Deprivation on all fronts for so long now makes me want to acquire things. Linda helps me to shop wisely. Interwoven with our trips to large retail stores are visits to the St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store. Today’s resale stores—filled with Christian Dior, Perry Ellis, and Godchaux castoffs—bear no resemblance to the secondhand stores I recall from my childhood, where the merchandise was worn, in need of mending, or stained. One day shortly after my release, I bought several sport coats and two shirts for The cashier recognized me, pulled $11 out of her own purse, and told me to have a great day.
This kind of compassionate generosity takes me by surprise every time. Conditioned by the stories I’d heard from ex-cons who returned to Angola, either as part of a ministry or as recidivists, about the difficulties they faced returning to society and how they had to try to hide their prison past or face scorn and abuse, I expected the same. In fact, because of my high profile, I expected worse. But I am greeted cordially by both blacks and whites. In one store, a white saleslady has finished her shift and is leaving for the day when she comes over to shake my hand. “There are some good buys on sweaters on the table around the corner,” she says, palming me a $10 bill. Linda points out that $10 is a lot of money for a clerk who probably makes little more than minimum wage. When I’m waiting to pay for my sweater, a black man in line gives me $20 and says, “Man, have lunch on me.”
I relied on the compassion of strangers for decades as I sought my freedom, but on a day-to-day basis, I’ve been self-sufficient for a long time. Moreover, in Angola, I had real power. Whatever was available, if it wasn’t illegal, was mine if I wanted it. Out here, I have no power at all. I don’t control anything, and I have no resources. I lack basic and essential skills such as math and driving. Finding myself dependent on others in so many ways is a huge psychological shift for me. It makes me even more grateful for the smallest kindnesses that come my way.
But life is more than compassionate encounters. Having been out about a month and a half, I’ve called deputy warden Darrel Vannoy to see about picking up my possessions from Angola. He phones back, informing me that Burl Cain wants to use the occasion to gather inmate leaders from around the prison for me to talk to, to give them hope. He wants me to come on a Monday or Tuesday, when the visiting room is closed. I ask Vannoy if it would be okay to separate the two events so I can pick up my stuff now and return another time to talk to the fellows. He says that’s fine, and I ask if I can visit the Angolite offices and see my friends Lafayette Ballard, Calvin Duncan, and Sydney Deloch. He agrees.
We arrive at the prison by noon. My escort seems uncomfortable, though trying to hide it. It’s probably because a white woman is with me, and he assumes she’s either my wife or girlfriend. I introduce her as Dr. LaBranche, part of my defense team, and he seems a little more at ease.
Linda has never been into the bowels of Angola, so I’m describing what she’s seeing. As we enter the A-Building, I see the gates, the security cage, the visitors in the visiting room to the left, the inmates on the other side of the gate, and all of the prison atmosphere I had suppressed comes rushing back. I force myself to ignore it because inmates are waving at me, thrusting their hands out to me. I represent their dream, their most passionate ambition in life—to be free. I can’t fold here. We pass the cellblocks where men are being searched as they line up to go to the fields; they wave and yell hello. At the Main Prison Office complex, black inmates and officers alike come to shake my hand and congratulate me.
We visit with friends at the Angolite offices. I go into Douglas “Swede” Dennis’s office for an interview. Swede, who never committed a crime against free society, was thrown into a violent jail in 1957 on a charge of vagrancy and killed another inmate in a fight. For that, he was sent to Angola during its bloodiest days and killed a tough-ass who was gunning for him, an act one warden called a “public service.” I promise him that as soon as I get my life together, I will try to help him get out.
I’ve reached an agreement with the authorities that a classification officer will have permission to bring my forty banker’s boxes of files out of the prison for me. Guards bring my two metal footlockers from storage and snap them open with a bolt cutter. I take one pair of shoes and leave the remaining food and clothing for whoever wants them. We leave for the visiting room, where we meet Sydney, whose legal advice led to my habeas petition for a new trial. We tell him we will do whatever we can to help him win his own release. Lafayette comes into the visiting room next, and I tell him also that I will do what I can to help him win release; he has always claimed innocence, and the police or prosecutors years ago destroyed the DNA evidence that he says will prove it. (I would eventually find out that DNA evidence often goes missing.) We’re off then to Camp F to see Calvin. As we drive into the heart of the prison’s eighteen thousand acres, I am again amazed at the beauty of the countryside, which belies the misery contained here. I thank Calvin for his legal aid, which helped free me, and promise him help in return, too.
