Wilbert Rideau

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Wilbert Rideau (born February 13, 1942) was described by Life magazine in March 1993 as "the most rehabilitated prisoner in America". Rideau was incarcerated in Louisiana State Penitentiary (better known as Angola Prison) from 1961 to 2000, convicted of murder three times before a fourth trial in 2005 convicted him of manslaughter, allowing time already served to fulfil his sentence. In 1976, Rideau became editor of the prison magazine, The Angolite, which he developed into a professional, award-winning bimonthly magazine. He is also known for helping to produce a number of award-winning documentary films, including The Farm, a film about Angola Prison that was nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary Feature and which won best documentary at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998.

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[edit] Childhood

When he was six, his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana (a city about 40 miles from the Texas border on Interstate 10). He attended the all-black Second Ward Elementary School. He was born into poverty, and when his parents later divorced, he became even poorer. He transferred to W.O. Boston Colored High School when he was in eighth grade and soon started playing hooky, shooting dice, and vandalizing tombs in a cemetery. Then he started selling cigarettes, three for a nickel. At 13, he got a job at a grocery store by pretending to be 16 and eventually stopped going to school.

[edit] Crime

According to trial testimony, on February 16, 1961, Rideau, then 19 years old, used a gun to rob $14,000 from the Gulf National Bank, kidnapped three bank employees — tellers Dora McCain and Julia Ferguson and manager Jay Hickman — and forced them into Ferguson's car, directing her to drive out of town into a wooded area. Rideau then lined up the victims and attempted to execute them. One bullet hit Jay Hickman's arm and he rolled into a bayou.

Rideau then shot McCain and Ferguson as they tried to flee. Dora McCain lay face down and played dead. Julia Ferguson then cried out begging Rideau to "think of my poor old daddy." Rideau then responded to the crying Julia, "Don't worry, it will be quick and cool." He then slit her throat and stabbed her in the heart. Julia died at the scene.

The way Julia died was later disputed by a defense witness for Rideau. During the fourth trial in 2005, Dr. Werner Spitz, noted that in his opinion the autopsy pictures showed the cut was only an inch long and more likely a tracheotomy. There was no other evidence of Rideau performing an emergency tracheotomy on the victim, only evidence of the murder.

Jay Hickman hid in the nearby bayou, and Dora successfully feigned death, despite Rideau kicking her in the side three times. He then left and was caught leaving town in the victim's car with the money from the robbery on the backseat.

[edit] First Trial 1961

Rideau was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white, all-male jury in 1961. While in the parish jail and on death row, Rideau began to read books smuggled in to him by guards. He also began to write, starting with writing letters for fellow inmates in exchange for cigarettes or money. He later began corresponding with Clover Swann, an editor at the New York Times.

Later, the United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction in Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723 (1963) on the basis that a secretly taped interrogation session was aired repeatedly on the local television station KPLC-TV's evening news, resulting in a biased jury pool and a "kangaroo court."

[edit] Second Trial 1964

A second trial began in 1964 with an all-white male jury. This jury also reached the same conclusion as found in the first trial. However, in 1969, a federal appeals court overturned this conviction on the basis that the prosecution had exercised some of its allotted peremptory exceptions on jurors because of their hesitancy to impose the death penalty.

[edit] Third Trial 1970

In 1970, he was retried again by an all-white male jury; and again convicted and sentenced to death. However, the death penalty was overturned in 1973 by the Louisiana Supreme Court, in accordance with the ruling in a United States Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, which had voided all death penalty sentences then existing. The Supreme Court, however, affirmed his conviction. Rideau, like all other inmates on death row, had his sentence commuted to Life without Parole.

Now off death row, Rideau asked to be transferred to The Angolite prison magazine's all-white staff and, when that was refused, started a prison magazine called The Lifer with an all-black staff. He started writing a column called "The Jungle" for black newspapers in the South.

[edit] Angola Prison Reform

In 1975, the federal court ordered the Angola prison to be reformed, the outgoing warden C. Murray Henderson appointed Rideau editor of The Angolite. The incoming warden, C. Paul Phelps, ratified the choice and made it so that The Angolite had to be held to the same standards as any respected publication. Rideau brought on two co-editors, Tom Mason and Ron Wikberg, and Billy Wayne Sinclair in 1978. Soon, the magazine transformed from a mimeographed newsletter into a glossy magazine, and it started winning awards.

[edit] Pardon Boards

In the 1980s, four pardon boards unsuccessfully recommended Rideau for release; he had been an exemplary prisoner, and nearly all other surviving prisoners convicted of murder in the same time period in Louisiana have been released.

[edit] Rideau Project

In 1988, Loyola University of New Orleans' Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice established the Rideau Project. The purpose of the project was to obtain freedom for Rideau.

[edit] Lecturer

Rideau became a sought-after lecturer. In 1991, he, along with Wikberg and University of Louisiana at Lafayette Professor Burk Foster, wrote a criminal justice textbook. While lecturing, Rideau had repeatedly confessed to the armed robbery and murder of Julia Ferguson.

[edit] Appeal

In the December 2000 case of Rideau v. Louisiana, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans threw out the 1970 conviction on the basis that "purposeful" racial discrimination tainted the grand jury process. The case returned to Calcasieu Parish, which, to the surprise of many outside of the area, decided to try Rideau for a fourth time. He was re-indicted in July of 2001.

[edit] Fourth Trial 2005

After much legal maneuvering, that trial took place in January 2005 in Lake Charles, Louisiana in the court of Louisiana 14th Judicial District Judge David Ritchie. Jury selection began January 3, 2005 in Monroe, Louisiana rather than Lake Charles, because the judge granted defendant's request for a change of venue. The prosecution was led by District Attorney Rick Bryant. The defense team included nationally-recognized defense attorney Johnnie Cochran and famed New Orleans defense attorney Julian Murray.

In a key victory in the trial for the defense, the only two verdicts Judge Ritchie allowed were on the 1961 definitions of murder; a premeditated killing with a sentence of life imprisonment without parole; and manslaughter, which carried a 21-year sentence. By 2005's standards, the killing would have fallen under Louisiana's first-degree murder offense, as Rideau murdered someone while committing another crime (armed robbery), but no distinction between first- and second-degree murder was made in the trial.

The Prosecutor could have tried Rideau again under the first degree murder statute allowing for capital punishment, but he chose not to seek the death penalty. Because the death penalty was available for this offense in 1961 and also available in 2005, the Prosecutor had the option of seeking a death sentence.

[edit] Manslaughter Conviction

On January 15, 2005, Rideau was convicted of the responsive verdict of manslaughter. This was done by a jury that was composed of seven whites, four blacks and one person of mixed race. The jury took six hours for deliberations. Because the maximum penalty for manslaughter was only forty years, Rideau was quickly released from the Calcasieu Correctional Center; he had already served 44 years.

[edit] Freedom

He quickly left the Center in a waiting car and traveled to a small hotel, which happened to be on the same street where he killed Ferguson, before travelling to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he gave his first full interview as a free man to the Associated Press. Twomey Center legal researcher Linda LaBranche said the move was in fear for his safety. Julian Murray said Rideau had been sent threatening e-mails, which he dismissed as the work of "kooks." In interviews, Rideau's family had expressed surprise that Rideau had already made extensive plans for his freedom and was quickly acting on them.

Rideau's whereabouts are unknown following his release from prison. Ultimately, he served 44 years for the bank robbery and murder of Julia Ferguson.

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