John T. Floyd Law Firm
Houston Criminal Lawyer
"Serious Criminal Defense Throughout Texas"
Experienced Criminal Defense Lawyer
Trials, Sentencings and Appeals
Federal And State Criminal Defense
Phone # (713) 224-0101
Toll Free 1-866-374-1327
E-mail jfloyd@JohnTFloyd.com
Top Lawyers for the People - 2008 HTexas
BILLY SINCLAIR’S BIO
Billy Sinclair, the author of the John T. Floyd’s “PRISON VOICES” and ‘DEATH PENALTY’ web pages, is a former inmate who served forty years in the Louisiana prison system.
Sinclair became a writer in prison. He was the recipient of a host of prestigious journalism awards, including the George Polk, Sidney Hillman, and Robert F. Kennedy Award for Special Journalism, and the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel awards. He has been published in numerous magazines, newspapers, literary journals, and legal journals. With his wife, Sinclair wrote a prison memoir, “A Life in the Balance: The Billy Wayne Sinclair Story” (Arcade Publishing, New York 2000); and had an essay published in Paul Roget Loeb’s book “The Impossible Will Take a Little While” (Basic Books, New York 2004) (along with Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, and Martin Luther King, Jr.).
Sinclair also became skilled “jailhouse lawyer” while imprisoned. winning the first published prisoners’ rights lawsuit in Louisiana with the assistance of his longtime attorney/friend Richard C. Hand (practicing in New York) and was one of the inmate leaders responsible for integrating the Louisiana State Penitentiary in 1973 (then known as the “bloodiest prison in America”) without a single incident of violence.
Sinclair was arrested for the offense of murder in 1965. He was convicted of capital murder in 1966. His death sentence was vacated and he was resentenced to life imprisonment following the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Furman v. Georgia. His life sentence was commuted to 90 years in 1992. He was paroled in April 2006.
He is affiliated with the John T. Floyd law firm as a paralegal.
E-mail Billy Wayne Sinclair Billy@JohnTFloyd.com
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