A new project gives a voice to people serving life sentences in Louisiana – and brought together two men whose lives collided in tragedy
curtailing prisoners’ rights to litigate against inhumane conditions, rights that were hard won during the civil rights movement.
With his head held in his hands, he speaks about the violence he experienced during Angola’s notorious years as America’s most brutal prison. He sustained third degree burns across his body during a prison fight when he was set alight using lighter fluid.“I need to be out,” he says, shaking his head seemingly in disbelief. “I could go somewhere and make me a living.”
The project began as an academic collaboration between Kondkar and Duncan, who spent 28 years on a life without parole sentence after being wrongly convicted. He became a “Part of prison means not showing weakness. You go through life like that. You could be in prison for 20 years and nobody would ever see you cry,” said Duncan. “You hold this stuff in all your life because there’s nobody to actually share it with. This was the first opportunity they had to feel comfortable.”Hannibal Stanfield was 19 at the time of his offense in 1988 and had spent 28 years incarcerated at the time of his interview. He remains incarcerated.
“As I started to learn, it became so enjoyable,” he recalled in an interview. “Book after book was intriguing, and I said: ‘I should have been doing this’. I was supposed to be educated. I was supposed to be a thinking man. But I was so traumatized as a youth.” “It brought tears to me, just seeing him,” he said. “I couldn’t focus, it hurt me to see it. The question kept coming back to me: why?”
“I prayed, and said: ‘Lord, I’ve got to get this hatred off my heart. It’s a miserable feeling. You can’t function right. So I forgave.”
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