Wilbert Rideau

Childhood and youth

Wilbert Rideau was born in Louisiana in 1942. When he was six, his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana (a city in the west of the state, located on Interstate 10 about 30 miles from the Texas border). He attended the segregated public schools: Second Ward Elementary School, moving to W.O. Boston Colored High School when he was in eighth grade. He soon started skipping classes. At 13, Rideau got a job at a grocery store and stopped going to school before finishing ninth grade.

He had just turned 19 when he committed a bank robbery in Lake Charles in 1961, during which he took three white workers as hostages. In the course of their trying to escape, he fatally shot and stabbed bank teller Julia Ferguson.

Trials and imprisonment

Before Rideau was arraigned, a local television news station, KPLC-TV, filmed an interview of him with the sheriff at the jail, in which he responded to leading questions and admitted to the killing of Julia Ferguson in the course of a robbery. It does not appear he knew of the filming and he was without counsel. This material was broadcast three times in Calcasieu Parish, exposing a large part of the population to the interview before the arraignment or trial.

The defense requested a change of venue, which the court denied. Rideau was tried before an all-male, all-white jury and convicted in less than an hour of first-degree murder in the death of teller Julia Ferguson. The jury included "two deputy sheriffs, a cousin of the dead victim and a bank vice president who knew the wounded manager". The killing took place in the aftermath of a botched bank robbery in 1961. Rideau was sentenced to death, which is the punishment for first-degree murder.

His conviction was appealed to the US Supreme Court. It held that the adverse pre-trial publicity and failure to grant a change of venue had compromised his due process. The majority decision said, "Yet in this case the people of Calcasieu Parish saw and heard, not once but three times, a "trial" of Rideau in a jail, presided over by a sheriff, where there was no lawyer to advise Rideau of his right to stand mute." The court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial.

Rideau was quickly convicted again of first-degree murder in 1964 by an all-male, all-white jury and, after another appeal, convicted again of murder in a third trial in 1970, also by an all-white jury. He was held on Death Row pending his execution. During this time, he was held in isolation and became determined to become educated. He started reading widely, and credits books with helping him survive and become a better person.

In 1972, following the US Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, finding the current state laws unconstitutional in how they applied the death penalty, the court ordered states to void the death sentences of persons on death row. They ordered their sentences to be amended to the next most severe level, generally life imprisonment. Some 587 men and 26 women were moved off death rows across the country. Rideau's sentence was amended by Louisiana to life in prison.

He was moved from death row in Louisiana State Penitentiary to the general prison population. After another appeal, based on the exclusion of blacks from the grand jury that had indicted him in 1970, Rideau was tried a fourth time in 2005. The jury was made up of ten women and two men, seven whites and five blacks. They "deliberated for nearly six hours before reaching an unanimous decision", convicting him of manslaughter, for which the judge sentenced him to the maximum of 21 years. Since Rideau had already served more than twice that time, nearly 44 years, he was freed immediately.

Legal history of the case

Rideau’s criminal case reached the United States Supreme Court on appeal. In Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723 (1963), the court made a landmark ruling related to the effects of adverse pre-trial publicity, which it concluded harmed due process in the case. The Court overturned Rideau’s 1961 conviction because the local television station, together with local law enforcement officials, filmed an “interview” with Rideau in jail with the sheriff and no counsel. The Court said this resulted in “Kangaroo Court proceedings” and a kind of public trial in the media before his case ever reached court. The local court had refused the defense attorney's request for a change of venue. The US Supreme Court ordered a new trial.

Rideau was retried in 1964. After another appeal because of errors, he was retried in 1970; each of those convictions for first-degree murder were also by all-male, all-white juries. In 1972 the US Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that state laws for the death penalty were unconstitutional as currently written. States were ordered to judicially amend death sentences to the next level of severity, generally life imprisonment. Rideau and hundreds of others on death row across the country had their death sentences changed to life imprisonment.

In his last appeal, Rideau won a new trial because blacks had been excluded from the 1970 grand jury that had indicted him on first-degree murder charges prior to his third trial.

Rideau’s trials and convictions split the Lake Charles, Louisiana, community along racial lines for four decades. In the fourth and final trial in 2005, most white spectators sat behind the prosecutor’s table and most blacks sat behind the defense.

Rideau had always admitted robbing the bank, fleeing with hostage employees, and killing one of them. The final trial pitted the prosecution’s 40-year-old version of events, which held that Rideau used premeditation to line up his victims before shooting them, during which Ferguson begged for her life. The defense said that Rideau had panicked and reacted impulsively - first, when a phone call interrupted the robbery, and then when hostage Dora McCain jumped from the get-away car and ran, followed by the other two employees. He said that the killing was done in panic rather than by premeditation. The jury unanimously convicted Rideau of manslaughter and the judge sentenced him to the maximum of 21 years. As Rideau had already served more than twice that long, he was released from prison.

Prison journalism

In the early 1970s, Rideau wrote a column, "The Jungle", for a chain of black weeklies in Louisiana. He freelanced articles to mainstream media, including the Shreveport Journal and Penthouse. A headline referred to him as the "The Wordman of Angola", saying "Rideau is Angola Penitentiary's Birdman of Alcatraz. He is a prisoner who has transformed the dark, drab, terror-filled life of prison into a greenhouse for the flowering of his talent."

Rideau had not gone beyond the ninth grade in his formal education before his arrest and incarceration, but was self taught in prison.

