Billy Sinclair

Billy Wayne Sinclair (born 1945) is a former prisoner at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola), convicted of first-degree murder and originally sentenced to death.

He became a notable journalist, known from 1978 for co-editing The Angolite with Wilbert Rideau; together they won some national journalism awards at the magazine, and were nominated for others.

In 1987 Sinclair cooperated in a federal investigation at the prison of pardons-for-sale during the administration of Governor Edwin Edwards.

[1] Sinclair was moved to isolation in other secure prison quarters because his cooperation put him at risk from other inmates.

In 1965 Sinclair at the age of 20 was convicted of killing James C. Bodden during a robbery attempt in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; he was sentenced to death in 1966.

"[4] Neither Rideau nor Sinclair had gone beyond the ninth grade in their formal educations before their arrests and incarcerations as young men; they had become self-taught in the prison, especially through reading widely.

[8] On March 17, 1981, Jodie Bell, a television reporter for WAFB-TV of Baton Rouge, interviewed Sinclair.

Ray Lamonica, a federal attorney, said that of the two dozen prisoners involved in the investigation, Sinclair was the only one to voluntarily cooperate.

But a parallel state investigation resulted in bribery charges against Howard Marcellus, who was the head of the pardon board under the Edwards administration.

[11] By 1989,[12] Sinclair filed a $100,000 ($245798.66 in today's money) federal lawsuit against Rideau, concerning the textbook The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana, a University of Southwestern Louisiana compilation of magazine and newspaper articles and papers from the Center for Criminal Justice Research of the university.

[13] Sinclair said that C. Paul Phelps, then the director of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections, and Wilbert Rideau were the most vocal of a group of journalists and officials who had opposed his release.

[14] Sinclair was moved to the Louisiana State Police Barracks,[15] and later, to the N-5 Special Management Unit cell block in the David Wade Correctional Center because of the stigma against "snitches" in prison.