisiana, it didn't really mean
life in prison with good behavior. Life sentences were almost
always commuted after ten years in six months. Besides, it's
not as if Griffin had much of a choice. It
was nineteen seventy and as a young man facing charges
of arm robbery and aggravated rape. In the South, he
would almost certainly deal with a jury.
Speaker 4: That could convict him and sentence him to.
Speaker 3: Death by electrocution. So Grippin, who had just turned twenty three,
did what his lawyer told him to do. He took
a plea deal, and he went to Louisiana State Penitentiary,
better known as Angola. There he started counting down the
days until he expected to walk free sometime in the
summer of nineteen eighty one. That day didn't come until
October fifth of twenty twenty one. By then, he was
seventy three and spent nearly seventy percent of his life
in prison. By the time the summer of nineteen eighty
one rolled around, Louisiana had changed the rules. The understanding
that people wouldn't really spend their life in prison, which
was common in many states at that time, had been
supplanted by new tough on crime laws. Grippin was abandoned
in prison, forgotten, along with the rest of the so
called Ten six lifers. There's no record of how many
Ten six lifers died in prison. Now, after spending decades
longer in prison than they were told to do, some
of them are finally getting out. Coming home from prison
is supposed to be a joyous celebration. What's your first
meal going to be?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: People ask what are you most excited for? Wasn't it
nice to sleep in a bed in your own room?
Grippin was happy to be out of prison, and he
was grateful to the people that made it happen. He
had started to give up hope of ever leaving in.
Goal In even contemplated suicide, but he didn't exactly feel
free either. The family members he was close to before
he got locked up are now dead. He has no
friends except for those he made in prison, and after
getting out, Grippin was supprise to learn that he was
required to register as a sex offender. Louisiana's sex offender
registry didn't exist when he was arrested. This was yet
another punishment tacked onto his sentence years later. I still
feel like they.
Speaker 4: Got me locked down.
Speaker 3: Grippin, one of the six ten six lifers I met
with in Louisiana this fall. I ain't no I was
gonna feel this way, but I do. I feel sometimes
like I'm in a world all by myself. I don't
know nobody, I don't know where to go. The practice
of releasing people with life sentences after ten years was
implemented informally by him Refuquaw and Golah's warden from nineteen
sixteen to nineteen twenty four, who went on to become
the state's governor. It was a way to save money,
but his idea was that this kind of a contract,
that good behavior and following what's expected of you should
result in release. A historian Raik o' hillier, who was
writing a book about the prison system has become more
harsh over time. Louisiana's ten and a half year minimum
for life sentences, which was enshrined into law in nineteen
twenty six, wasn't uniquely lenient. It was common in every state,
including the federal system, that people who were sentenced to
life wouldn't serve more than fifteen years. According to a historian,
everyone was aware of it. It was routine, said Hilton Butler,
an associate warden. He told the prison newspaper The Ngolite
in nineteen eighty if a lifer kept his nose clean,
he got out of prison after ten and a half years.
I'd say, amos, ninety nine percent of all the lifers
got out but in nineteen seventy two, the US Supreme
Court temporarily halted the death penalty. No longer able to
sendence people to death, Louisiana decided life sentences need to
be more punitive. In nineteen seventy three, the state legislature
required life sentences for murder to carry a twenty year
minimum before parole eligibility. In nineteen seventy six, a legislature
amended the minimum to forty years, and in nineteen seventy nine,
lawmakers abolish parole eligibility for anyone with a life sentence,
with the minimum sentences for life terms being lengthened and
then eliminated. The culture became more punitive, and commissions for
the Ten six lifers abruptly vanished. Some were even asked
to hand over their old rap sheets, which noted the
exact date at which they would have completed ten years
in six months becoming eligible for release, in exchange for
a modified sheet. As release dates for the Ten six
Lifers faded away, most of these individuals were forgotten by
an outside world until a recent push to free them.
Many of Louisiana's judges, lawyers, and criminal justice reform advocates
were not aware of the state's broken promise to those
that were sentenced to life before nineteen seventy three. By
the time Gripping got to Angola, observers were describing condition
that shocked the conscious of any right thinking person and
flagrantly violate basic constitutional requirements. As one district judge wrote
in nineteen seventy five, it was a dangerous place to
be incarcerated. In the early nineteen seventies, a ten to
six lifer named James Preston was sent to work in
the fields with his co defendant Larry. Shortly after they arrived,
Larry was run over by a tractor and killed. Preston
told his lawyer years later, because so many courts were
destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. Preston told his lawyer this years later,
and y'all, they don't have Larry's last name because court
records were destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, and Preston's lawyers were
unable to confirm Larry's last name. One of the many
men president in Gola during this time was Lewis Mitchell.
