NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A 71-year-old man who spent more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana has died, less than a week after a judge freed him and granted him a new trial.
Herman Wallace's attorneys said he died Friday at a supporter’s home in New Orleans. Wallace had been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and stopped receiving treatment.
U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson had ordered Wallace released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on Tuesday after granting him a new trial. Jackson ruled women were unconstitutionally excluded from the grand jury that indicted Wallace in the stabbing death of a 23-year-old prison guard, Brent Miller.
Wallace and another inmate convicted in the guard’s death were part of a group that came to be known as the “Angola 3.”