Billy Wayne Sinclair

Billy Wayne Sinclair is a former prisoner at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (also known as Angola), convicted of first-degree murder and originally sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life in 1972. 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. It published articles written by inmates at the prison.

The Angolite, a prisoner-edited and published newsmagazine. Sinclair became famous for his work and won numerous awards for reporting. The Columbia Journalism Review once referred to Rideau and Sinclair as “the Woodward and Bernstein of prison journalism.” 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.

In 1979, Rideau and Sinclair won the George Polk Award. The Polk Award was made for the articles “The Other Side of Murder” and “Prison: a Sexual Jungle.” In addition, the magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award.

In 1987 Sinclair cooperated in a federal investigation at the prison of pardons-for-sale during the administration of Governor Edwin Edwards. No charges were made against Edwards but Howard Marcellus, head of the pardon board under the Edwards administration, was convicted of bribery following a state investigation. Sinclair was moved to isolation in other secure prison quarters because his cooperation put him at risk from other inmates. With support from some law enforcement organizations, he was paroled in 2006 to the state of Texas.