Wilbert Rideau

by In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment

  George’s wife, Tanya, saved his life on September II by asking him to drop their children, Hallie and Sela, off at school that morning, so he was running behind schedule. Had he been on time, he would have been getting coffee in the World Trade Center, as usual, as he passed from the train stop to the street, when the planes struck.

  A week after the attack, George was one of only ten people on his flight from New York to New Orleans, a testament to the public’s newfound fear of flying. A day before coming, he had finally been able to get into his office, six blocks from Ground Zero, to retrieve my case file. Going to court the next morning, I rode in a van with a young, white baby-killer chained up in the seat behind me. Hyper, almost happy, he beamed when we reached the courthouse and he saw the cameras: “Oh, we’re gonna be on TV!” Of course, the media wasn’t there for him, but for me.

  Days turned into weeks, then into months of constant court activity that seemed to eat up the calendar of my remaining life. Judge Canaday imposed a gag order in the case and refused to recuse himself despite indisputable evidence that his appointment was subject to manipulation. He saw his selection as a “harmless error” and set a January trial date. On appeal, the Louisiana Supreme Court ordered Canaday off the case and a new judge to be selected from a full hopper of seven bingo balls. That ruling marked the first time in forty years that the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in my favor on anything. I thought the ruling would get my case moving more quickly toward trial, but I was wrong.

  Life in the Calcasieu jail became even more difficult as opportunities for recreation virtually disappeared. When we did get out of our dorms, I’d jog around the track, which ran past windows of the solitary-confinement cells; from one window, a naked white woman made a point of counting off my laps to me, while from another, an agitated white man yelled “Nigra white boy” at me. In the wee hours of a Saturday morning, eleven new men assigned to the road crew that picked up paper and trash alongside the parish roads were transferred to my dorm, filling it up. The overcrowding was awful. Clothing now hung over everything, making the place gloomier and darker. It was noisier, too. The funk of unwashed bodies was inescapable.

  Several successful escapes caused authorities to curtail unnecessary movement by detainees, which didn’t help the atmosphere. The authorities knew that giving inmates an outlet for their mental and physical restlessness through movies or recreation helps maintain the stability and safety of an institution. But rather than confront grandstanding politicians, who influence the media and the public, they crumbled in the face of criticism, restricting or eliminating these outlets. That, of course, made their own jobs tougher and their workplace less safe, not to mention less humane for individuals awaiting trial, who had not yet been convicted of anything.

  The weather turned cold, and with flu season approaching, I asked for an immunizing injection, which I had received every year at Angola because of my history of chronic bronchitis and my age. The parish coroner, who came around once a month or so to look after the health needs of the detainees, denied my request. I was told that the only way I could get a shot was to have a private physician come into the jail to give me one. I asked Linda and George to see if they could find a doctor willing to do this—a black doctor, because I didn’t feel that I could trust any white person from Lake Charles to stick a needle into my arm. The proceedings in my case and the reports on them by the local media had reignited my paranoia about local white folks. Everywhere I looked—in the jail, in politics, in local society—I saw a rift along racial lines that I hadn’t seen anywhere else in decades. A black doctor volunteered to give me a flu shot and continuing care for the length of my stay.

  We had no heat. The floor crew told me it worked everywhere in the jail except our dorm. We just couldn’t warm up. Some men sewed caps out of the flimsy sweatshirts sold in the commissary, and I was able to buy one for some Bugler tobacco. I also scored a scanty cotton item that passes for a blanket and an extra sheet, which, when placed outside the blankets, keeps enough body heat in to warm you if you sleep in the paper-thin thermal underwear sold at the commissary under two sets of orange cotton jail scrubs, along with two pairs of socks.

  After a while, a trusty who worked in the clothing office got me a jacket, but it was too late. I had picked up a bug. I got my prescribed blood-pressure medication and baby aspirin from the nurse, but she had nothing to relieve my cold. She said the best she could do was to have me fill out a medical request form and pay $5, and she’d order me Sudafed through the medical process. By the time it arrived, my cold was gone.

  In December, a random selection brought Judge Wilford Carter to preside over my case. I thought once again that Divine Providence was intervening to give me a judge who, first and foremost, had the reputation of being independent of the prosecutor’s office, and second, was one of the two African American judges in the district. Within days of Carter’s appointment, Bryant filed a motion to recuse him on the grounds that sixteen years earlier, when he was a state representative representing a black district in Lake Charles, Carter had appeared before the 1986 pardon board at his constituents’ request to say that since other convicted murderers were routinely being freed on the grounds of rehabilitation, fairness dictated I should be freed as well, especially since my rehabilitation was universally acknowledged. The parade of thirty-five other witnesses appearing on my behalf amply proved his point. He told a Lake Charles television station: “We ought to have the same standard for everybody. We don’t do that in Louisiana…. We have one man who has been in prison longer than anybody else for the same crime under the same circumstances.”

  In his motion, Bryant accused Carter of working with Julian Murray in 1986 “to lobby for defendant’s release on the same charge for which he will stand trial,” and demanded, “What is to stop them from working together toward that goal today, when they are in ultimate positions to accomplish that goal—trial judge and defense attorney?”

