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.
