ST. FRANCISVILLE, La. (AP) — A federal appeals court extended an order Friday blocking the release of Albert Woodfox, the last incarcerated member of a group of Louisiana prisoners known as the Angola Three.

A federal judge this week ordered Woodfox’s release and barred the state from trying him a third time in the 1972 death of a prison guard.

The state appealed, and a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked his release. That panel extended the order Friday until the state’s appeal plays out.

Woodfox and two other prisoners became known as the Angola Three because of their long stretches in isolation at the penitentiary in Angola and other facilities.

Woodfox was first placed in solitary confinement in 1972 after being charged in the death of a Louisiana State Penitentiary guard. The prison farm is more commonly known as the Angola prison, and it is Louisiana’s only maximum-security prison.

The other members of the Angola Three were Robert King and Herman Wallace, but Woodfox is the last behind bars. Wallace was released in October 2013 when a judge granted him a new trial. He died days later.

King was released in 2001 after a court reversed his conviction in the death of a fellow inmate in 1973.

The case of the Angola Three has drawn international attention from human rights groups and the United Nations, who’ve condemned the state’s decision to hold them in isolation for decades.

State officials have said repeatedly that evidence shows Woodfox is a killer and have objected to the term “solitary confinement.” They say Woodfox is allowed to watch television through the bars of his cell, talk to other inmates in his tier, read books, talk to visiting chaplains and leave his cell every day for an hour.