HOUSTON-On Sunday, January 21, 2018, I was informed by Maia Lake that her father, Richard Mafundi Lake had passed away that morning.
The guards had found him unresponsive in his Alabama prison cell of 31 years.
As of this writing, an “official” cause of death had not been determined, but the Mafundi Lake Support Committee in Birmingham, Alabama have been fighting the prison system for years, demanding adequate medical treatment for Mafundi and other inmates in Alabama.
Carolyn Weyni Njeri Lake, Mafundi’s wife and chair of the committee, wrote in one complaint published by the Support Committee in response to a third stroke Mafundi had suffered. She stated:
“My Husband, Richard Mafundi Lake was admitted to the infirmary at Donaldson Correction Facility where he is a prisoner. Unfortunately, there is no doctor at this facility on weekends (as a matter of fact, two prisoners recently died at Donaldson during a weekend where no doctor was present).
“Not only that, Mafundi had been without his regular medication for four weeks prior to this incident.”
So despite what an “official” determination might say, the fact is that Mafundi’s death is squarely on the state of Alabama and the entire colonial U.S. State that framed and put him there in the first place.
At the time of Mafundi’s death, he was serving a life sentence under the “three strikes, you’re out” law.
Mafundi was arrested on a trumped-up rape charge eight days following a successful, National African Liberation Day march, rally and conference in May of 1983 in Birmingham in which Mafundi was the primary organizer.
