The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday in favor of Attorney General Buddy Caldwell that Albert Woodfox received a fair trial for the murder of a young Angola prison guard almost thirty-five years earlier. Caldwell had appealed Federal District Judge James J. Brady’s 2008 ruling granting Woodfox a new trial on the ground that his trial attorneys had been ineffective. The federal appellate court agreed with Caldwell and vacated the lower court’s ruling in a sixty-three page opinion by Judge Carolyn Dineen King that accepted every one of the Attorney General’s arguments.   

Woodfox was originally convicted in 1973 for the brutal stabbing murder of Angola prison guard Brent Miller. Woodfox’s 1973 conviction was overturned on grand jury issues, he was re-indicted, re-tried, and unanimously convicted again in 1998. Co-defendants Herman Wallace and Chester Jackson were also convicted in 1974.

Yesterday’s decision upholds the 1998 Woodfox conviction as correct, and sends the case back to federal district court to rule on a final grand jury issue which was not before the federal appeals court.

A copy of the court opinion can be found under the more resources.

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