Wilbert Rideau

by In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment

  Smith expanded on the freedom from censorship Phelps had instituted at Angola. He gave his approval for Ron and me to collaborate with Dave Isay, a young New York radio producer, on a half-hour documentary about the state’s get-tough penal practices and the hopelessness, the deaths, and the state of emergency that followed. Dave showed us how to produce, write, and record a radio program, and then he taught me how to narrate it. The star was Moreese “Pop” Bickham, seventy-two, believed to be the state’s longest-confined prisoner. “Tossing Away the Keys” aired on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and was the first such venture between convicts and a radio producer. It won the Livingston Award for Dave, who would, in time, get Bickham out of prison. When he returned to New York, Dave left his broadcast-quality recorder with me in the event I might be able to persuade the warden to allow me to do a program on death row. I was having as full a life and as good a time as anyone who is deprived of his freedom and a normal framework for his life could have.

  I understand no more now than I did then why Governor Roemer refused to grant me my freedom but trusted me with his political well-being, allowing me to travel around the state without restraints or shackles, and only an unarmed officer accompanying me when I gave talks. I could have literally walked off at any point, which would have done Roemer irreparable harm.

  On April 3, 1990, I again flew to Washington, D.C., this time to appear before a convention of newspaper editors to talk to them about running a free press behind bars. I was given a warm reception by several hundred editors the next morning. I urged them to fight censorship, especially as regards prisoners. I impressed upon them that, contrary to the claims of penal administrators everywhere, censorship was not necessary and that a free prisoner press could benefit both inmates and the institution. I told them The Angolite had proven valuable in easing tensions by dispelling rumor with truth and by helping both keeper and kept understand one another. It wasn’t always easy, I said: “If you make a mistake, you get a letter to the editor. Imagine, if you will, a guy with a bandanna around his head, an earring in his ear, nasty scar on his face. Let’s call him Bruno. If he doesn’t like what I have to say here today, Bruno is quite likely to show up at my office door or my bedside with a clenched fist or a baseball bat. Believe me, Bruno gives a whole new meaning to the concept of letter to the editor.” They laughed.

  The appearance meant a great deal to me. Three decades earlier I had committed a terrible sin and was condemned, written off by the world, and left to die—if not by execution, then by incarceration. But here I was, a river of time later, after a long, hard struggle for life and a future in the face of none. I was profoundly mindful of just how far I was from my impossible beginnings.

  Jetting through the skies on the way home, I closed my eyes and thought of Linda. The more I learned about her, the more I liked her. She was endlessly interesting. We were from totally disparate backgrounds and cultures, but we saw and thought about things similarly, to the point that I said, “Talking with you is like talking to a minature version of myself. Mind if I call you ‘Junior’?”

  “Why can’t I be ‘Senior’?” she asked.

  “I don’t care, but I’m older than you.” She became “Junior.”

  In 1989 Linda became an investigator for the state board of ethics and moved to Baton Rouge. She was now less than an hour’s drive from Angola, where she could conduct research and sit in on public events of interest to me. Her dedication to me was humbling.

  We were optimistic about my clemency hearing, a couple of weeks away. Roemer’s new pardon board was sympathetic to me. I had endeavored to “do more,” as the governor had put it on 20/20 two years earlier. I had talked to at-risk schoolkids and to criminal court probationers, for which I had been awarded a certificate of appreciation by the mayor of New Orleans. I coedited a textbook, The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana, for use by criminal justice students. There was the precedent-setting radio show. Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism had announced that The Angolite was again a finalist for the 1990 National Magazine Award, the fourth time. The most powerful element in our argument for my release, however, had been produced by Linda.