In the summer of nineteen sixty six, police stopped the
nineteen year old black man on his way home in
New Orleans. They claim there have been a burglary nearby
and that he looked familiar. They took him to the
fifth Precinct and asked if he knew a woman named Cynthia. Yeah,
that's the girl I go with. He said, we don't
allow and they used the N word to go to
know white girl in Louisiana, Mitchell recalls him telling him.
Mitchell was beaten, arrested, and accused of raping Cynthia. He
was also charged with raping Linda, a sixty six year
old white female. Mitchell said he didn't know from Adam
and Eve. The evidence against Mitchell was weak. A medical
examination of Cynthia on the day the police said she
was raped did not reveal any evidence of recent trauma.
The second women did not identify Mitchell as her assailant
in a lineup, even when the police specifically asked her
if he was the perpetrator. Mitchell didn't know any of
that at the time. What he eventually learned, he said,
was that Cynthia's mother disapproved of her daughter dating a
black man, and that she had connections in the police department.
Mitchell wanted to fight the charges but quickly realized doing
so could cost him his life. Prosecutors told his lawyers
that the best option year client has is to enter
a guilty police because if he fights, he's gonna get
the death penalty. Mitchell's ten to sixth release date was
August seventeenth of nineteen seventy seven, and he still has
a copy of his rap sheet to prove it. As
the prospect of life outside Angola faded, Mitchell channeled his
frustration into physical activity. He boxed some of the best
fighters in the prison. He lifted weights, and he was
crowned Mister Angola. He won fifty dollars competing in the
Angola Radio, an activity that cost him one of his teeth.
It didn't bother him, he said he was numb to pain.
Gripping got to Angola shortly after Mitchell, but he mostly
kept to himself. Tall and gaunt, Gripping spoke in a soft,
deep voice. He described even his most horrific experiences in
an even steady tone. I was scared when I first
got there, Gripping said, I seen a lot of people
get killed. One time, Grippin said he had to jump
in the toilet to avoid being burned when someone started
a fire in his cell. When Grippin was a kid,
the woman who raised him sat down and told him
she wasn't his biological mother. She took him in, she said,
because his biological mother didn't want him. They were real,
real poor, and sometimes he stole food so they had
something to eat. He struggled in school and was in
and out of juvenile detention. Grippin's only sister was killed
by an abusive boyfriend, he said, and before she died,
she encouraged him to get to New Orleans because she
knew he liked jazz. He followed her guidance, but he
was arrested shortly after he got there. He claimed he
never raped anyone, but that he pleaded guilty to avoid execution.
After twenty years, Grippin was convinced he'd never get out
of prison. He resolved to get in shape and try
to escape eight their fences in Gola, but the real
barriers of the lakes and the dense trees that surround
the prison. Grippin wanted to make an attempt anyway, What
did he have to lose. If they catch me and
kill me, they just kill me. If they don't kill me,
I get away. I might get away, Am I not?
Speaker 4: He thought?
Speaker 3: A friend eventually talked him out of it, urging him
instead to seek release through the courts, and Grippin agreed
to try the path out of prison for gripping in
some of the other Ten six Lifers began in a
surprising place inside in Gola itself in nineteen ninety nine,
Andrew Hundley and that's the guy we had on letting
in Gola that I was referencing at the beginning of
this episode. Andrew Hunley was sentenced to life in prison
for a homicide he committed when he was fifteen. Faced
with the prospect of spending the rest of his natural
life behind bars at such a young age, Hunley began
studying the history of life sentences. Learning about the Ten
six Lifers was a devastating revelationation if even those who
weren't supposed to spend their lives in prison had wound
up doing so, he was certain he would never go home.
Hunley was transferred to a goal in twenty fourteen and
assigned to Camp F, the same dorm as Mitchell. Hunley
slept in the bunk bed above another Ten six lifer
named Lester Pearson, who had got to prison in nineteen
sixty five, more than sixteen years before Hunley was born.
Hunley grew particularly friendly with a lifer by the name
of Kenneth Womack. Hunley played basketball, and he was often
the only white guy on the court. Womack, who was
also white, liked watching him play, cheering Larry Bird whenever
Hunley would score. The court system proved useless for most
ten six lifers. Few lawyers knew they existed, so they
were left to file litigation on their own, and even
when ten six lifers got their cases in front of
sympathetic judges, there was not an obvious legal fix. They
were never guaranteed release after ten years and six months,
so it wasn't explicitly illegal to stop granting it. When
Judge Nandy Campbell of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court
took office in January of twenty twenty one, she used
the pandemic related pause in jury trials to catch up
on post conviction applications. Grippin's application, which he filed without
the help of a lawyer, was one of the first
she read. He asked the judge to withdraw his guilty plea,
arguing the state had not held up its end of
the deal. Campbell was stunned by the order. Grippin described
during all her years as a practicing defense lawyer, she
had never heard of this kind of situation.