  At a February 2002 hearing on the recusal, Carter addressed head-on the attack on his integrity—an assault that would have been unthinkable on any white Calcasieu Parish judge. He and Julian declared they had never met before that day and had never previously been in contact about me or anything else. Carter turned to chief felony prosecutor Wayne Frey, who was handling the recusal motion for the absent Rick Bryant:

  “Do you not think my oath of office would prevent me from collaborating with Mr. Murray? And if not that, that the laws of this state, which would make it a crime for me to communicate with Mr. Murray to get Mr. Rideau off, would? I would have to commit a crime; would you say that?”

  Frey responded, “I would think that you would, yes, sir.”

  Carter pressed forward: “What facts do you have to support such a statement, other than the fact that I appeared at the pardon board meeting sixteen years ago?”

  Frey said he had no other facts.

  Judge Carter refused to recuse himself, saying the state had presented no evidence to suggest that he was not and could not be impartial in his duties as judge and that absent such a showing, he had not only the right but the responsibility under law to stay on the case. Bryant appealed the ruling to the Third Circuit. The mainstream white media in Lake Charles slanted their coverage against Carter, referring to him as my advocate. The black community was up in arms at the raw attack on Carter’s integrity, but there was little that they could do. Lawrence Morrow ran editorials in Gumbeaux defending the judge. A white two-member majority of the Third Circuit panel, citing no law for their action, threw Carter off the case. We appealed to the state supreme court and waited some more.

  Reverend J. L. Franklin, the thirty-six-year-old pastor of the Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Fellowship Church in Lake Charles, helped to fill the months of inactivity in my case. He had visited me one day and asked if I’d like him to pray with me, even though he was certain I had many other religious and spiritual advisors who came. I told him that the only other religious person who had come was a pri
est who’d been sent by his superior, at my mother’s request. The priest told me that jail authorities gave the clergy a hassle when they came, so they didn’t come regularly as a general practice.

  Franklin and I hit it off immediately. He was a throwback to the ministers of the civil rights days, who took leadership on social and civic matters as part of their duty to their parishioners. He was deeply concerned about the poor quality of education in the black schools in Lake Charles and the indifference to it by the predominantly white school board. I urged him to run for a seat on the board in the upcoming elections. He knew nothing about politics, so I ran his campaign. We conferred during our weekly visits.

  Franklin ran on the theme that a good education is the best crime prevention and announced his candidacy in front of the jail. He pointed out that Louisiana spent only $5,200 a year to educate a child, claiming a lack of money, but could find $52,446 a year to incarcerate that child in one of its hellish juvenile prisons should he steal a $500 television. He told me that a white judge had pulled him aside and told him not to mix the issues of public education and juvenile justice. “I disagreed,” Franklin told me.

  Franklin unseated the entrenched incumbent and immediately began working to improve education in the underperforming schools of the parish, which happened to be predominantly black. He became vocal about other local social issues, most often those concerning racial division or racial inequities. He visited me two or three times a week to consult, and he came to call me “The Professor.” We became fast friends.

  The state supreme court refused to consider our appeal regarding Carter, so it was back to a random allotment, now accomplished by computer. It selected Judge Patricia Minaldi. My team learned about that from media reports.

  A transplant from Boston, Minaldi was reputed to be highly intelligent. She now lived in the overwhelmingly white, conservative enclave of Sulphur, Louisiana, and had ascended to the bench on a strident law-and-order platform. Because she had worked as one of Bryant’s prosecutors for a decade while my case was active, the law required her to step aside as judge. Julian sent her a letter requesting she do that without our having to file a motion to recuse her. (It was also rumored that she’d had an affair with Bryant, which some people thought still may have been ongoing.) After more than a month of silence, she denied the request and invited us to do whatever we felt we had to do.

  George and Linda had broadened their contacts in the law enforcement and legal communities of Lake Charles and New Orleans in order to learn more about the rumored affair between Minaldi and Bryant. Linda also pored through the Lake Charles American Press archives for every mention of Minaldi since her arrival in Calcasieu Parish.

  By August 2002 she had learned that Judge Minaldi was given an award by Crimefighters, a victims’ rights organization, whose Lake Charles chapter had come into existence with the express purpose of circulating a petition to stop me from ever leaving prison. At that time, the president of the chapter was Beth Lundy, now sheriff, who was then an employee of Bryant.

  “Because race is such an integral part of this case,” Linda said, “Minaldi’s acceptance of an award from Crimefighters is further grounds for us to call for her removal.”

  Linda had identified several members of Crimefighters’ board of directors who had ties to David Duke and white supremacist organizations and activities.

  “We’ll put it in our recusal motion,” said Linda, “and send the motion to the media and then hope they show up for the hearing. After all, Minaldi is rumored to be on a short list for a federal judgeship, which makes her of more than local interest. George decided it would be good to put Sheriff Lundy on the stand, since she’s the one who set up the Lake Charles chapter and gave Minaldi the award.”

  “You know,” I said, “Lundy is going to claim she didn’t know about Crimefighters’ affiliation with white supremacists. And so is Minaldi.”