  Since Governor Roemer indicated on 20/20 that he was willing to listen and willing to learn, she and Ted Quant decided that Linda would scour public records for the sort of hard data that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had been treated differently from other convicted murderers petitioning for clemency. She spent weeks in the secretary of state’s office and archives recording every pardon and commutation granted to every Louisiana murderer since 1961, when I entered the system. She and Ted were shocked to see how little time many of them had served. Although ten years and six months had been the understood length of a life sentence for half a century, many murderers had been made eligible for parole after serving a third of that and were eligible to be discharged without parole after serving half of it. Linda found forty-eight executive clemencies granted to thirty-nine formerly condemned prisoners who had been freed since I entered prison in 1961. There were more than five hundred clemencies granted to murderers since 1961. None of those released had served as much time as I had.

  From Ron Wikberg, who used sheriff’s receipts, prison admission and discharge cards, and fingerprint cards in the prison’s Identification Department to identify the arrival and departure of lifers from the penitentiary, she learned that thirty-one convicted murderers had entered the gates of Angola in 1962, the year I arrived. Six carried death sentences; the other twenty-five, life sentences. All had been freed, except me.

  Since the bitter opposition to me was coming from Calcasieu Parish, Linda studied the history of murder convictions there. She discovered that up until at least 1976 (her cutoff date) Calcasieu Parish had sentenced to death every black man convicted of killing a white, the highest such rate ever documented in America. Whites who murdered whites received the death penalty 23.3 percent of the time; blacks who murdered blacks, 10.4 percent of the time. She discovered that those convicted murderers from Calcasieu who had been released from prison since 1961 had spent an average of twelve years behind bars; she also learned that no black convicted of murdering a white had ever been granted clemency and freed. At twenty-nine years and counting, I had been imprisoned longer than any offender in the recorded history of Calcasieu Parish.

  When Linda first told me what she had discovered, I bristled with resentment that I had been singled out for harsher treatment than all those who did little or nothing to earn a second chance but got it anyway. Then I reminded myself that the last twenty-nine years had been a gift: I was supposed to be a dead man but had escaped execution three times. The maturity that had come with age and education was also a gift. And I had learned that optimism, the only antidote to despair, is a choice we make. I had made it long ago, and it allowed me to live a reasonably happy and meaningful life in prison. True, my life over the past twenty-nine years had almost unbearably difficult moments—years, actually—but it was also rich with significant work, friends, and love that came to me from outside the gates. It wasn’t the free life that I craved, but it surely was better than the life I would have had on the streets if I had never gone to prison. Still, of course, I yearned for a normal life.

  Linda’s findings, based on the 101 murder convictions in Calcasieu Parish between 1889 and 1976, revealed blatant, institutionalized racism. Her exhaustive research changed the nature of the debate over me: It was now about “equal justice,” not “mercy.” She submitted “The Rideau Report,” eighty-three pages distilling her findings, to the governor’s executive counsel and the pardon board in advance of my hearing. The Institute of Human Relations of Loyola released the report to the media.

  I was once again optimistic about my chances for release. But we should have taken more seriously a comment by the governor a month earlier. In March, the Morning Advocate reported that Roemer was not yet convinced I should be freed; he intended to meet with bank teller Dora
McCain at my request and that of Reverend James Stovall. “I’ll see if that brings any change in my attitude,” said Roemer.

  I had made no such request. Nor had Reverend Stovall.

  As the pardon board convened on the afternoon of April 18, 1990, I heard on the radio that Roemer had met with McCain the day before and decided that he would not grant me clemency.

  At two o’clock, my supporters—clustered in the hall and the lunchroom at corrections headquarters—poured into the adjoining hearing room. As usual, I was not allowed to attend. Attorney Julian Murray, who was representing me pro bono, spoke first. He said the governor was quoted as having said that he had spoken with Dora McCain, and “after speaking with Mrs. McCain, that he felt that the crime was so heinous, and it was such a terrible crime, that he was not disposed as of that given moment in time to grant any type of commutation to Wilbert. I would respectfully suggest to the governor that he got the cart before the horse, because he has appointed this board to first hear the evidence, make the recommendation, and then in due course he has to make the ultimate decision.”