Speaker 4: The nation these.
Speaker 3: Men were forgotten is really real, Campbell said in an interview.
She denied the request, believing she didn't have the authority
to change his sentence, but she held on to his
application because there was something about it that was haunting me, said.
There was a small subset of ten six lifers for
whom the court offered a glimmer of hope. In twenty twelve,
the U. S. Supreme Court prohibited mandatory life without parole
for people who had committed the crime before they were eighteen.
The court cited research showing how parts of the brain
responsible for impulse control and risk avoidance are not yet
fully developed in adolescents, making them less deserving of the
most extreme punishments. Weeks later, a ten six lifer named
Henry Montgomery filed a motion to correct his sentence, which
he argued was illegal in light of the Supreme Court's
decision in nineteen sixty three, when Montgomery was seventeen, he
was arrested for killing Charles Hurt, a white plain Closed
sheriff's deputy in East Baton Rouge. News coverage at the
time described Montgomery as a Negro student known as the Wolfman.
Montgomery was convicted and sentenced to death. The Louisiana Supreme
Court later overturned the conviction, citing racial prejudice. The trial
had started on the newly created Charles Hurt Day, and
there had been KKK activity ahead of the court proceedings.
The Louisiana Supreme Court noted in its decision Montgomery was
retried and sentenced to life. If life sentence is commuted
by the governor to ten years and six months, subjects
discharged date will be nine nineteen seventy nine. An old
copy of Montgomery's rap sheet read. But by nineteen seventy
nine the ten six law was gone and Montgomery was
facing the rest of his life behind bars. Even without
a pathway to freedom, Montgomery tried to make the most
of his time at Angola. He wrote letters for men
who were illiterate, and he helped start an education program
for those with less than an eighth grade education. He
created the Angola Amateur Boxing Association, judging matches and training
others to box. He went to church and worked for
years in the prison's silkscreas shop. Both the District Court
and the Louisiana Supreme Court denied Montgomery's request to correct
his sentence, claiming that the US Supreme Court's prohibition on
mandatory life without parole for juveniles did not apply retroactively.
Henry was kind of heartbroken when he first got denied,
said Preston, the ten six lifer whose codefendant was killed
shortly after he got to Angola. Remember he got ran
over by the tractor. Preston, who was arrested at sixteen,
went on to work at the prison's law library and
followed Montgomery's case closely. Henry, this is not the end,
Preston told Montgomery at the time. You got a chance.
All you got to do is just hang in there.
Montgomery challenged his sentence all the way up to the
US Supreme Court, and in twenty sixteen he won. The
court ruled that its prior ban on mandatory life without
parole for juveniles applied retroactively. I can't even explain to
you how happy a lot lot of cats was when
they found out this case was retroactive, said Preston, I
must jumped through the ceiling. Montgomery Supreme Court victory didn't
guarantee his release, but it did mean that he, in
thousands of others who had expected to die in prison,
would get the chance to go before the parole board.
In June of twenty sixteen, Hunley became the first juvenile
lifer in Louisiana to be released as a result of
the Montgomery decision. I got a break for a lack
of a better term, he said. He applied for parole
with the help of a skilled parole lawyer, almost immediately
after the Supreme Court news. The Parole board unanimously voted
to release him, and he walked out of Angola after
nineteen years in prison. The following year, the state passed
a law creating a twenty five year minimum before any
juvenile lifer could go before the parole board. Once released,
Hunley was free to leave Angola behind and never return,
but he thought of Pierson, his former bunkman. Certainly he
watched me go home and had to wonder to himself,
how is this guy going home and I'm still here.
So he made it his job to go back for
those he left behind. Hunley is the first to point
out the unfairness of him getting out before others who
have been locked up for much longer, and I concur
with that. He said that on our show he has
a very guilty conscious about He just can't make sense
of the fact that he was the first one to
get out of there Moss. After his release, he helped
start the Louisiana Parole Project, a nonprofit that works to
free people who have been incarcerated for twenty plus years
and have demonstrated their rehabilitation. In the past five years,
the nonprofit has helped get more than two hundred and
thirty people out of prison in parole hearings. Hunley commits
to providing long term support to anyone granted release by
the Parole Board. Hunley's post prison life makes this case
for second chances. Since his release, he earned his bachelor's
degree and master's degree, helped start a nonprofit, got married,
and bought a house. He and his wife have two
pugs and are expecting their first child. He speaks fast
and works long hours as if making up for lost time.
