A Louisiana man who has served 47 years in prison remains incarcerated nearly nine months after his parole date and following two court decisions ordering his release.
The Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole voted unanimously on March 18 to release Bobby Sneed from Angola prison.
Sneed collapsed on March 25, four days before his scheduled release, and tested positive for amphetamine and methamphetamine, prison authorities claimed. He was held past his release date for a disciplinary hearing, but the disciplinary committee dropped the drug use allegations because it could not confirm that the urine sample used to accuse the 75-year-old was his.
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By Nov. 9 authorities at the Louisiana State Prison in Angola, Louisiana, had accused Sneed of a fresh drug charge, saying the prisoner had been found unresponsive with “one eyedropper containing unknown liquid substance inside the bottle,” a liquid they later said was PCP.
Following this, he was found guilty at a disciplinary hearing of possession of a controlled substance and sentenced to one day in solitary confinement.
Both the charges from March and the November charge have been dropped by the prison disciplinary board, and by Dec. 9 a district judge issued his second ruling ordering Sneed’s release.
While waiting by the gate to be picked up on Dec. 10, Sneed was rearrested and sent to a nearby jail.
Although the judge had ordered his release the day before, which followed another on Nov. 18, the parole board engineered a way to keep Sneed incarcerated despite the rulings in his favor, including its own vote.
During his brief release, the board issued an arrest warrant for parole violation, arguing that the two drug accusations against Sneed this year violated his parole — even though he was still incarcerated and not actually paroled.
“This latest illegal and retaliatory move by the Board of Parole—yet another foul blow in their Javert-like pursuit of Mr. Sneed—is an effort to prolong Mr. Sneed’s unconstitutional detention,” Sneed’s lawyer, Thomas Frampton, wrote in a federal court filing in response to his rearrest.
