Wilbert Rideau

by In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment

  In 1966, Billy escaped. A week later, he was apprehended in Arkansas after committing another robbery. In March 1967, he was transferred to death row, where he spent much of his time loaded on drugs. At some point he began to do serious reading and ultimately filed a lawsuit against the long-term confinement of death row inmates in cells without any physical exercise. He won the suit, thereby acquiring a reputation as a jailhouse lawyer, which brought him some status among inmates.

  In 1976, 63 percent of the inmates in Angola were functional illiterates. So the pool from which to draw someone for The Angolite who was reasonably proficient in English was small. I believed Billy had grown and improved as a result of his prison experiences, and I believed devoutly in second chances. He gave me his word that he would not use narcotics or do anything to bring disrepute upon The Angolite, and I knew he wasn’t involved with any gangs.

  When I told Maggio of my choice, he was irate: “You can forget Sinclair. He will not work on The Angolite as long as I’m warden.” Phelps would not overrule Maggio.

  The administration’s hostility toward Billy stemmed from the many lawsuits he’d filed against the prison. To defuse opposition, he agreed he’d never file another suit against the warden, the institution, or any employee. The agreement entailed no real loss to the inmate population, because Billy’s only success had been in the death row exercise case four years earlier. Peggi Gresham pointed out to Maggio that this was an opportunity to end Billy’s legal terrorism of his employees. Maggio assigned him to The Angolite. To my surprise, Billy expressed relief: “That takes a big load off me, ’cause everybody wants me to file shit for them. This provides me the excuse to say no.” He started work on the July/August 1977 issue.

  Phelps, Gresham, Maggio, and other officials did not readily take Billy into their confidence regarding administrative processes and decision making. Gresham and I discussed the magazine’s operations and management on the phone, in the lobby of the Main Prison, in her office, or wherever we met. Billy’s medium-security status restricted his movement to within the Main Prison, which left me to attend conferences and meetings or to cover events elsewhere in the prison. Billy understood the officials’ initial distrust of him and aimed to win them over. The Angola Jaycees, which he’d inherited when Tommy left, provided a perfect vehicle. He poured his energy into the organization and, after the Jaycees raised $1,000 for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Maggio began to warm to him.

  In November, Maggio revealed that he planned to leave at the end of the year to become warden of a new institution. In eighteen months, he had converted a violent Angola into one of the safest prisons in America. There had been only two killings in 1976 and one in 1977, with fewer than ten stabbings serious enough to require hospitalization. And he had done it without restricting freedom of expression for either inmates or employees. His wardenship began the most transparent and open prison administration in Louisiana history—possibly in American history—a transparency that would continue with his successor, Frank Blackburn.

  As Maggio prepared to leave, the school of journalism at Southern Illinois University announced that The Angolite, the nation’s only uncensored prison publication, had swept the American Penal Press Awards. It was cited for its “high quality and success in leading the way in new and responsible prison journalism.” The awards were presented at Angola in a ceremony attended by the corrections and prison hierarchy as well as media from throughout the state. Our journalistic achievements were given widespread coverage in Louisiana, as was my editorship of The Angolite. I was good copy—something new and different.

  I became something of a local celebrity, in demand as a speaker around the state. Shortly after the awards, the Alexandria police chief arranged for my transfer to his custody for a weeklong tour of his city’s schools to talk to kids about the importance of doing the right thing in life. People wanted my autograph or a photo taken with me. They congratulated me, shook my hand, patted me on the back. Some women slipped me their phone number or address. One treated me to a tour of the city, and we made love on crushed clover on the outskirts of town, making a far-fetched prison fantasy come true.

  Then came the announcement that The Angolite was one of five finalists in the category of specialized journalism for the 1978 National Magazine Awards. Administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, the awards are the highest honors for the nation’s magazine industry. Judges cited The Angolite for its “realistic reportage of what is happening behind prison walls.” In the end, Scientific American won, but it was the first time a prisoner publication had ever been in such august company.

  These were life-changing events for me. They marked the first time in my life that I had been publicly patted on the back for having done something good. It felt great. The honors increased The Angolite’s stature in the prison. When Warden Blackburn took over, he, like Phelps and Gresham, gave our journalism his unflinching support, and we were able to become more aggressive.

  Energized, I mapped out major stories for the remainder of the year, selecting each for its potential impact or appeal to diverse segments of the prison community. The editorial mix I sought was first displayed in the July/August 1978 issue, which featured “Anatomy of a Suicide,” Billy’s chilling account of the life and death of his best friend, Billy Ray White, who committed suicide and slowly bled to death in the cell adjacent to Billy’s while the two men talked; my profile of Peggi Gresham, the first female associate warden in a male prison in Louisiana; and an interview with New Orleans district attorney Harry Connick, the state’s foremost opponent of the release of Angola prisoners. I also added a popular new section where readers could express themselves unedited. With this issue, too, I acquired illustrator Troy Bridges, which made the majority of the Angolite staff white.