And y'all, that's a total fact that guy has sat
across from me where I'm recording right now, and I
will tell you, you would never know that guy spent
twenty years in prison, one of the sharpest individuals I've
probably ever met, and looks like a bank executive. You
would never know. The Parole Board is mostly staffed by
people who have been incarcerated. Several of them are the
group's of former clients. Then in firsthand the unexpected challenges
of re entering society after a long stint in prison,
and they applied those lessons to their work. One of
the first things the Parole Project staffers do after picking
someone up from Angola is take them shopping for clothing groceries.
The idea is to make sure they have the basic necessities,
but also to help them get comfortable with being around others,
choosing between infinite brands of toothpaste, and navigating the checkout process.
The Parole Project owns eight properties that can provide free
transitional housing to twenty seven people. It also has nine
one bedroom condos that it rents to people who can
afford housing but struggle to find a landlord who will
rent to someone with felony convictions. The group offers classes
on life skills their clients may have missed by spending
so long in prisent financial literacy, social norms, how to
get a job, how to use the cell phone, and
how to avoid online scams. There's also a class on
how to interact with the police. For many formerly incarceorted people,
their last experience with the police wasn't that good. And
let me say this, y'all, a very important program. Look,
these people, you know, people get out of prison. The
recidivism rate is much lower when they know how to
deal with life on the outside. And that is what
the Louisiana Parole Project figured out. And they're just they're
just basically teaching them how to acclimate back into society.
And let me tell you, the recidivism rate for someone
that goes through the Parole Project is like two percent.
It's extremely low. And there's a reason for that. It's
because these people help them assimilate back into society. But
even as the Parole Project has helped hundreds of people
get out of prison, most of the ten six lifers
remain out of reach. The only ones eligible for parole
were a handful who were younger than eighteen at the
time of the offense. Even Montgomery, whose landmark Supreme Court
case provided second chances to so many others, was repeatedly
denied parole. But in December of twenty twenty, Jason Williams
won the Orleans Parish District Attorney race with a decisive
fifteen percentage point lead. Williams, a former criminal defense lawyer
and city councilman, ran as a progressive prosecutor and promised
to create civil rights divisions to review old cases involving
misconduct over harsh sentences. He recruited his longtime friend Emily
mal from the Innocence Project in New Orleans to head
that division. Maul agreed to it on the condition that
she would have the resources and encouragement to look in
every vestige of the astrocities and harms that were caused
by the DA's office to the people of the city.
Williams said in an interview, it wouldn't be enough to
promise to do better going forward. They needed to be
thorough reckoning with the sins of the past. Williams wasn't
familiar with the ten six Lifers when he was first elected,
but Mall was. Back in two thousand and six, Innocence
Project New Orleans helped to exonerate a black ten six
lifer who was wrongfully convicted of raping a white teenager
when he was also a teen It's the kind of
thing that when you learn about it in the context
of somebody telling you I was promised this thing and
then they changed it, it forever affected me, Maul said
in an interview. Hunley was selected to be part of
a transition Team working group for the incoming DA. We
can't have a conversation in Louisiana about mass incarceration without
talking about the ten six lifers, he said. During the
first meeting, everyone said, what's a ten six lifer? Hunley
later recalled, y'all I was one of those people, right.
Hunley explained the history and talked about the ten six lifers.
He knew Williams had jurisdiction over only about eighteen of
those who had been sentenced in that system in New Orleans,
but by early twenty twenty one, his office has committed
to taking a look at each of those cases. Grippin
didn't know about the new DA's plans, and he was
losing hope. He prayed every night and sometimes during the
day too, for a way out of Angola. The things
I've seen over the years, it spooped me, he said.
I had nightmares about it, hollering in my sleep, waking
people up in the dorms, but they understood why. Last spring,
a staffer at the prison told him to go to
the office because he had a phone call. Griffin was
taken Aback. I got a phone call. I ain't know
I was that popular, he said, wondering who could possibly
be trying to reach him. When he picked up the phone,
Hunley was waiting on the other end of the line. Leroy,
I know you don't know me, Hunley said, but I
want to help you. Soon after that call, Hunley and
several of his colleagues went to Angola to meet with
about a dozen of the ten six lifers who were
convicted in Orleans Parish and were under Williams's jurisdiction. They
met at the prison chapel, where the ten six lifers
filled the pees and Hunley stood at the pulpit. There
was a new district attorney, Hunley explained, and he was
interested in reviewing their sentences. Hunley spoke deliberately, being careful
not to overpromise. Nothing was guaranteed. He said, there would
be victim outreach and a judge would have to sign
off on any resentencing agreements. But for the first time
in decades, there was cause for hope to gripping. This
news was nothing short of divine intervention. Out of all
the people in the prison, they found his name and
chose to help. God went to them to come to me,
he said. I appreciate it from my heart, he told
the staff at the Parole Project, because if it wasn't
for y'all, if I didn't run away from here, I
would have committed suicide. I would have hung myself. The
process for freeing ten six lifers was straightforward. Their lawyer
at the Parole Project and the DA's office would sign
on to a joint post conviction plea agreement asking you
judge to vacate the existing life's sentence and replace it
with the Senate shorter than the amount of time already served.