  He continued to press his point before the board: “What [the governor] has undertaken has been an extraordinary act within the history of this state … we have a government of laws, not of men. And it is not appropriate that Wilbert Rideau have his future and his fate determined by the feelings of one person [Dora McCain] …in this society we don’t allow victims to determine the punishment.”

  Rick Bryant, an assistant district attorney making his fourth appearance with Salter before the pardon board, suggested that my case had not been treated differently from others, emphasizing time and again that the Calcasieu Parish district attorney’s office opposed the release of all murderers, a statement we knew to be blatantly untrue.

  It was particularly ironic that on the day Salter and Bryant made the 250-mile round-trip from Lake Charles to fight to keep me in prison, the Lake Charles American Press ran an editorial about justice in the Calcasieu courts. It outlined the case of a white man, former Lake Charles Dock Board member Terry Hebert, who had killed two pedestrians—a black man and woman—while he was driving drunk. A white judge, Ellis Bond, refused to take a victims’ impact statement from the families and accepted Hebert’s “no contest” plea. At sentencing, Judge Bond said he believed Hebert would be more careful in his drinking in the future, “considering the agony he and his family had suffered as a result of hitting and killing his two victims.” Then he sentenced Hebert to two and a half years in prison, which he immediately suspended and replaced with six months in the local jail. Hebert was allowed to remain free on bond while appealing what his attorneys called an overly harsh sentence. Even the Lake Charles newspaper thought the sentence mocked justice. It was in this context that I read Bryant’s front-page statement about me in the same edition of the paper: “Nothing he could do would ever be sufficient for him to be released.”

  The annual Angola Rodeo draws thousands of tourists who pay to see convict “cowboys” in daring events. An inmate rides a bucking bronco.

  In “convict poker,” the last man to remain seated at the table rather than run away wins $100. Although injuries sometimes occur, they are rarely serious.

  With Ginger Roberts (later Berrigan) in 1979. She came to Angola to give legal pointers to the jailhouse lawyers. She became my first pro bono attorney, recruiting influential supporters and additional lawyers to try to win my release through clemency and the courts.

  Frank Blackburn, Angola warden, 1978–81 and 1984–87. He called The Angolite his “conscience.” Under him, the magazine won many honors for investigative journalism that exposed problems at the prison.

  In the past, inmates were buried in packing crates and pressed cardboard caskets by a crew of grave diggers. After inmate leaders appealed for change, funerals became meaningful events conducted by inmates and boasting prisoner-made caskets and a horse-driven carriage.

  With C. Paul Phelps, Angola warden, 1976, and Secretary of Corrections, 1976–81 and 1984–88. He taught me about friendship, civic responsibility, and moral obligation. Phelps turned The Angolite into the only uncensored prison publication in America because he thought it would help clean up the prison and improve inmate-employee relations—which it did.

  With the decline of furloughs and the loss of other incentives to encourage good behavior, Warden Hilton Butler instituted the outdoor visiting program for trusties who remained discipline-free for one year. They could relax with their visitors in a beautiful park on the prison grounds.

  Peggi Gresham, Angolite supervisor, 1976–85, was the best boss I ever had. The first female to become an assistant warden in the all-male prison, she commanded respect and cooperation from inmates and employees alike. Here she is with Angolite stringers Ashanti Witherspoon (left) and Woodrow Arthur.

  August 7, 1984: Timothy Baldwin (left), with attorney Bill Quigley, declared to the pardon board that he was innocent of the murder for which he was sentenced to death. The hearing was a charade, as the governor had secretly ordered the board to deny all requests from condemned prisoners. Like many others, Baldwin was returned to death row and executed.

  With Margery Hicks, member of the pardon board, in 1984. She told me about the fraudulent clemency hearings for death row prisoners and became my friend and advocate.

