A federal appeals court ruled on Monday that Louisiana may retry Albert Woodfox, the last member of the “Angola 3” still incarcerated, who a lower court ordered freed in June, The Advocate reports. Woodfox has been in solitary confinement for nearly all of the past 43 years.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit overturned U.S. Middle District Court Judge James J. Brady’s decision not only to release Woodfox but to prohibit him from being retried. “The district court abused its discretion,” Judge Carolyn King wrote in the 2-1 decision, joined by Judge Priscilla Owen.

“If ever a case justifiably could be considered to present ‘exceptional circumstances’ barring reprosecution, this is that case,” Judge James L. Dennis wrote in his dissent, citing Woodfox’s failing health and imprisonment in solitary confinement on two unconstitutional convictions, according to The Advocate.

In 1972, Woodfox was serving time for armed robbery in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola, when a prison guard was fatally stabbed. Despite the lack of any substantial evidence connecting them to the crime, Woodfox and another prisoner, Herman Wallace, were accused of the murder—retribution, they claimed, from prison authorities for their membership in the Black Panther Party and criticism of prison conditions.

Woodfox was first convicted of the murder in 1973. On appeal, the conviction was thrown out on the grounds that Woodfox had ineffective counsel. He was retried and found guilty again, in 1998. The conviction was thrown out again, this time because of racial discrimination in grand-jury selection.

He remained in solitary confinement nearly the entire time, as did Wallace, whose conviction was overturned on grand-jury-discrimination grounds a few days before his death in 2013. The third member of the Angola 3, Robert Hillary King, who was incarcerated in a separate crime, was released in 2001 after serving 29 years in his six-by-nine cell.

State prosecutors reindicted Woodfox in February, after his 1999 conviction was overturned last November, the New York Times reports. Judge Brady ordered Woodfox’s release in June. Prosecutors won an emergency motion to keep Woodfox in jail while they pursued an appeal, which the higher court has now granted.

At this point it’s not clear how the state proposes to offer Woodfox a fair trial, given that all the prosecution’s key witnesses are now dead. According to The New Yorker, prosecutors proposed to circumvent this problem by having stand-ins read the deceased witnesses’ prior testimony from transcripts.

Image via AP. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.