In The Land Of The Free

This documentary, both rousing and dispiriting, narrated by Samuel L Jackson and produced by The Roddick Foundation, shines a spotlight on the case of two prisoners in Louisiana’s notorious ‘Angola’ prison (population: 5,000) who have been lingering in solitary for 37 years for a crime many people believe they never committed. Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox were minor criminals and members of the Black Panther Party when in 1972 they were accused of murdering a prison guard – a crime of which even the guard’s wife believes they were innocent, not least because the witnesses were so unreliable (one was blind; another was promised freedom).

Another man, Robert King, was later hauled into jail from the outside for ‘investigation’ and accused of murdering an inmate; together they became known as the Angola Three, although King was finally released in 2001. Interviews with King, Wallace and Woodfox, with lawyers and politicians and even with the guard’s wife, make this a rounded study and as much a portrait of what it’s like to spend four decades locked up as a rallying cry for the freedom of innocent men.