We are sure many of you have felt isolated before.
Maybe you’ve spent too much time in your room, feeling bored, miserable, yet surrounded
by gadgets, food in the fridge, pizza delivery on call and with a wonderful, comfortable
bed to retire to when needed.
So imagine being stuck in a small cell without much else than a hard bed, a desk and perhaps
a few books to read.
Imagine that for a few days, weeks, and then try to get your head around a year, 10 years.
Not surprisingly many human rights advocates call this torture, and there is a lot of evidence
that tells us how such confinement can have very negative effects on a person’s mental
and physical health.
As for 46 years in solitary, let’s see how that went.
If you research most time spent in solitary you get quite a few names popping up.
The Guardian reported in 2016 that a man called Albert Woodfox had been released from a U.S.
prison, writing he spent an incredible 43 years in solitary.
The man who ate a fellow prisoner’s brain with a spoon, Hannibal the Cannibal, aka,
Robert Maudsley, has almost done that much time in a lone cell in the UK.
He even had a special cage made for him given what he did when he last got close to another
prisoner.
Then we’ve got the criminal who is sometimes called America’s most dangerous prisoner,
Thomas Silverstein, who’s been in solitary since 1983.
But today we are going to talk about a man called Hugo Pinell.
While his name doesn’t appear on many of those lists regarding most time spent in solitary
confinement, we can find sources that do indeed say he either spent 45 or 46 years locked
up alone.
What’s perhaps most shocking about this story is what happened to him just a short
time after he got out of solitary, but let’s first tell you a bit about him.
Born in 1945 in Nicaragua Pinell didn’t exactly flourish when he arrived aged 13 in
the United States.
He had fire in his blood that’s for sure, but some sources claim it was his relationship
with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s that might have had something to do with his
rape conviction.
We cannot find much evidence supporting any kind of set up, though.
Pinell was sentenced to life to be served at San Quentin State Prison.
Sources tell us that the 19-year old Pinell had denied any crime, but in the end took
a plea because he was told he’d only get a very short sentence.
Three years later after attacking a prison guard he was moved to Folsom State Prison.
There he carried out another assault on a guard and was moved yet again, and then at
his new place he assaulted another guard.
The year was 1970.
A year later and this troublesome prisoner took his violence one step further.
After managing to get a guard into his cell he committed murder.
That same year and Pinell was moved back to San Quentin, and it is there that he would
become part of what’s known as the San Quentin Six.
Pinell and five others had tried to escape, but during this attempt all hell broke loose
in the prison and there was a massive riot like San Quentin had never seen.
During this riot three corrections officers were killed, as well as three inmates.
One of those inmates was quite well known.
He was George Jackson, one of the leaders of the Black Guerrilla Family.
It was said it was the killing of this man that led to the vengeance taken out on the
guards and the other prisoners.
It’s depends on which source you are reading, but you might hear that Pinell and co were
trying to expose brutality and racism inside prisons and this animus led to a riot, or
that they willingly started a riot and the prison was totally blameless.
This event is still a matter of controversy, and the riot is a story in itself.
To say Pinell was disliked by some opposing gangs and by prison guards and other authorities
might be an understatement, and he was about to be made an example of.
But before that happened he did some other terrible things, and one of those was when
he stabbed his defense attorney, a woman called Lynn Carman.
She actually denied that Pinell had done this, so the story sounds kind of sketchy.
Many people state that there was some prison corruption, but we can’t corroborate that.
Pinell was put on trial anyway, two guards came forward and said Pinell had cut their
throats during that riot.
In 1976 he was convicted of two counts of felony assault and his days of hanging around
with other prisoners were over.
There was no way the system wanted this man in the general population and as you can imagine
the guards weren’t exactly sympathetic about locking him up alone in a cell for a long,
long time.
He moved from prison to prison we are told, but he was always destined for the hole wherever
he went.
Much of his time it’s said was spent at Pelican Bay prison, and his attorney later
said that from his first day in solitary to his rather unfortunate release he had no write-ups
and spent his time mostly writing.
Much of this work was related to activism.
You see, many people believe Pinell was as much an activist as he was a man that cut
the throats of prison guards.
We can find sources as we said that believe he was set up for his first crime because
of his affiliation with the Black Panther Party.
Some of those sources state that Pinell was railing against terrible prison conditions,
and this is what got him into so much trouble.