Grippin will be the first test case of this process,
along with Mitchell, who was still hanging on to his
old rap sheet with that original promise from the state
for an orderly release. Days before the hearing, Hunley ran
into an unexpected hurdle. Staff and in Gola couldn't find
a birth certificate for Leroy Griffin or any indication that
he existed before he was arrested. When Hunley called to
talk about it, Griffin offered a matter of fact explanation, Oh, well,
my name is not Leroy Grippin. My name is Willie Ingram.
As it turned out, when he was arrested in nineteen seventy,
he gave the cops a fake name, Leroy Griffin, hoping
they wouldn't find his record of stealing in Florida, where
he grew up.
Speaker 2: Poor.
Speaker 3: The cops mishurt him and wrote Leroy Griffin that name
following him through the courts and into Angola.
Speaker 4: That is absolutely crazy, y'all.
Speaker 3: On a Tuesday morning in early October, about a dozen
of Mitchell's family members filed into the New Orleans courtroom.
Because of COVID nineteen restrictions, Mitchell would participate by a
video conference, but his family still wanted to come to
court as a show of support. One of the relatives
in the courtroom was Mitchell's niece, Lucille Johnson, who was
a toddler when he was arrested. She had no memories
of her uncle outside of prison, but she doesn't remember
the day of his arrest, specifically how hard it was
to see her mother in so much pain. Growing up.
Johnson's mom and grandmother held a community supper fundraiser to
hire a lawyer, but nothing in the lawyers did work.
In a joint plea agreement, Mitchell's lawyer, Jane Hogan and
assistant da Buildish Sarma, asked Campbell to resent it to
him to forty years. It was less time than he
had already served, so he would be able to get
out immediately, but under the condemnt that he forfeited his
right to seek additional relief In court, they cited the
state's betrayal of the ten six promise and Mitchell's good
conduct while incarcerated, his comprehensive reentry plan. Studies showed that
people typically age out of crime, and the cost of
imprisoning someone his age more than seventy seven thousand.
Speaker 4: Dollars a year.
Speaker 3: It had taken Mitchell decades just to get someone in
a position of power to recognize his existence. Now Here,
in court, a prosecutor was arguing for his freedom and
a judge was tearing up listening to what he had
been through. Then the judge ruled Campbell agreed to the
plea agreement, and he was free. The hearing was mostly procedural,
and the whole event took about a half an hour,
but for Mitchell, the experience was profound. It seemed to
me like she seen my innocence. Mitchell said, I feel
like she knew it was Joyfully said, I never thought
nobody gonna see my innocence. Ingram, whose resentencing paperwork still
named him as Leroy Grippin, went next. The courtroom emptied
out except for the Parole Project's staff. It went from
a celebration to this more I don't want to say somber,
but it was sort of matter of fact, and then
it was over. Hunley said. Ingram was free too. Hunley
in the Parole Project Deputy director Carrie Myers picked Mitchell
and Ingram up that afternoon took them to Baton Ridge,
where they would live in one of the Parole Project's townhomes.
This is just something you can't describe in words. Words
can't fit it, Mitchell said during a fun interview in
the car that day. You look back at so many
that deserve an opportunity like this and can't get it,
so you got bittersweet and happiness all together. So you're
only sitting in a conglomeration of feelings. They've done a
wonderful job getting me out of Angola. I'm not going
to mess up their reputation through stupidity. If anything, I'm
going to help their cause. Even after watching Mitchell and
Ingram leave Angola, Lester Pearson didn't think his day would
ever come. He knew better than to get his hopes up.
Spending that many years in prison had taught him the
precariousness of things that were supposed to be near certain.
His life had been dictated by the whims and inclinations
of people more powerful than him, who were motivated by
factors outside of his control. On Tuesday, October nineteenth, that
person was Robin Pittman, the Orleans Parish Criminal District judge
presiding over his resentencing hearing. Pearson, who was eighty four,
participated in the hearing through a video conference from Angola.
