Wilbert Rideau

by In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment

  Salter appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court, arguing that my constitutional right to a fair trial must be honored. What he really asked the Louisiana Supreme Court for was permission to rewrite the law so that I could be retried in Louisiana. On June 8, 1964, the Louisiana Supreme Court was happy to oblige. Years later, the court would acknowledge it had acted contrary to law in making its ruling.

  My new trial was set for December 1, 1964, in East Baton Rouge Parish, the state capital. It was a new jurisdiction, but little else changed; it was still the Old South. Moreover, because of the bitterness in Louisiana over what the ruling white power structure felt was federal interference in state sovereignty regarding the racial integration of schools and public facilities, the tongue-lashing the Supreme Court gave Calcasieu Parish when it reversed my conviction made my case even more notorious all over the state.

  Frank Salter had been insistent about moving my trial to Baton Rouge. But, then, he knew something about Sargent Pitcher, the East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney who would assist in prosecuting me—something that would emerge only in the trial courtroom. My defense lawyers, who lost every battle in their attempt to have the trial moved anywhere else, probably knew it, too.

  Since the civil rights movement had gotten a toehold in Louisiana, the racial climate was worse than ever. Negroes made a significant encroachment on previously all-white territory during the summer of 1964, when Louisiana State University, the state’s flagship institution of higher education, enrolled its first colored undergraduates—under federal court order. As Negroes organized sit-ins, rallies, and voter-registration drives, whites banded together in violent supremacist groups and flexed their muscles, as Ralph Blumberg, who had purchased a radio station in Bogalusa in 1961, discovered when he publicly denounced the Ku Klux Klan in late 1964.

  “We were called Communists, integrationists, ‘nigger lovers.’ We were threatened with death. Nails were put in our tires. Our car windows were smashed. Six shells from a high-powered rifle were fired into our transmitter house. Due to a kidnapping threat, I had to send my family back to St. Louis,” Blumberg said in a 1966 article in the magazine American Judaism. The Klan boycotted and threatened his sponsors, and by early 1965 he had to sell his radio station and leave Louisiana. During this same time, the homes of numerous civil rights workers in Lake Charles were hit by midnight cross burnings, as was the home of the local NAACP president.

  The Klan, which practiced violence and terror to ensure white supremacy and keep the coloreds “in their place,” had its genteel counterpart in the White Citizens’ Council, which employed the power of government to deprive blacks of their right to vote. Among its members and sympathizers were lawmakers, businessmen, governmental agency heads, law enforcement officials, and other movers and shakers.

  The new trial judge, Elmo Lear, conceded he had serious reservations about the constitutionality of the transfer, but pointed out that it had been done on the orders of the Louisiana Supreme Court, so he had no choice but to accept my case and try it. However, he expressed the hope that, if and when this case was reversed on appeal, it would be sent to Judge John Rarick, the renowned arch-segregationist of West Feliciana Parish.

  Because of the cost and time required to mount a defense 125 miles from their Lake Charles law offices, Sievert and Leithead both asked Lear to relieve them of their obligation to represent me. The judge refused, but appointed two Baton Rouge attorneys—Elven Ponder and Kenneth C. Scullin—to assist them with the case. Three weeks before the trial began, my expanded defense team moved to have the 1961 indictment thrown out on the grounds that the method used to select the grand jury pool—five white jury commissioners and the clerk of court sat around a table and handpicked potential jurors by thumbing through race-coded cards made up for that very purpose—was racially discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

  The whole criminal justice system in Calcasieu Parish, as elsewhere in Louisiana, was all white—the robed white men who sat on the bench, their white clerks, the white jury commissioners. Grand jury foremen, personally chosen by the judges, had been white men as far back as Calcasieu Parish records and living memory stretched. So were all the sheriffs who tracked down and arrested suspects, and all the coroners who sat on sanity commissions and performed autopsies for the state, and all the district attorneys and their assistants who decided which suspects would stand trial for their lives and which would be tried for lesser penalties.

