After serving nearly 50 years in prison, a political prisoner was granted a ‘compassionate release’ from prison last week.
According to Liberation News, the former Black Panther, Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz, 78, who served 49 years in prison and 22 years in solitary confinement, finally became a free man as he was released from prison on Oct. 26.
Shoatz was granted release due to his declining health. He was permitted a medical transfer to leave prison to go to a hospital in Pennsylvania. The activist was admitted into hospice care and treated for advanced-stage cancer.
Shoatz’ fearless legacy earned him the nickname ‘Maroon’ after he escaped prison twice.
According to Black Wall Street, Shoatz not only was a member of the Black Panther Party, but he was also a member of the Black Liberation Army. In 1970, the 78-year-old was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was convicted after he took part in an attack on a “Philadelphia police station that left one officer dead and one wounded.”
When he landed back in prison after his second escape, Shoatz petitioned lawmakers to repeal life sentences without parole. He also became President of the Pennsylvania Association of Lifers in 1983.
After serving 22 years in solitary confinement, Shoatz was released in 2014 and sued the state’s Department of Correction for “cruel and unusual” punishment. The lawsuit stated that Shoatz experienced cruel treatment, cramped living conditions, and mental health issues while living in solitary confinement.
Shoatz won the lawsuit in 2017 and was awarded a total of $99,000 and a permanent reprieve from solitary confinement. He had legal assistance from his attorneys and representatives from the Abolitionist Law Center.
Democracy Now! reported that Shoatz is currently residing in hospice care where he is “battling stage four colorectal cancer and must receive nutrients through an IV.”
Shoatz’s son, Russell Shoatz III, addressed the media to highlight the prison system’s lack of proper care towards elderly and sickly prisoners.
“What’s in the transcripts are the evidence that the prisons don’t have the capabilities to take care not just of their healthy prisoners, they definitely don’t have the ability to take care of their geriatric prisoners, and that they have effectively killed my father,” Shoatz III recently told media.
