Wilbert Rideau
Wilbert Rideau is an American convicted killer and former death row inmate from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who became an author and award-winning journalist while held for 44 years at Angola Prison. Rideau was convicted in 1961 of first-degree murder of Julia Ferguson in the course of a bank robbery that year, and sentenced to death. He was held in solitary confinement on death row, pending execution. After the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states had to rework their death penalty statutes because of constitutional concerns, the Louisiana Court judicially amended his sentence in 1972 to life in prison.
During his 12 years on death row, Rideau had begun to educate himself, by reading numerous books. After being returned to the general prison population, from 1975 Rideau served for more than 20 years as editor of The Angolite, the magazine written and published by prisoners at Louisiana State Prison ; he was the first African-American editor of any prison newspaper in the United States. Under his leadership, the magazine won the George Polk Award and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for its reporting, and it was nominated for others.
Rideau appealed his case four times. The Supreme Court of the United States and lower courts ordered a total of three new trials; SCOTUS overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial because of adverse pre-trial publicity. He was convicted again of murder two more times, in 1964 and 1970, each time by all-male, all-white juries. He served more than 40 years in the State Penitentiary; parole was never approved. In 2005 Rideau was tried a fourth time. He was unanimously convicted by the jury of the lesser charge of manslaughter; they did not believe he had planned the killing. Rideau was sentenced to the maximum of 21 years; as he had already served nearly 44 years, he was freed.
A Life magazine article in March 1993 referred to Rideau as "the most rehabilitated prisoner in America." He has written several books and edited compilations of articles. He participated in making two documentaries, including The Farm: Angola, USA, about the lives of six men at Angola, including himself. It was drawn from his memoir Life Sentences and much of the film was made at the prison.
Childhood
Wilbert Rideau was born in Louisiana in 1942. When he was six, his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana. He attended racially segregated public schools, according to state law: Second Ward Elementary School in the lower grades, and starting at W. O. Boston High School when he was in eighth grade.Bank robbery and killing
Rideau was 19 when he committed an armed bank robbery in Lake Charles in 1961. He forced three white workers: Julia Ferguson, Dora McCain, and Jay Hickman into a car and drove away with them as hostages. He lined them up and shot at them six times. Ferguson and McCain fell to the ground. When Ferguson tried to get up, he stabbed her with a hunting knife. In the course of their trying to escape, Rideau fatally shot and stabbed bank teller Julia Ferguson, shot Dora McCain in the neck, and kicked her in the ribs, breaking one. The survivors testified to Rideau's guilt, noting that Rideau first shot Ferguson and then plunged a knife into the woman's chest and neck, and also shot and kicked Dora McCain, while saying "You'd better be dead." McCain and Hickman survived by pretending to be dead.Trials and imprisonment
Before Rideau was arraigned, a local television news station, KPLC-TV, filmed his being interviewed by the parish sheriff at the jail. Rideau responded to leading questions and admitted to killing teller Julia Ferguson in the course of a robbery. He did not appear to know he was being filmed, and he was without counsel. This material was broadcast three times in Calcasieu Parish, exposing a large part of the population to the interview and confession before Rideau was arraigned or taken to trial.The defense requested a change of venue because of possible influence of the broadcast on potential jury members, which the court denied. Rideau was tried in 1961 before an all-male, all-white jury. At this time, blacks in Louisiana were still largely disenfranchised: excluded from voting, they were also excluded from juries and political office. He was 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". Rideau was sentenced to death, which is the punishment for first-degree murder.
His 1961 conviction was ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court. In Rideau v. Louisiana, the court ruled that the adverse pre-trial publicity and failure by the lower court to grant a change of venue had compromised his receiving 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.
The District Attorney of Calcasieu Parish, Frank Salter, Jr., reindicted Rideau for the killing of Ferguson. In 1964 another all-male, all-white jury quickly convicted Rideau again of first-degree murder. That conviction was overturned by appeal, and Rideau was tried a third time in 1970. Rideau was convicted a third time of first-degree murder by an all-white jury.
He was returned to death row at Angola, where he was held in solitary confinement pending his execution. During this time, he 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 Supreme Court ruling in Furman v. Georgia, finding the current state laws unconstitutional as they varied widely in how they administered 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.
Rideau was moved into the general prison population. After another appeal, based on the exclusion of blacks from the grand jury that had indicted him in 1970, despite passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s to end racial discrimination, Rideau's last conviction was vacated.
A new trial was ordered and he 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 a unanimous decision, convicting him of the lesser charge of manslaughter. 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 Supreme Court on appeal. In Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U.S. 723, the court made a landmark ruling related to the effects of adverse pre-trial publicity and the refusal of the court to agree to a change of venue, which it ruled was a denial of due process of law for the defendant. The Court overturned Rideau's 1961 conviction because of the repeated broadcasts by the local television station of the sheriff's "interview" with Rideau in jail, and with 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. In addition, the Parish Court had refused the defense attorney's request for a change of venue. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial.Rideau was retried by the Parish District Attorney for first-degree murder in 1964 and again convicted. 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. He remained on death row at Angola.
In 1972 the 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 other persons on death row across the country had their death sentences changed to life imprisonment.
In 2000, a federal appeals court ruled that Rideau's original indictment was flawed, because blacks had been excluded from the 1961 grand jury, which had indicted him on first-degree murder charges.
The Lake Charles, Louisiana, community divided largely along racial lines for four decades over the Rideau case. The parole board had repeatedly recommended he be given parole, but two Louisiana governors declined to approve it, largely due to strong local pressure from whites in Calcasieu Parish. In the fourth and final trial in January 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. Attorneys in the final trial presented two versions of these events. The prosecution held that Rideau used premeditation to line up his victims before shooting them, and that Ferguson had 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 Rideau killed in panic rather than by premeditation. The defense urged a verdict of manslaughter. 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 immediately freed.