  Sievert and Leithead nonetheless lost their argument about racial discrimination, and on December I, my second trial began. We had not gone far in the jury selection process when the issue of race surfaced again. Prospective juror Eddie Bates told Elven Ponder that he had been a member of the Citizens’ Council for about a year. Ponder pressed him about the purposes of the organization.

  “Well, we flatly don’t believe in integration of the races, if that’s what you mean,” prosecutor Pitcher said, coming to Bates’s defense. “I’d like to state for the record the purpose of the Citizens’ Council, of which I am a member, is the preservation of constitutional government, and being a member of it is no more than being a member of the Presbyterian Church or any other organization.” Pitcher sat on the board of directors for the Zachary, Louisiana, chapter.

  Ponder jumped up and objected to Pitcher’s gratuitous commentary. He moved for a mistrial on the grounds that the commentary was prejudicial and inflammatory. When the judge denied the motion, Ponder challenged the seating of Eddie Bates for cause. The judge denied that, too, and refused to let my lawyers ask Bates or any other potential jurors if they had friends and associates who belonged to the Klan. In the end, an all-white, all-male jury was chosen, as everyone knew would be the case.

  The second trial was virtually a repeat of the first, but the jury was quicker, taking only fifteen minutes to conclude that I was guilty and I should die. I was returned to the East Baton Rouge Parish jail, atop the courthouse, to wait out the required appeal and review of my case by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

  I had been kept in total isolation prior to the trial. After the verdict, I was instructed to pack my things because I was joining the jail’s inmate population. Unlike in the Calcasieu Parish jail or Angola, prisoners here were generally kept in isolation cells for brief periods only for “mental observation” or punishment. All others were housed together indiscriminately, according to race—blacks in one part of the jail, whites in another. This marked the first time I would live among other prisoners and, like many before me, I feared entering that notorious world. The men on death row who had been in general population told me that if I entered one, especially because of my small size, I would be challenged until inmates learned I was from death row and charged with murder; that would imply I was dangerous, and therefore people would be less likely to mess with me. I began preparing myself right away. I traded some Playboy magazines on the black market for cash and a flat knife; I glued both inside the bottom flaps of the thick cardboard box that I would carry my personal possessions in. I was gambling that the deputies transporting me and those booking me into the jail wouldn’t expect me to have contraband, since I was coming from Angola’s death row, the most secure and restrictive lockup in the state. On September 29, 1964, when I entered the East Baton Rouge Parish jail, I received only a perfunctory inspection.

  Heading into general population, I cloaked the knife in a damp bath towel that I held against the underside of the box as I walked beside a deputy. When I stepped inside the large, poorly lit room as a steel door slammed shut behind me, a row of metal tables was to my left, and a young, muscular, clean-cut guy sat possessively on the first table, reading a newspaper. It was the dayroom, where everyone congregated, ate, and passed time by playing cards or dominoes or talking. There were two showers against the rear wall. Large cells containing multiple bunks were on each side of the dayroom. They were sleeping quarters, where the inmates were locked in for
the night. Until then, the doors remained open. More than a hundred men coexisted in quarters designed for far fewer. Many slept on the floor because there were not enough bunks.

  Everyone halted his activities to see who the new person was. Their faces seemed ugly, fearsome. I was scared, but I knew that if I showed fear, they would chew me to bits. “I knew this was my lucky day!” said a young inmate sitting on the floor ten feet away, his back against bars, apparently taking part in a dice game. “There’s fresh meat in the house! Lil’ Man,” he said, with his best tough-guy face, “there ain’t enough bunks, but you can sleep in mine.” There was a little laughter followed by a hush, as everyone waited for my response.

  I dropped the box and towel to the floor, revealing the knife in my hand. I let a moment elapse for effect, as the youth’s face turned serious, fearful. Trying to keep any trembling out of my voice, trying to sound calm and matter-of-fact, I said, “You must be tired of living.” Nobody moved. I hoped he didn’t call my hand. I didn’t want to fight; I had no experience in fighting. I did know, though, that this moment, this encounter, would define my life both in this jail and beyond. I was going to do whatever I had to. My mouth was dry, and my hands felt clammy around the knife’s masking-taped handle. The silence seemed long.