  Billy aspired to match my recognition as a professional journalist. He began to think hard about stories and to focus on writing objectively, which was difficult for him because he tended to moralize, seeing the world as black-and-white. I suggested he use his knowledge of the law to educate inmates about their rights, the workings of the justice system, and legal news and issues important to them. He took to it immediately, writing lengthy legal essays and delving into actual cases of Angola prisoners.

  I concentrated on analytical features and investigative reports. In the September/October edition, I reported on old-timers lost in the bureaucracy of the system. In “Conversations with the Dead” I told of Frank “Cocky” Moore, who had been living in a tin shack and tending horses behind one of the prison’s out-camps for thirty-three years—in a system that routinely released lifers after a decade of good behavior. The New Orleans Times-Picayune and other media picked up on my story, and Cocky was soon free.

  Billy was impressed with the reaction of the outside world to the story, but I could sense his resentment, too. He was becoming more competitive. I feared that, because I didn’t want there to be a winner and a loser. I asked Gresham to promote him to associate editor.

  She bristled. “I am not going to promote anybody to improve their attitude,” she said. She did, however, allow him to accompany me on a trip—his first—to Dixon Correctional Institute, less than an hour’s drive from Angola, to do a story for our last issue of the year. Shortly afterward, we learned The Angolite had won top honors from the American Penal Press for best news reportage, the second consecutive year. Billy was promoted to associate editor with the publication of our March/April 1979 edition.

  The Angolite’s prominence grew. Corrections Magazine highlighted me in its March 1979 issue with a feature, “The Angolite Angle: A Louisiana Inmate Leads His Magazine into the Big Leagues of Journalism.” The American Bar Association gave me its 1979 Silver Gavel Award for “Conversations with the Dead,” for “outstanding contribution to public understanding of the American system of law and justice.” It marked the first time in the ABA’s hundred-year history that it had so honored a prisoner. Warden Blackburn went to Dallas to
accept the award. Billy and I received a special 1979 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award “for bringing about a deep understanding of the lives and deaths of those imprisoned.” The award was presented to Phelps and Blackburn by Senator Edward Kennedy and Ethel, widow of Robert Kennedy, during ceremonies attended by several hundred journalists at her Virginia home. Upon his return, Phelps instructed prisoner publications at other state facilities to follow our example. Supervisors and inmate staffers of the publications at both Dixon Correctional Institute and the women’s prison at St. Gabriel traveled to Angola to meet us, study our operation, and discuss ways of improving their own.

  My success and The Angolite’s were the latest signs in what I had long since begun to feel was a charmed existence. I had twice narrowly avoided being lynched following my arrest, then had been rescued from three consecutive death sentences by three unexpected landmark decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court. Thrown into the most violent prison in America, I not only survived, I thrived. “It’s like something’s happening on a level that I don’t understand,” I told Phelps one afternoon when he stopped by my office.

  “You’re getting religion?” he asked, smiling.

  “I don’t know, but at what point do I ask, What the hell’s going on? I can’t help wondering if some cosmic force or supernatural entity isn’t pushing me along a specific course in life, having saved me for some unknown purpose I’m to serve.”

  “You’ve been blessed by an extraordinary amount of good fortune,” Phelps said. “You want to make sense of it, and you will, eventually. But the important thing to understand now is that you’re uniquely postured to make a difference in the lives of others, to do a lot of good, and to educate the public about the world of prison. That should be a personal mission with you, whether you feel a supernatural force nudging you toward it or not. Society needs the information you are in the position to provide. This criminal justice business has a lot of experts—we’re good at studying statistics and pretending we know what we’re talking about, and while I can’t speak for the other professionals, I know we penal administrators fake it a lot. You can provide the kind of truth that comes from firsthand experience.”

  I had, indeed, come to see The Angolite as my mission in life, my path to redemption. It allowed me the satisfaction of helping others, whether by educating them or solving problems. It also kept me in touch with people outside prison, normal people, so I could mitigate some of the effects of being institutionalized. The magazine gave me a measure of control over my life; I could decide what stories to pursue and set my own schedule. Every day held the promise of unpredictability and discovery—giving tours, traveling, sitting in on meetings with administrators, checking the levees that kept the Mississippi in place, researching Angola’s history, photographing the annual Angola rodeo, and talking to scholars, media, and government officials from Louisiana and elsewhere. Under Blackburn, The Angolite took flight. Our staff began to tackle the kind of difficult subjects for which the magazine would become famous: inequities in the system, lost and forgotten prisoners, the brutal realities of life behind bars.

  We didn’t do it alone. The Angolite gradually developed a network of relationships with editors and journalists throughout Louisiana and the nation upon whom I could call for information, photos, and general assistance. In return, we acted as a resource for them when they wanted information on Angola, story ideas, or guidance on whom to talk to—inmate or employee—about a particular issue. We became the de facto public information office for Angola and the Department of Corrections.

  As we became more aggressive in covering our world, we had heated editorial conferences with Gresham and Phelps. The arguments were always over style and language. Phelps didn’t want obscenities in the magazine. He wanted a publication that people could pick up off his coffee table or in a doctor’s office and read without being offended. I felt we sometimes needed crude language to convey effectively the realities of prison life. “I was just thinking how my fellow penal administrators around the country would never believe what is taking place in this room,” Phelps said in a flash of wry humor during one of our arguments.