This is what one website that writes about poor conditions in prisons says about Pinell,
“Pinell was held in solitary confinement for more than 40 years.
But he would not be broken.
Despite being locked in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, Pinell continued to struggle
against the horrors of America’s prisons.”
This is what Pinell wrote himself after many years in solitary, “I came in a juvenile
delinquent, a common criminal.
Thanks to Beautiful People, I awakened, I have grown and transformed into a humble freedom
Servant....
Your care and solidarity has provided me with extra strength and drive to keep on pushing
and evolving and I hope that my company has served you well.”
Unfortunately, we cannot tell you if this man was unfairly treated by the justice system
or if he was a brute more than he was an activist.
What we can tell you is that after those 45 or 46 years in solitary, Pinell got word from
the prison that he was going to be moved to New Folsom but this time he would be entered
into the general population.
According to the website Global research, Pinell, nicknamed “Yogi Bear”, was worried
about this because he believed that many people would be out to get him.
We must remember that his black activism wasn’t exactly popular with some gangs who call themselves
white supremacists.
It also seems he had enemies in black gangs.
He was right to be concerned about his new found freedom.
Again, there are two sides to this story, but the one thing all sources do agree on
is that after spending so many years in solitary confinement this man wasn’t going to get
to enjoy his freedom.
That’s because in 2015 Pinell was murdered.
Those who write that Pinell was an activist that had faced a life of injustice wrote that
this had been a set up by prison authorities, that Pinell was basically assassinated and
the prison just let it happen.
Some mainstream media, however, reported that Pinell was merely a casualty in a riot that
broke out due to gangs not getting along.
We are told that two prisoners who were likely part of a white supremacist gang did the deed,
with one man holding the 71-year old Pinell down while the other stabbed him 19 times
with a prison-manufactured weapon, aka, a shiv.
Pinell’s lawyer said that Pinell was a marked man, telling the LA Times, “The only mystery
is, why after all these attacks and threats against him, they would send him out to be
killed.”
We are told that his freedom lasted two weeks, and that he was attacked on the prison yard.
His lawyer certainly doesn’t think that Pinell was the beast he was made out to be,
and that he was always just on the wrong side of the prison authorities.
“The story that has come out so far is about the monster that was put down," the lawyer
said.
“I have never known him to be that.”
In fact, a federal lawsuit soon accused prison authorities of negligence as it said they
knew exactly what would happen and his death could have been prevented.
The Orange County Register tells us that many people were after Pinell, who had once had
a homemade bomb thrown into his cell and on another occasion had been stabbed in the back
during a rare occurrence when another prisoner could get close to him.
The lawsuit even goes as far to say that prison guards had bets on how long Pinell would last
when he got out of solitary.
Other sources also tell us that guards were overjoyed when he was killed.
It was a matter of payback for them.
It further states that it was well known that the Aryan Brotherhood wanted Pinell’s blood,
and that his two killers both had “an extensive history of racially motivated attacks on other
inmates.”
This report tells us that Pinell wasn’t killed during a riot as had been reported
by some media, but that he was assassinated and it was this hit that caused a riot to
break out.
We actually found a blog with some correspondence posted by an inmate who claimed to be “one
of the last ones to see our beloved Brotha Yogi alive.”
He also wrote, “There is so much that the brothers and sisters don’t know.
However, make no mistake that this was a plot, a setup between the administration and staff,
also the Aryan Brotherhood that carried out this racist assassination on Yogi.”
We also found other blogs with notes from prisoners, and they too believed this was
the assassination of an activist.
We should at least listen to a former prison guard that worked in the same prison as Pinell
back in the day.
He wrote, “Pinell in his prime, when I worked with him, was very muscular and did not come
out of his cell without many chains and a choke chain installed, which is no longer
allowed.
He was a very dangerous person.
He would bust the knuckles of his fists to be better able to use them as weapons.”
So, there you go.
This is a very controversial story.
Pinell might or might not be the prisoner that has spent the most time in solitary,
but he might well be the prisoner to spend the least amount of time in general population
after getting out of solitary.
Do you know anything about this tale?
Do you think he was a monster, or a man just fighting back against brutality, or something
in between?
Tell us in the comments.
Also, be sure to check out our other show Why Do People Go Crazy In Solitary Confinement?.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time.