It’s 3:30 when we get back to the car. As we speed down the highway, leaving the prison increasingly behind, I feel relief, the tension falling away. Linda asks what it was like, going back.
“I am so glad to be out of that place—through with its madness,” I say.
The biggest pain in prison, I explain, is the way you are assaulted psychologically and emotionally, the way in which you are robbed of any dignity as a human being and told in countless ways that you don’t matter. Then there is the endless aggravation—the craziness, the madhouse atmosphere—that stems from stupidity ruling your world. People in supervisory positions in prison are often not selected on the basis of skill, experience, or ability, but because of politics or cronyism, which means that fools are often placed in positions of power. Stupid people tend to make stupid decisions and do stupid things, and it is this aspect of prison, compounded by the ignorance, childishness, self-destructiveness, irresponsibility, self-centeredness, and criminality of many prisoners, that makes daily prison life maddening. And stupidity takes no holiday; it is woven into the fabric of daily life. There is also the monotony, and the unparalleled boredom it breeds. Finally, there’s the emotional deprivation—never being genuinely bonded with anyone or anything.
When we return to Baton Rouge, I am relieved to be home. I finally understand the concept of home. I have a family of one human mate and three felines to whom I belong and who belong to me. I have no words to describe how wonderful this is. I eat and stare out at a couple of cardinals strutting their stuff while Willie B dozes at the bottom of the tree. I delight in this—trees, pets, the simplest of things—and wonder idly how possessing wealth could make this any better. Not that I expect wealth.
John Whitley and Dwayne McFatter arrive to pick me up for a lunch date. I haven’t seen the former warden and assistant warden since they testified at my trial. We go to a nice seafood restaurant beside a lake, where I am the only black. I realize that this is most often the case when I go out with friends. I find it ironic that I socialize almost entirely in a white world. But that’s because almost all the people who tried to get me out of prison were white. Many of them stuck by me for decades, rallying support for my clemency appeals, talking to governors, visiting me, doing whatever they could. Other than black officials within the penal system who supported my work and my clemency efforts—and Loyola University’s Ted Quant—I had almost no support from African Americans, outside the black Lake Charles community toward the end of my long struggle. I wasn’t alone in that. Most of the people involved in prison reform or battling against the death penalty, most of the lawyers and activists fighting either for individual prisoners or for fairness and equity in the pardon and parole processes in Louisiana, were white. With some exceptions, the blacks who came to the prison were ministers or gospel singers who played to a captive audience willing to have their souls saved if it meant a few hours’ relief from the tedium of prison life, followed by a good meal.
Whitley and McF
atter and I reminisce. They ask me how my new life is going. I tell them that, through my lawyers, I’ve heard from people from all over the world who wish me well, but that despite all my journalism awards and honors, I have yet to be offered a job. They express surprise at this. Like many others, my own family included, they think that my “celebrity” can automatically be translated into big bucks.
Personally, I’m not surprised at the lack of job offers. It would be a rare employer, TV station, or newspaper publisher who would be willing to hire a high-profile ex-con who has vocal detractors, some of whom may be their advertisers. I always knew I’d have to be self-employed. Most ex-cons try to hide their past for this very reason. But that’s not an option for me.
I wonder how Michael Anthony Williams will fare. He’s the lead story on the news tonight, exonerated by Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project after spending twenty-four years in Angola for a rape that DNA has conclusively determined he did not commit. He’s the ninth Louisiana prisoner freed from a wrongful conviction in the past two years. His parents died while he was in prison, and none of his six siblings has visited him in fifteen years. He went in at sixteen and, he is saying at his press conference, was sexually abused while guards turned their backs. He is justifiably proud of having survived his long struggle for vindication and freedom. He expresses the hope that he might be able to become an interior decorator. He smiles and shows the check for $10 that he received from the state upon his release to restart his life. Looking straight into the camera, determination filling his voice, Williams says, “But I’m gonna get a job.”
Williams is optimistic about his future, like most men getting out of prison. They get out intending to stay out. Society, however, does not necessarily see Williams’s imprisonment and ultimate vindication the same way he does. His triumph over tremendous odds is admirable, heroic even, but to many he will always be an ex-con above all else. His innocence doesn’t necessarily remove the stigma of having been in prison, of being “different” because of that cultural experience, in a way that diminishes his attractiveness to potential employers.