  Billy Sinclair (left), Angolite writer, later coeditor, 1977–86, with his longtime friend and supporter, prison food manager F. Berlin Hood. In a corrupt clemency system, Hood offered to act as middleman for Sinclair to purchase the freedom he was otherwise denied. In 1986, Sinclair initiated an FBI sting against Hood, who was arrested and convicted.

  Jane Bankston, the first mental health director for the Louisiana penal system, listens to Phelps and me. She recruited a staff of professionals and implemented meaningful programs for the treatment of mentally ill prisoners. She became a supporter and personal friend.

  Tommy Mason (bottom left) arrived at Angola in 1969, at age sixteen, with a life sentence for murder. He was a model prisoner, my associate editor, and, later, Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards’s personal valet. The governor freed him in 1987. A loyal friend, he returned to visit. Dr. Linda LaBranche (center), my unlikely knight in shining armor, saw me on TV in 1986 and spent the next two decades working to free me.

  March 10, 1988: My friend “Dot” Henderson arranged freedom for two rehabilitated lifers as a farewell gift to me as her tenure as Louisiana parole board chairwoman ended.

  Model prisoner and lifer James “Black Mattie” Robertson bids farewell to Warden Hilton Butler on July 10, 1989, after forty-one years at the prison. He was paroled following The Angolite’s profile of him as the state’s longest-confined prisoner.

  Larry Smith was the only black warden of Angola, 1989–90, and the right man for the times, bringing calm to the prison during a state of emergency. He expanded the freedoms Phelps put into place and approved my entry into radio production.

  John Whitley, Angola warden, 1990–95, dubbed “The Man Who Tamed Hell” by Time magazine, was one of Angola’s best wardens. With him as publisher, The Angolite enjoyed its heyday. He approved my becoming a correspondent for National Public Radio and my filmmaking as avenues to educate the public about the realities of prison.

  Members of Angola’s Vets Incarcerated honor their deceased brethren in the prison cemetery on Memorial Day. An estimated 10 percent of the nation’s prisoners are military veterans.

  Louisiana executioner “Sam Jones” killed twenty prisoners in this electric chair. Photographic evidence published in The Angolite showing the mutilation and burns inflicted upon the condemned helped facilitate the state’s switch to lethal injection. “Jones” talked himself out of a job when he gave us an interview.

  Ron Wikberg, my associate editor, married his sweetheart, Kay, upon his 1992 parole after serving twenty-three years for killing a man during a holdup. He was a nice guy and a brilliant jailhouse lawyer, who regarded his prison experience as “positive.” R
on and Kay met when he responded to her request for information.

  Prisoners meet women through friends and relatives, correspondence, and religious and civic functions at the prison. Some fall in love and marry in the prison chapel. Here, I’m attending the wedding of my associate editor Michael Glover (with a borrowed tie) and his bride, Debi.

  Burl Cain (left), Angola warden, 1995-present, and Richard Stalder, Louisiana corrections secretary, 1992–2008. They built an empire on the backs of prisoners, and Louisiana became the leading incarceration state in the country. Cain tolerated no criticism of him or his administration, and freedom from censorship became a thing of the past.

  An inmate “lawyer” interviews clients he will represent in disciplinary court. There are many self-taught jailhouse lawyers behind bars, but about fifty well-trained ones work in Angola’s Legal Programs Department as “counsel substitutes” to serve the legal needs of the inmate population.

  The Angolite changed constantly during my quarter-century editorship as writers were freed, quit, or died, and as successive administrations brought new supervisors and publishers. Here, with supervisor Dwayne McFatter (bottom), in January 1996: left to right, Lane Nelson, Michael Glover, Keith Elliott, me, Clarence Goodlow, and Douglas Dennis.

  With Antonio James, before his March I, 1996, execution for murder, which was the subject of my TV documentary “The Execution of Antonio James.” It won me awards, which Warden Cain kept, without even telling me about them.