  Linda laughed. “You think?” she asked mockingly. “How politically incompetent do you have to be to crawl in bed with someone without checking them out? Can you even imagine how Julian could shred them on the stand if they made such a claim?”

  “I see where you’re coming from,” I said. “Once we get either one in the witness box, it’s a no-win situation for them. If they knowingly embraced Crimefighters, they’ve married themselves to racists; if they say they didn’t know about the supremacists, they define themselves for their political adversaries as reckless and incompetent.” We just needed the media to cover it.

  We filed a motion to recuse Minaldi, claiming she should step aside because of her employment in the district attorney’s office while my case was active, because of the “close, personal relationship” between her and Bryant—which was, we said, an open secret in the Calcasieu Parish legal community—and because of the award she received from Crimefighters, given that the trial would require the presiding judge to rule on issues concerning race.

  On September 9, 2002, Minaldi held a brief hearing. An assistant district attorney asked the judge to hold my lawyers in contempt, claiming the language in our motion was “abusive and insulting and discourteous” to both Minaldi and Bryant, and vowed to seek sanctions with the Bar Association against them (he never did). Minaldi gave the state thirty days to file a response to our motion. She claimed that “there are things that are in this motion that are untrue and inaccurate,” but she also said, “because they might establish grounds for recusal… I will refer it out to another judge, and that judge will make all the decisions regarding the conduct of [the defense attorneys].”

  After the hearing, an incensed Rick Bryant went on the local FOX-TV affiliate and vehemently denied having had an affair with Minaldi—denying more than we had actually alleged—and insisted he would file an affidavit to that effect. An affidavit he eventually filed addressed only Minaldi’s employment in his office and made no denial of an affair or even a “close personal relationship” with her.

  That same afternoon, deputy clerk of court Jeanne Pugh, who had worked Minaldi’s hearing, randomly allotted a judge to hear the recusal motion. The computer selected Al Gray, the only African American judge in the district besides Wilford Carter.

  Chief Judge Fred Godwin, with no standing in my case, called Pugh to find out which judge would preside over the recusal hearing. That is when, apparently, the idea of a black judge hearing any kind of motion in my case caused more than a little concern in some quarters. Godwin talked with Bryant and then Minaldi. Then he instructed Pugh to undo the allotment of Gray, telling her that Minaldi intended to refer the case to another judge only after the district attorney filed his response to our motion. Neither the chief judge nor anyone else ever explained why, even if that were true, a random allotment that was to take effect thirty days hence had to be rescinded and later redone. Finally, the chief judge called Ron Ware and told him about his various conversations.

  The next day Godwin, with clearer eyes, told Pugh he was retracting his previous instructions to her. He said it was the clerk of court’s responsibility to make a determination concerning the allotment based on Judge Minaldi’s statements during the hearing. Pugh’s boss then withdrew the allotment “on his own authority.”

  This Keystone Kops routine would have been funny if the rest of my life were not at stake.

  Months passed and still there was no resolution from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as to whether Gray would be reinstated to hear the motion to recuse Minaldi. Over our objection, Judge Kent Savoie, a former prosecutor from Sulphur, was brought into the case. He set a hearing on our motions for February 13, 2003—my sixty-first birthday.

  George came down from New York, as he did nearly every month, for a brainstorming session before the hearing. He had taken about a dozen “John Doe” affidavits, mainly from persons in the legal community who had heard about the affair between Minaldi and Bryant, in some cases from one of the principals. After Minaldi was nominated for a federal judgeship in January 2003, some informants bega
n reaching out to the defense team. They wanted the protection of anonymous affidavits because they were afraid to anger either a sitting judge or the district attorney, two of the most powerful people in the parish. But if push came to shove, our John Does were willing to take the witness stand under a subpoena. We also put Bryant’s wife on our subpoena list.

  “I’ve talked to Julian and to Linda,” George said, looking across the table at Linda, “and we all agree that we need to bring Johnnie in now.”

  I had met Johnnie Cochran in 1999 after The Farm was nominated for an Academy Award. He came to my Angolite office to interview me for two hour-long segments on his television show. After the interviews, he gave me the pin off his lapel, which said EXPECT A MIRACLE, and told me that if I won a new trial, he’d be there for me.

  “I thought we were going to save him for trial,” I said.

  “The problem is,” said George, “if we get stuck with Minaldi, she’s too smart ever to let Johnnie come in as counsel. She’ll keep him out.”

  “How can she do that?” I asked.

  “He’s coming in as counsel pro hoc vice, like me, which only means that he’s not a member of the Louisiana bar but the court recognizes his credentials from other states and allows him into the case kind of like a guest. No judge has to permit someone with out-of-state credentials to practice in their courtroom. And Minaldi will realize immediately that Johnnie Cochran will rearrange the dynamics of media coverage of the case, meaning scrutiny of what is going on down here by outsiders rather than sanitation of their hijinks by the hometown cheerleaders at the American Press and KPLC-TV,” said George, referring to Lake Charles’s two main media outlets. “We’re going to sneak Johnnie into Lake Charles for the hearing on the thirteenth.”