  But, in terms of reporting, everything remained fair game; officials had to cooperate and make information available. For “The Child-Savers,” a story in the July/August 1979 issue, we went to Louisiana’s largest reform school, the former State Industrial School for Colored Youths, where I had been sent as a teenager. My objective was to examine the prevailing view that the juvenile system was full of violent delinquents. I found what I expected: Although 68 percent of all the kids going to juvenile court in Louisiana in 1974 and 1975 were white, 68 percent of those sent to prison were black. The racial disparity held true for 1976 and 1977. Phelps, who had disagreed with my proposition of institutional racism, was surprised at the revelation. I also discovered that 85 percent of the 1,076 juveniles sent to prison in 1976–77 were there for nonviolent offenses. Angolite stories that exposed problems were normally followed by some type of administrative remedy, but “The Child-Savers” was not. The outside media apparently did not find these revelations of racism newsworthy; the statistics revealing lopsided juvenile justice would continue for the next quarter century.

  What I felt to be my most important story, and the one that held the greatest potential to be censored, was “The Sexual Jungle.” In 1979, penal administrators still universally lied about prison rape, characterizing it as an infrequent occurrence by aggressive homosexuals and sexual deviants. But, as I’ve said, it was an epidemic perpetrated primarily by heterosexuals, and it was an integral part of life in prison, condoned by security officers who were complicit in maintaining its existence. Penthouse senior editor Peter Bloch had asked me to write an article about rape and sex in prison, but he wouldn’t allow me to write more than a thousand words, which, in my view, was insufficient to cover the subject. I turned down his offer of $1,000 (it wasn’t easy). I decided, instead, to do an article in The Angolite, where I had as much space as I needed to properly deal with the subject. For the exposé, I interviewed officials, victims of sexual violence, perpetrators, and experts. To add a national perspective to the story, I turned to Ginger Roberts.

  I’d met Ginger when she was a Louisiana State University law student clerking at the Department of Corrections. Phelps had asked me to look after her as she and a group of fellow students embarked upon a project to help Angola jailhouse lawyers. A New Yorker, she had done civil rights work in Mississippi before being invited to Louisiana by Elayn Hunt when she was director. We hit it off instantly, forming what would become a lifelong friendship. She became my first pro bono attorney and a staunch supporter of both my journalism and my freedom efforts. At my request, Ginger interviewed Dr. Frank Rundle in New York City for The Angolite. Having served as chief psychiatrist at the 2,200-man California Training Facility at Soledad and as director of psychiatry of Prison Health Services for all of the correctional institutions in New York City, Rundle provided the national overview I needed.

  I opened my piece with a description of the assault I had witnessed in the East Baton Rouge Parish jail:

  Leaving the bullpen, he strolled toward the cell area. Stepping into the darkened cell, he was swept into a whirlwind of violent movement that flung him hard against the wall, knocking the wind from him. A rough, callused hand encircled his throat, the fingers digging painfully into his neck, cutting off the scream rushing to his lips. “Holler, whore, and you die,” a hoarse voice warned, the threat emphasized by the knife point at his throat. He nodded weakly as a rag was stuffed in his mouth. The hand left his neck. Thoughts of death moved sluggishly through his terror-stricken mind as his legs, weak with fear, threatened to give out from under him. An anguished prayer formed in his heart and his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably. He was thrown on the floor, his pants pulled off him. As a hand profanely squeezed his buttocks, he felt a flush of embarrassment and anger, more because of his basic weakness—which prevented his doing anything to st
op what was happening—than because of what was actually going on. His throat grunted painful noises, an awful pleading whine that went ignored as he felt his buttocks spread roughly apart. A searing pain raced through his body as the hardness of one of his attackers tore roughly into his rectum. “Shake back, bitch!” a voice urged. “Give him a wiggle!” His rapist expressed delight as his body flinched and quivered from the burning cigarettes being applied to his side by other inmates gleefully watching. A sense of helplessness overwhelmed him and he began to cry, and even after the last penis was pulled out of his abused and bleeding body, he still cried, overwhelmed by the knowledge that it was not over, that this was only the beginning of a nightmare that would only end with violence, death, or release from prison.

  Not only was the twenty-eight-page feature, illustrated with numerous photos, published in the November/December 1979 issue just as I wrote it, but Phelps and Gresham also incorporated it in Louisiana’s corrections training programs as required reading for new employees. The administration’s policy for dealing with sexual violence and homosexuality was revised: Once officials understood that openly gay inmates did not incite sexual violence and were often its victims, they stopped the wholesale lockup of overt homosexuals.

  Later, following an American Corrections Association convention, Phelps told me that a number of corrections officials from other states could not understand why he was allowing me to do what I was doing, and they were especially displeased with “The Sexual Jungle.” “We were sort of boycotted at the convention,” he said, “which tells me that we must be doing something right.” It was a comment that perfectly revealed Phelps’s strength of character, not only to run a transparent prison but also to revel in it in the face of criticism by his peers.