Digging Deeper Alternative Journalism Fall 2020: Looking Into the Life of Gregory Bright

Gregory Bright was born in New Orleans and only made it until he was 20 years old before he spent the next 27 years, 7 months, and 10 days of his life in jail for a crime he did not commit. Mr. Bright was arrested in 1975 for the murder of Eliot Porter and was sentenced to life without parole along with Earl Truvia, someone who he hardly knew. Although the jury was not aware of this information, the coroner placed the time of death much later than the eyewitness said that she saw Gregory and Earl. Even worse than this, the jury was also unaware of the fact that the eyewitness was a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered from auditory and visual hallucinations and taking heroin. And as if that wasn’t enough, the jury was not even informed that there was no line of sight from the witnesses’ window to the place she said she saw the two men. While the jury and the court slowly began to uncover this new evidence that cleared Mr. Bright, he remained in jail.

Not only was Gregory wrongfully convicted of a crime he did not commit and spent the rest of his life in jail, but he was forced to do hard labor for free at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The Louisiana State Penitentiary is a maximum security prison farm and has been nicknamed ‘Alcatraz of the South’ and the ‘Angola Plantation’. Angola plantation sits on the same plot of land where a former plantation named Angola used to sit, named after the African country where many of the Louisiana slaves came from. The penitentiary has the largest number of prisoners on life sentences in the United States. Even worse, this prison is known for its brutal conditions where there are well over 900 to 1,000 assaults inside the prison each year, many involving guards assaulting prisoners. Angola is also known for its lack of healthcare, and when a prisoner gets sick there, they will most likely die. To avoid paying high wages for licensed doctors, Angola found doctors whose licenses were suspended. At one point, of the 14 doctors working at Angola, 12 received disciplinary sanctions for misconduct, including sexual assault of patients.   

But despite these horrible conditions, Gregory used his time in prison to learn how to read and write. He also taught himself the law which he used to challenge his convictions in the courts. Luckily for Gregory, the Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) stepped in to finally prove his innocence and have him and Earl released from jail.  

What is most unbelievable about the Penitentiary and Gregory’s time there is the fact that it is a working farm, almost exactly like the plantation that stood there previously. Gregory, a Black man, was forced against his will to do hard labor on a farm without pay, farming everything from cabbage and corn to cotton and wheat. The previous sentence can only be defined as one thing, slavery. And Gregory is just one of many African Americans who faces the same situation. There are more than 40 prison farms in the United States, many of which hold thousands of individuals. Since 1980, the majority of prisons have been built in rural America to allow for prison labor. And between 1990 and 1999, 245 prisons were built in rural areas, showing the rapid growth of prison farms in our country. But if slavery was supposedly ended many years ago, how can this type of prison still exist? The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution perpetuated the concept of penal servitude, free labor as a punishment for a crime, which allows, by law, prisons like the Louisiana State Penitentiary to exist. 

If we look at mass incarceration statistics in the United States, the legal system in America perpetuates slavery. Men like Gregory, because of the color of their skin, fill prisons in our country, many of which force inmates to perform manual labor for free. The allowance of these facilities will never cease to exist since they have become a large part of the economy. Statistics show that over 4,000 companies profit from mass incarceration in our country. Some of these companies include McDonalds, Walmart, Starbucks, and American Airlines. The Federal Prison Industries Program (UNICOR) makes nearly half a billion dollars each year from prison labor, while prisoners are paid between 23 cents and $1.15 per hour. Not only are Black men and women jailed at more than triple the rate of white men and women, but also nearly half of all people serving life sentences are Black. This fact alone is unbelievable and is direct proof of racial injustice in our country.

Those being released from prison don’t know exactly what they’re walking into. (Photo: Getty)

If we take a look at the lives of people like Gregory who have suffered from the racial injustice of the criminal justice system in our country, we can start to see a pattern and endless cycle that occurs. When Black individuals like Gregory are incarcerated they and their families end up struggling financially. People like Gregory lose an average of 500,000 dollars in earnings over their lifetime as a result of incarceration.  Even if they are released, they have an extremely difficult time getting jobs with a criminal record, and even if they do find a job, it is low-level at best. 27% of individuals who were formerly incarcerated are unemployed. This economic struggle forces them into lower-income neighborhoods which exposes them to a host of hardships and makes it virtually impossible for them to recover. 

After Gregory Bright was finally released from jail, he could only get hired for small jobs in areas like roofing and floor buffing. He is just one of many people of color in our country that is handicapped by his criminal record. He might finally be free from prison, but is he really a free man if he is shackled by his economic struggles and disadvantaged position in society?