He had been in prison for nearly fifty seven years. Hogan,
the Parole Project lawyer, had briefed him on the joint
Plea agreement, so he knew what to expect, but he
couldn't make out every word. In the hearing, Pittman announced
her decision to vacate Pearson's life sentence and then resentenced
him to fifty five years, which was two years fewer
than he had already completed. She wished him good luck
and encouraged him to make use of what he learned
during his time in prison. Yes, ma'am, Pearson responded, thank you, ma'am.
As a formality, she asked Pierson to raise his right
hand and confirm he understood the terms of the agreement.
At one point, Pearson said he wasn't following, so Pittman
repeated the terms of the agreement. The judge asked him
if he understood, Yes, ma'am. He said, I understood some
of it. Hogan interjected, explaining to him that he had
to agree he wouldn't file anything in court. No, Pearson exclaimed,
I understand. How many years did I give you? Pittman asked,
I believe you said forty, Pierson said, citing the number
Hogan and Sarma had proposed in the joint plea agreement
he had reviewed a the hearing. He wasn't positive what
number the judge landed on. He just knew it was
less than the time he had already done. Pittman told
him she didn't say anything close to forty and then
she didn't like to repeat herself. I'm getting frustrated, she said,
and suggested they push the hearing to the next day.
Hugan told the judge she believed her client understood the
terms of the deal. He was just having a hard
time hearing. But Pittman wasn't obligated to ensure that Pearson
was aware of what he was green to, and she
was losing patience At that moment. It seemed to Pearson,
who had refused to get his hopes up, he would
not be leaving Angola that day after all. Hugan requested
a moment for a private call with Pearson. When they returned,
Pierson carefully recited the terms of the plea deal. Well,
Pittman said, I guess that's it. Peerson would walk free
later that day. The week before Thanksgiving, the five ten
six lifers who had got out of prison agreed to
meet with me. They were staying in Baton Rouge and
y'all way. When I say me, I mean the person
that wrote this article that I referenced at the beginning,
they were staying in Baton Roudge in two townhomes owned
by the Parole Project about a half mile from each other.
There are weekly house meetings where they were debriefed by
adjusting to their new situation. They were welcome to stay
in the townhomes for as long as they wanted, Hunley
told them, but some were eager to move on and
settled down closer to their families. The ease of their
transitions varied depending on their ties to the outside world.
Womac was already part of a tight knit church community,
and during his first several weeks in freedom, members of
the church took him fishing into shop for a suit
and dress clothes. They offered to host him for Thanksgiving dinner.
He was looking forward to moving into the spare room
in his brother's house in Tennessee. The speed of modern
vehicles scared Womack, though, and he was still figuring out
how to use a smartphone, but overall things were good.
It's sensational, Womack set of being out of prison. Every day,
I'm overjoyed and really taking it in and enjoying it.
For Mitchell, every weekend was a family rein after everything
he still smiled easily and was quick to crack a joke.
In November, his family rented a banquet halt and threw
a surprise birthday party. For his seventy fifth birthday, they
pinned cash through the lapel of his suit jacket, a
New Orleans tradition, and surprised him with a car. My family,
I didn't know they had so much love for me,
Mitchell said. It's like the time they wanted to see me,
they couldn't see me, and they see me now they're
pouring it all on me. They're throwing me all the
love they had pin up on me. Things were harder
for Ingram. When he walked out of Ingola, he had
no offense record of existence. It had been more than
a month since his release, and the Parole Project staffer
still hadn't been able to track down any identifying documentation.
They had applied for birth certificate records in Louisiana and
Florida under different variations of the name Willie Ingram, but
hadn't been able to get a response. It's like screaming
into outer space, Hundley said. It seemed possible that after
experiencing so much trauma in living under a false name
for so long in his life, Ingram might not actually
know his birth name. Without a birth certificate, Ingram couldn't
get an ID card a security number, which meant he
couldn't apply for food stamps or housing assistance. He even
risk being turned away at a pharmacy if he went
to pick up medication. He tried to stay busy to
keep his mind from wandering, but he felt limited in
what he could do. He wanted to go see a movie.
He wanted to go to a restaurant, but he didn't
have any money. He got lost trying to go for
a run, and he didn't know how to use it
navigation app on his phone. He ended up walking into
a restaurant, explaining that he just got out of prison
and needed to find.
Speaker 4: His way home. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: He wanted a friend, someone he didn't know from prison,
but he doesn't know how to meet one. He wants
to get his high school diploma and maybe even go
to college, but he doesn't know where to start as
a registered sex offender. He's worried he might get in
trouble if he goes to the library.
Speaker 4: What can I do?
