Interview with Billy & Jodie Sinclair – 2

Billy Wayne Sinclair, author of "Love Behind Bars – The True Story of an American Prisoner’s Wife"

One of America’s most famous prisoners, Billy Wayne Sinclair, a man known to many as a latter-day Robin Hood, tells an amazing story of Crime, Courage & Redemption.

Sentenced to death in 1965 at age twenty for an unpremeditated murder during the bungled holdup of a convenience store, Billy Wayne spent his first 7 prison years on death row. When the death penalty was abolished, his sentence was commuted. Serving a total of 40 years in the Louisiana prison system—20 years at the nation’s worst prison, Angola, Billy became a well educated advocate of prison reform.

• Largely responsible for integrating the once fiercely segregated Angola State Penitentiary
• Respected, self-trained jailhouse lawyer who has helped hundreds of fellow inmates get a fairer deal
• Award-winning journalist, editor of the highly respected prison journal The Angolite Whistle-blower extraordinaire, the man who blew wide open the pardons-for-sale scandal that rocked the Louisiana government and helped send key officials, such as former Governor Edwin Edwards to jail
• Married by proxy, behind the backs of prison officials, to a pretty, feisty television anchorwoman, Jodie Sinclair, who has been his staunch supporter and helpmate for thirty years and is now his coauthor for both these amazing books.

During nine-year tenure with prison publication, the Angolite, the magazine was a finalist in the 1978 National Magazine Awards competition; a recipient of the 1979 Robert F. Kennedy Special Journalism Award; a recipient of the 1981 Sidney Hillman Award; and recipient of the 1981 and 1982 American Bar Association’s Certificate of Merit. Was an individual recipient of the 1980 George Polk Award and the 1980 American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award.

Listen to his unvarnished story taking you behind the metal doors of the Angola State Penitentiary–and other Louisiana prisons–to reveal the brutal truth of life inside.

The Powerful, Poignant Story of Love, Courage, and Redemption from Death Row, Where an Indomitable Woman Challenged Corruption in Order to Free her Husband
 
When TV reporter Jodie Sinclair went to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as the Death House at Angola, in 1981, she expected to report about the death penalty and leave. She never expected to fall in love. Billy Sinclair was an inmate at Angola, sent there for an accidental murder during a robbery gone wrong. After facing a trial which was skewed against him and being sentenced to death, he saw first-hand the corruption and abuse rife in the criminal justice system, and he began an unrelenting crusade for reform. When the pair married by proxy a year after meeting, Jodie took up Billy’s fight.
 
From then on, she lived with one foot in the outside world and one in the complex and dehumanizing bureaucracy of the prison world. This incredible memoir tracks her heroic twenty-five-year fight to save her husband from dying in prison, the professional setbacks she suffered for marrying a prisoner, and a pardons scandal in which she wore a wire for the FBI to help her husband expose corruption in the criminal justice system leading all the way to the governor’s office, which put a target on Billy’s back. It is the uplifting true story of a woman who stood by her man, and in doing so, exposed the horrors of our criminal justice system and became a voice for all those who have loved ones behind bars.

Jodie Sinclair, author of "Love Behind Bars – The True Story of an American Prisoner’s Wife"

Jodie, an award winning Television Anchorwoman A Life in the Balance will leave you shaken and upset. And as Assistant Sheriff of the city and county of San Francisco, Michael Marcum, noted after reading the manuscript, it will doubtless also leave you “outraged . . . and ashamed of the criminal justice system.”

Jodie has used these ideals to assault a corrupt prison system, to champion social reform, and to preserve hope through her committed yet turbulent marriage to convicted murderer Billy Wayne Sinclair. Louisiana’s corrupt prison system, sex, violence, bribery, injustice, and a mismatched love story unfold in the nonstop, gut-wrenching pages of A Life in the Balance.

The Powerful, Poignant Story of Love, Courage, and Redemption from Death Row, Where an Indomitable Woman Challenged Corruption in Order to Free her Husband
 
When TV reporter Jodie Sinclair went to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, also known as the Death House at Angola, in 1981, she expected to report about the death penalty and leave. She never expected to fall in love. Billy Sinclair was an inmate at Angola, sent there for an accidental murder during a robbery gone wrong. After facing a trial which was skewed against him and being sentenced to death, he saw first-hand the corruption and abuse rife in the criminal justice system, and he began an unrelenting crusade for reform. When the pair married by proxy a year after meeting, Jodie took up Billy’s fight.
 
From then on, she lived with one foot in the outside world and one in the complex and dehumanizing bureaucracy of the prison world. This incredible memoir tracks her heroic twenty-five-year fight to save her husband from dying in prison, the professional setbacks she suffered for marrying a prisoner, and a pardons scandal in which she wore a wire for the FBI to help her husband expose corruption in the criminal justice system leading all the way to the governor’s office, which put a target on Billy’s back. It is the uplifting true story of a woman who stood by her man, and in doing so, exposed the horrors of our criminal justice system and became a voice for all those who have loved ones behind bars.

Michael Carter, Co-Host

Michael Carter's Website