The remaining incarcerated member of a group of Louisiana prisoners known as the Angola 3 was ordered to remain behind bars Friday when a federal appeals court blocked a judge's earlier order that he be released.
Supporters of the inmate, Albert Woodfox, had set up a podium outside a small Louisiana jail, expecting that he would walk out a free man and speak to the world.
"We are so sorry that did not happen today," one of his lawyers, Carine Williams, told reporters gathered outside the gate.
Instead, Woodfox, 68, who has spent more than four decades in solitary confinement for the 1972 killing of Brent Miller, a guard at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, will remain in the jail while his appeals process continues moving through the courts.
This undated photo provided by the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 shows Albert Woodfox. AP
He and two other men, Robert King and Herman Wallace, became known as the Angola 3 for their long stretches in isolation in Angola and other prisons. King was released in 2001 after a court reversed his conviction for the killing of a fellow inmate in 1973. Wallace was released in 2013 when a judge granted him a new trial, then died days later.
Woodfox has been convicted twice of the guard's murder, and each time the verdict has been overturned.
Earlier this week, a U.S. district court judge ordered Woodfox released and said the state cannot try him a third time. Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell appealed that decision. An appeals court temporarily ordered him held, and on Friday a federal circuit court panel sided with the state, blocking Woodfox's release pending his appeal.
That satisfied two Miller family members, who also waited outside the jail for word.
"Thank the good lord," said Wanda Callender, Miller's sister.
Asked their reaction to claims that prejudice had tainted Woodfox's earlier verdicts, Miller's brother, Stan Miller, responded: "To us, he has had a fair trial."
Aaron Sadler, a Caldwell spokesman, released a statement saying the office was "pleased" with the circuit court's decision.
"It has always been the state’s priority to ensure justice for the brutal slaying of Brent Miller and to hold accountable this murderer who has an extensive history of violent crimes," Sadler said.
Mark Potter
Mark Potter is an NBC News correspondent based in Miami where he reports for NBC Nightly News With Lester Holt, TODAY, MSNBC and NBCNews.com. He joined NBC News as a staff correspondent in 2004.
During his more than 40-year journalism career, Potter has reported from all over the United States, South America, Central America and the Caribbean, including Haiti, Cuba and Mexico. He has also worked in NBC's London and Hong Kong Bureaus, and has reported from China, the South Pacific, the Philippines and Israel. Much of his career was spent with investigative units at both the national and regional levels, and he has reported on topics including politics, narcotics, immigrant smuggling, environmental issues, natural disasters, international conflicts and numerous high-profile court cases.
Among the stories he has covered are the Cuban Mariel boatlift, the Grenada invasion, the arrest and trial of Panama's General Manuel Noriega, the Mexican and Colombian drug wars, the Haitian immigration crisis, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the Hezbollah-Israeli war, the 1980's Miami riots and cocaine crisis, the Theodore Bundy murder trial, the Oklahoma City and Atlanta Centennial Park bombing investigations, the regime of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, the Everglades Valujet crash, scores of hurricanes, the Armero volcano disaster in Colombia, the Central American conflicts, the Elian Gonzalez legal battle, several Papal trips, the right-to-die case of Terri Schiavo, the Gianni Versace murder, the U.S. heroin epidemic, the Southwest border-security debate, the U.S.-Cuban political opening and the dramatic prison-tunnel escape of Mexican kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.
For 15 years, prior to working at NBC News, Potter was a correspondent for ABC News, reporting for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline and Good Morning America. He also worked for CNN, where among other duties he served as contributing correspondent for the Emmy-Award winning magazine show, CNN and Time.
Potter is the recipient of the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Award, a Robert F. Kennedy Award, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, National Headliner Awards, the 2011 national Emmy Award for "Mexico: The War Next Door," a 2015 Emmy Award for "Hooked: America's Heroin Epidemic," numerous Emmy nominations, and six regional Emmy Awards. He also received a 2015 National Association of Black Journalists Salute to Excellence Award.
Potter has often appeared as a guest lecturer in journalism classes at the University of Miami, the University of Missouri and the University of Kansas. His work is also featured in "Square Grouper," a 2011 documentary film about South Florida marijuana smugglers, and in “Cocaine Cowboys Reloaded,” a 2014 documentary about drug-related violence in Miami and Colombia.
Potter was graduated from the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism and then worked for three local television stations in Evansville, Ind., and Miami before joining network news in 1983.