Speaker 3: What do they want from me? Mitchell also had to
register as a sex offender, a painful reminder that although
he was no longer in prison, he was not officially vindicated.
The only way for him to attain formal recognition of
his innocence would be through an executive pardon. It's like
kidnapping me, Mitchell said of the registry. I'm free one way,
but I'm not really free. Hunley usually commutes between the
Parole Project office in Baton Rege and his home in
New Orleans, but on November sixteenth, he spent the night
in a vacant room in one of the Parole Projects
trans positional houses in Baton Ridge. The next day was
an important one and he couldn't rest a traffic jam
making him late. By then, he had helped get five
ten six lifers out of prison and had assurances that
more were on the way home. But Montgomery, the man
who made huntleyes for it impossible, was still at Angola.
Because he was convicted in East Batonrige Parish, Williams couldn't
touch his case since his Supreme Court victory. Montgomery had
gone before the three member Parole Board twice to request
a second chance, but failed to get the required unanimous
vote both times. The first time in twenty eighteen, one
board member voted in his favor, but two others claimed
he hadn't taken enough classes to deserve release. This was
a nonsensical rationale. Montgomery had completed the requisite one hundred
hours of programming, even though Angola didn't offer classes for
the first thirty years of imprisonment. Still, Montgomery looked for
more classes to take and stay out of trouble. But
in twenty nineteen, the Parole Board denied him a second time,
this time with only one descenting vote. He still hadn't
taken enough classes, claimed Brennan Kelsey, the lone no vote.
I think that's a lack of maturity, Kelsey told Montgomery,
who was then seventy two. Montgomery's third parole Board hearing
was on November seventeenth, and this time Hunley had a
good feeling about it. Montgomery had completed more classes and
the optics of continuing to imprison this aging man were
becoming increasingly untenable. By then, roughly eight hundred juvenile lifers
had been released from prison as the result of the
Montgomery decision. Hunley had spoken at hundreds of parole hearings,
but still he stayed up until two am preparing for Montgomery's.
Just before nine am, Hunley sat down in front of
his laptop at a granite table in the Parole Project
conference room, wearing a gray suit and a purple tie.
The walls are decked created with portraits of formerly incarcerated
Parole Project clients and a hand painted sign by the
New Orleans Artists that said believe in Second Chances. Behind
Hunley sat several former juvenile lifers who were also free
by Montgomery's case. This was so deeply personal for all
of them. Hunley joined the video call for the hearing,
and the room fell silent, with all eyes locked on
the laptop screen. Montgomery, who participated from Angola, is hard
of hearing, and at times he appeared to struggle to
follow the discussion that would determine his freedom. Asked if
he had changed in the year since his crime, Montgomery
said he had learned about helping others in the importance
of thinking ahead. He apologized to the Hurts he had
destroyed their family. He said, something he would carry with
him for the rest of his life. When it was
Hunley's turn to speak, he began by acknowledging the depth
of the loss experienced by the Hurt family. We are
not here to defend Henry's actions from fifty seven years ago. Rather,
we're here to speak about who Henry is today, Huntley started.
The day I was born, Henry had already been in
prison eighteen years. I came home from Angola five and
a half years ago, and Henry is still there, Hunley said.
Speaker 4: Today.
Speaker 3: There are about twelve of us in this very room
who benefited from a court ruling that bears Henry's name,
and we submit to you that Henry is no less
worthy of this opportunity than any of us who came
home before him. The family of Charles Hurt appeared at
each of Montgomery's parole hearings to oppose his release. At
this third meeting, Linda hurt Wood, the daughter of Charles Hurt,
suggested that Montgomery was feinning his self problems releasing him,
which showed great disrespect to law enforcement.
Speaker 4: She said.
Speaker 3: One by one, each of the three Parole Board panel
members voted to grant Montgomery's release. The crowd and the
Parole Project office burst into applause, jumping out of their
seats for a group embrace. They continued celebrating in another room,
but Hunley stayed behind. He still had two more juvenile
life or parole hearings to speak at. One was granted,
the other denied. Around eleven am, Hunley got a call
from Angola. Montgomery was ready to be picked up. As
he made the familiar drive to prison, he filled it
the near constant calls and texts from other clients. If
juggling the bureaucratic and logistical challenge of multiple cases that
once frazled him, it didn't show. Everyone has their talents
and Hunley, he told me, is that he knows how
to get things done. Louisiana's Highway sixty six, the road
that takes you the last twenty miles to Angola, is scenic,
lined with lush, green trees, but to anyone who's spent
time in Angola, the trees are part of the prison,
a key part of the barrier that separates the incarcerated
from the rest of society. Just before twelve thirty pm,
Montgomery walks through the gates at Ngola, carrying a small
sack with a few belongings. He and Hunley hugged off
to the side before facing the reporters and camera crews
that had come to document the high profile release. Seeing
Montgomery in person, it was clear that he had a
hard time following the parole hearing. His hearing aids consisted
of over the year headphones that wrapped around the back
of his head and hooked up to a small box
with a microphone that dangled around his neck from a lanyard.