In 1975, a federal court ordered the Angola prison to be reformed, the result of a civil suit by the ACLU because of the high level of violence and abuse of prisoner rights. The consent decree required the prison to institute desegregation of programs and work assignments. The outgoing warden appointed Rideau as editor of The Angolite; he was the first African-American editor of any prison journal in the United States. The incoming warden ratified the choice and, with a handshake, gave Rideau freedom from censorship. His progressive administration supported the nation’s only uncensored prison publication. During his 25 years as editor, Rideau became well-known nationally, gaining a reputation beyond the prison. He was the first African-American prison newspaper editor in the United States.

In 1979, Rideau and co-editor Billy Sinclair won the George Polk Award for the articles "The Other Side of Murder" and "Prison: The Sexual Jungle". In addition, the magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, and a 1981 Sidney Hillman Award. The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, and it was nominated seven times.

Rideau was permitted to travel the state accompanied only by an unarmed guard to lecture about the prison newspaper. He was permitted to fly to Washington, D.C. twice to address the nation's newspaper editors on the subject of prison journalism.

Rideau and co-editor Wikberg were named “Person of the Week” for their journalism on Peter Jennings's World News Tonight in August 1992.

Books and compilations

After being released, Rideau wrote In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (2010), recalling his experiences in Angola. It won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was shortlisted for the British CWA Gold Dagger prize for non-fiction.

With Ron Wikberg, associate editor, Rideau edited The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana (1991), used as a textbook. Wikberg was Angolite associate editor from 1988 to 1992 (he was paroled that year.) This textbook was a compilation of magazine and newspaper articles, and papers from the Center for Criminal Justice Research of University of Southwestern Louisiana. About half of the book's articles were first published in The Angolite. Rideau and Wikberg collaborated on the book with Professor Burk Foster of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

Rideau and Wikberg also collaborated on Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars, a 1992 anthology of articles from The Angolite. It was published in 1992 by Times Books, a subsidiary of Random House, but is now out of print. This book came to the attention of Elizabeth Garbus and Jonathan Stack, a pair of New York documentary filmmakers. They drew from it for their film The Farm: Angola, USA (1998). Rideau was credited for his work with them on the film; he was also among the six men featured in the documentary, which has won numerous awards.

Other media

In the 1990s, Rideau branched out into radio, television, and documentary film making. He became a correspondent for National Public Radio, produced a segment for ABC-TV’s newsmagazine Day One; and paired with radio documentarian Dave Isay for a piece entitled “Tossing Away the Keys.”

He collaborated on creating and producing two documentary films, Final Judgment: The Execution of Antonio James (1996), directed and produced by filmmakers Jonathan Stack and Elizabeth Garbus, and The Farm: Angola, USA (1998), directed by the same pair, with credit also to Rideau. The Farm won an Emmy Award and several others, as well as being as nominated for an Academy Award. James Minton, “Two Angola inmates win top TV award,” Baton Rouge Advocate, July 1, 1995; James Minton, Baton Rouge Advocate, August 10, 1996.</ref>

Clemency efforts

Mother Jones said that "a mix of racial politics and tough-on-crime posturing blocked [Rideau's] release for more than three decades", even though several LSP wardens said that Rideau was completely rehabilitated. Rideau remained incarcerated through the mid-1990s, while other inmates with similar sentences had been paroled.

An investigation by 20/20 revealed statements by Governor of Louisiana Edwin Edwards, who said that he believed that Rideau was rehabilitated, but that he would not release the prisoner under any circumstances. Rideau said that governors did not advocate for his release because he had become "a political football" due to his appeals and retrials. He believed that it would be difficult for a prisoner in Louisiana to be released from prison.

Fourth appeal, trial and aftermath

In 1998 the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP joined his case and participated in mounting a fourth appeal. In December 2000, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans threw out Rideau’s 1970 murder conviction based on grounds of racial discrimination in the grand jury process in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, which had indicted him. All the members of the grand jury were white.

To the surprise of many outside the area, the Calcasieu Parish prosecutor decided to try Rideau for a fourth time for first-degree murder. Rideau was indicted again in July 2001. The jury, composed of both men and women, and blacks and whites, unanimously found him guilty of manslaughter, as they did not believe the murder was premeditated. Rideau was sentenced to the maximum of 21 years, but he had already served nearly 44, more than twice that, so he was released. Whereas he had been represented by local court-appointed defense attorneys in his first three trials, his defense team in 2005 included prominent civil rights attorneys: Johnnie Cochran, George Kendall, and famed New Orleans defense attorney Julian Murray, who all worked on the case for free, or pro bono.

The case was prosecuted again under the laws in effect at the time of the crime in 1961. The jury was free to convict Rideau of murder – the state elected to prosecute under the “specific intent” rather than the “felony murder” doctrine of the 1961 statute – or manslaughter, which in Louisiana is any homicide that would otherwise be murder if it is either committed without specific intent to harm an individual, or if it is committed in the heat of passion. The defense said that Rideau had become panicked during the robbery and especially by the hostages attempting to escape.

Shortly after Rideau’s release, Judge David Ritchie, who had declared Rideau indigent at trial, ordered him to pay more than $127,000 to the court to cover the cost of the trial and conviction that ultimately freed him. This order was overturned by the Louisiana Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

The Louisiana Court of Appeals stated:

After release

Since his release, Rideau has published a memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance, about his years at Angola. (See Books... above for awards) He has frequently been asked to speak about his experiences, and his work to rehabilitate himself while in prison. In 2009, he was included in the documentary The Farm: 10 Down (2009, Jonathan Stack's follow-up to the survivors of the six men he had featured in his earlier film on Angola. Rideau was the only one among them to have left the prison alive.

In 2011 Rideau was one of the invited speakers at the Newark Peace Education Summit in Newark, New Jersey.