  “You Wilbert Rideau?” the newspaper reader on the front table asked.

  “I am,” I replied, not taking my eyes off the youth in front of me.

  “I’m Billy Green, and the fat mouth on the floor is Chicken,” he said. “He don’t mean you any harm. He just has a habit of shooting off his mouth at the wrong time.” He looked at Chicken, chiding him: “Didn’t I tell you about messing with people you don’t know, coming through that door? Do you have any idea who you fucking with?” He lifted the newspaper, pointing to the front page. “He’s from death row, getting ready to go back to death row, and he ain’t got a fucking thing to lose ’cause they can’t burn him but once. You’re sitting there playing stupid-ass games with a dude who’s gonna put your lights out. Now what is your dumb ass gonna do?”

  “I’m gonna apologize, man,” the youth said, rising slowly, everyone laughing at him. “I’m sorry, man. I—I made a big mistake.”

  I nodded, relieved. “Let me have your attention a minute,” I said loudly to everyone, exploiting the moment. “I’m not sleeping on the floor. I’m willing to pay five dollars for a bunk. I’m also prepared to take one if I have to. So, who wants the money?” A ratty-looking guy walked up to offer me his bunk. I bought it.

  The jail population was a transient one. There was no society, no commonality, no values, nothing governing behavior but the law of the jungle: strength ruled, and the only order was what it imposed. The jail was constructed in a manner that made policing of inmate activity virtually impossible; access to the bullpen was restricted to a single door, which meant jailers could not see 90 percent of it without actually entering it, which they rarely did. Jailers therefore could maintain only some degree of order through the process of accommodation, allowing the strongest clique to practice their vice with impunity in exchange for maintaining peace and managing the lockup. Billy Green, an ex-con and local street gang leader from Baton Rouge, ruled here. He coordinated the inmates’ lists of orders from the commissary and turned them in to a deputy, then made sure when the items came in that they were distributed properly; he saw to it that the weak as well as the strong got their meals and that cleaning supplies were distributed and used. In short, he served as liaison for the authorities in their dealings with the inmate population.

  My first major adjustment to living off death row was, understandably, to the lack of privacy—the communal toilets, showers, living quarters. Sitting on a commode in public for a bowel movement was a new and difficult experience, resulting in bouts of constipation. And there was the need to be a little paranoid: The other occupants of death row told me never to let an enemy catch me sitting on a commode with my drawers pulled down around my ankles because then I could neither run nor fight. Shortly before my trial, I had sought medical attention for an infection on my foot from Baton Rouge coroner Dr. Chester Williams, who refused, explaining that Calcasieu Parish was not paying him to provide me medical care. Expecting the same response now, to protect against becoming infected I showered every day and refused to shake hands, which earned me the reputation of being a “neat freak.”

  Rule of the lockup was almost always decided by violent conflict. And the inability of different personalities to get along in a lawless, idle, overcrowded environment also generated violence. The major incubator of such conflicts, however, was unmet needs, the biggest being nicotine addiction. Just about all of us smoked. Men without resources generally devised methods to take from those who had—by trade, guile, theft, or force. I was no different. The time I spent reading on death row, coupled with my eighth-grade formal education, made me the best-educated inmate in my lockup. Two-thirds of the men were barely literate; a third were unable to read or write. That provided me an opportunity. I began writing letters for them: I got a pack of cigarettes for a family letter, two packs for business, and three packs for a romantic letter, which often went to female inmates in the women’s lockup adjacent to ours.

  In a caged population that included a lot of young, sex-starved males at the peak of their sexuality, it was to be expected that some used gays and the weak to satisfy their sexual needs. A popular saying among the normally heterosexual youths explained their behavior: “A hard dick has no conscience.” Some inmates willingly exchanged sexual favors to provide for their other needs, but violence or the threat of it was the usual method employed to force the weak into sexual slavery.