We're gonna get you better, ones, Hunley promised. After answering
a few questions from reporters, Montgomery climbed into the front
seat of Hunley's suv and headed home to Batonury, a
city he hadn't seen in nearly sixty years. Here, let
me do something, Henry Hunley said, leaning over to buckle
montgomery seat belt, a practice that wasn't yet mandatory the
last time Montgomery was a free man. Seven of the
ten six lifers have now been freed from ingald Well.
What Williams has committed to try to bring home the
remaining twelve who were convicted in Orleans Parish. That leaves
dozens of others. Mitchell is friends with one of them,
and he's hanging on to his old friend's rap sheet.
It shows that he was supposed to be eligible for
release in nineteen eighty three. Wo Mac didn't end up
moving in with his brother in Tennessee. After a brief visit,
his brother's wife told him she didn't want him to
live with them. After all. It wasn't personal, she said,
she just wasn't used to living with other people. What
Mac understood. But he's still trying to figure out what's next.
The guys who knew Ingram and Angola still call him Grippin,
but he's getting closer to having proof of his real identity.
After he got out of Angola, the Parole Project asked
the al Chehua County Public Schools to search for Ingram's record.
There are port cards they found for William Willie Ingram
shows a boy who struggled in school and who teachers
judged him harshly. He has made very little progress, several
teachers wrote in the comments. But there it was, finally
on paper, Willie Ingram is a real person. Shortly after
Hunley updated me about the progress on Ingram's case, he
mentioned there had been a similar issue with another client.
The record's staff and Angola had been unable to find
a birth certificate for Henry Montgomery, a name that has
been synonymous with juvenile justice reform in the United States.
Using Montgomery's mother's name, record staffers eventually were able to
locate his birth certificate, and it revealed that his first
name is not Henry and his last name is not Montgomery.
Hunley asked that Montgomery's legal name be kept private to
afford him some level of animinity, but best guest at
the reason for his name discrepancy is that Montgomery assumed
his last name of his grandparents when he moved in
with them as a boy. The first and middle names
of his birth certificate could appear with an unusual spelling,
suggesting that his mother may have been illiterate or was
misunderstood by the person who wrote down the name. Either way,
the man whose name bears a landmark Supreme Court case
plans to keep going by Henry Montgomery, even.
Speaker 4: If his ID card says otherwise.
Speaker 3: In mid December, he got a call from a New
Orleans number he didn't recognize. You know who this is,
A familiar voice, asked his grant apparent, even through the phone.
Is this Lewis? I asked, Yes, it is, he said,
with a laugh. In the weeks since I had visited,
Mitchell had moved out of his transitional housing in Baton
Ridge and into his niece's home in a town outside
New Orleans. They were still having family reunions each weekend,
he said, and he was invited to multiple Christmas parties.
He was still in touch with his roommates from Baton
Ridge and planned to visit them soon. Campbell, the judge
from his resentencing hearing, teaches criminal law seminars at Loyola
University School of Law, and she invited Mitchell and Ingram
to speak at her students end of semester dinner. It
was the most emotional, powerful evening that I've ever had
since I started practicing law, Campbell said. There wasn't a
dry eye in the house. One person at the dinner
asked Mitchell if he was mad about what he had
been through. No, he said, I felt that Once upon
a time I used to lay in bed and cry.
Why am I here? I've been hurt too long to cry.
The pain got me numb, he said. When I talk
about it, you will cry, but I won't feel a
thing because I'm numb from crying. I'm numb from hurting
and y'all. That is the story of the ten six
Lifers of Angola.
Speaker 4: Crazy stuff.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what hard to research, but what a
well written article. And I want to credit her again,
Jessica Scholberg of the Huffington Post for that. And I
hope you enjoyed that, a little bit of history into
the ten six Lifers. And until next time, I'm Jim
Chapman for what do you Everton, We are your host
of Bloody Angola, a podcast one hundred and forty two
years in the making, the complete story of America's bloodies.
Present peace, a.
Speaker 1: Wall Street line, shackle.
Speaker 2: Chains, it's calling my name, there is no mercy and
this being a tentery juice as the huge stream game
Rango three, I'm here by me to die inside these walls,
inside the wild and when mores I know it's a
bloody anglebody angle.
Speaker 1: A p.
Speaker 4: Don B.