  Sex was also used to express contempt. Child molesters—called “baby rapers”—were particularly reviled, but all sex offenders were regarded with scorn by both prisoners and jailers. Many viewed the jail rape of sex offenders as poetic justice, as I learned when a skinny seventeen-year-old Negro was placed in our lockup following his arrest for the rape of a fifty-two-year-old white housewife. It was like throwing meat to hungry dogs. He was locked in a cell occupied by several members of Green’s clique, who took turns raping him during the night. The next night, he was placed in another cell so that other clique members could also “get their issue,” after which Green announced that anyone wanting to have sex with the youngster was welcome to do so.

  When the raped youth was taken to court, he complained to the white jailers, who simply shoved him back behind bars and told him, “Get your ass in there, bitch, and take care of those men. Now you know what that woman felt like.” He did, but what his victim endured at his hands, as horrible as it was, paled in comparison to the nightmare of the ongoing violence and terror he was subjected to. He was beaten for “snitching” to the jailers, made a human toy in brutal games for the amusement of the men, and, of course, raped at whim, unable to resist because Green had decreed that he’d better not. When it was discovered that the youth’s rectum was hanging several inches out of his backside, Green arranged for him to leave for medical treatment, after reminding him there was no percentage in snitching because the cops didn’t care and the gang could get to him anywhere within the jail, on the streets, even in the penitentiary. The youngster eventually pled guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of release after ten years, six months. But the sexual torment he endured changed him forever. He would, at Angola, go on to establish a pattern of violence with other inmates that would result in his spending most of his life in disciplinary cells, which doomed him to die in prison.

  The men on death row had laughed and joked about prison sex, but they had not prepared me for what I found. As badly as I craved sex, I discovered that I didn’t want it that badly. “Hey, that was my first reaction,” said Big Al, an ex-con who had invited me to use the services of his sex slave. “But then, as time got hard and my dick got harder, I realized a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. Enough time passes, you’ll see it in a different light
. Like they say, when you in Rome, you do as the Romans.” His view was not atypical.

  Having come from Angola’s death row only to be reconvicted and again face the electric chair gave me stature among the other inmates. In the perverse convict culture, I was viewed almost as a martyr, since it was extremely rare for the state to seek the death penalty a second time rather than offer a plea for a life sentence. Bizarrely, it was believed that wisdom was attached to this sort of martyrdom. Inmates listened when I spoke, and my opinion was regularly sought to settle disputes. I acquired such influence that the inmates asked me to represent them in talks with jail authorities during troubled times.

  Rebellious inmates would plug their commodes to protest jail conditions, flooding the courtrooms on the floors below and shutting down hearings and trials. Authorities decided I was the troublemaker, probably because the inmates often united behind me. In the wee hours one morning during a protest, I was awakened by a gloved hand over my mouth. Several deputies quietly carried me out of the lockup. Green followed us out. I realized that Green had engineered this betrayal. He later apologized, explaining that he had sold me out in exchange for leniency in his criminal case. But he had instructed all his followers in the jail to take care of me. If I needed anything, he said, I had only to send word to him.

  I was taken to the Hole, an isolation cell that afforded no contact with others except when a prison guard or inmate orderly opened the metal hatch on the steel door, through which I received my food. Because of the extreme deprivation it imposed, punishment in the Hole was rarely more than a week or two, never more than thirty days. I was to become the exception.

  The jail authorities had placed me in the all-white section of the jail, a move meant to isolate me and lessen my influence among the blacks. My first visitor was Sheriff Bryan Clemmons, who peered through the hatch of my cell door to tell me, “I’m the sheriff, and you’re not gonna run my jail.” He said I would remain in that cell as long as I was in his custody. He kept me there for more than two years. That made me special. The other inmates sympathized with me; the deputies grudgingly acknowledged my sheer endurance. After a while, many of the jailers—all of them white—came to feel I was being treated unfairly and started leaving the hatch on my door open so the white inmates could give me food or tobacco.