I’ve been ironing and now hand Linda her jeans, freshly pressed and creased. She rolls her eyes and smiles, as if I’ve done something magnificent and foolish. I do all the ironing around here, along with the laundry, the dishes, the sweeping, and fixing the bed in the morning. I’ve taken to domesticity. I love taking care of our things, our house, our yard. I can’t describe how happy I am just raking leaves or hauling garden soil.
It’s been two months since my release, and I’ve been floating along carefree on the goodwill and generosity of my friends and loved ones. I’ve spent my days blithely fascinated by Google and our goose-down comforter, bowl-you-over fuchsia azaleas, and quick-as-a-wink e-mails.
And now Judge Ritchie reenters my life. He charges me with court costs of nearly $127,000. He decrees that despite his having declared me indigent, I am to pay for the cost of my fourth trial, because it was I who requested it. The fact that I did so because I was serving an unconstitutional sentence flowing from an unconstitutional trial is apparently immaterial, as is the fact that I served forty-four years in prison on a sentence that was dischargeable in ten and a half. Nobody is talking about reimbursing me. In fact, in the wake of the judge’s order, someone writes to the Lake Charles newspaper and suggests that I should reimburse the state for the cost of my room and board all those extra years that they housed and fed me. The fact that no other criminal defendant in Louisiana history has ever been assessed the cost of his trial is not lost on Judge Ritchie. He simply asserts that he is not bound by what other judges have or have not done. He claims to have the power to make me pay for the salaries of the sheriff’s deputies who stood guard in the courtroom; the cost of transporting, housing, and feeding the jury that freed me; and the cost of putting him and his staff up at a nice Monroe hotel during jury selection and feeding them at the city’s best restaurants.
We note in our appeal of Judge Ritchie’s order that the only thing we’ve been able to turn up comparable in all of American jurisprudence was what happened in the immediate aftermath of Emancipation, when conscripted prisoners filled the need for lost slave labor in the South. A freed slave would be arrested for some minor offense like lingering and fined, say, $2; but then he would also be slapped with “court costs” beyond the ability of any freedman to pay, making him slave labor under another name.
Judge Ritchie is incensed at the implied comparison. He also expresses concern that I’m going to write a book, for big money. I have submitted a proposal to write my autobiography, hoping that the lessons I’ve learned over forty years in prison can be helpful in making people understand what it is really like. Maybe the judge doesn’t want me writing about Calcasieu Parish, about him, about Angola. A number of corrections officials, I was told, expressed surprise that I didn’t bash Louisiana or Angola during my appearance on Nightline after my release. Frankly, it amazed me that people thought I would be mean or spiteful, considering that I built my journalistic reputation on telling the truth, good or bad.
If Ritchie’s order is upheld, I wonder how I am going to contribute anything to the maintenance of our household. Linda has funded my freedom effort with her retirement savings and with the sacrificed years of employment that would have given her a pension. Now we are both without safety nets, and I realize that I don’t even have Social Security and Medicare to fall back on since all my working years were spent in Angola, and that doesn’t qualify you for those benefits.
I’m severely depressed for the first time as a free man.
“What are we going to do?” I ask Linda.
“What we’ve always done, Wilbert. Fight them. And in the meantime, take as much joy from life as we can, every day.”
I try to do this, but in the wee hours and at other moments I am overtaken by anxiety over our future. This goes on for months until one day an old friend, Meredith Eicher, invites me to a street concert downtown. Meredith’s mother, Elayn Hunt, was the first female director of corrections in Louisiana, in the 1970s. At the concert, she introduces me to Gary McKenzie, an attorney who specializes in bankruptcy law. Gary offers to file for bankruptcy for me to discharge Judge Ritchie’s $127,000 in court costs. We agree to it. Six months later I’m declared bankrupt and free of debt. I’m now apparently worth about $4,500, which I received as a settlement from Time magazine for the years they gave reprint permission for an essay I wrote for them. I contribute the money to household expenses and sleep better at night.
I’ve been invited to New York to address the board of directors of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, without whose help and resources I’d still be languishing in Angola. It is an important night, and Linda and I both work diligently on the speech I will give not only to thank them for what LDF did for me but also to try also to impress upon them that there is a great need for more legal assistance for people in prison, some innocent and others worthy of release. Thirty-six hours before we head to the airport, George Kendall calls with the news that Johnnie Cochran has just died of a brain tumor in Los Angeles. When I speak of Johnnie to his fellow board members and show them the EXPECT A MIRACLE pin he gave me, I am surprised that my voice disappears into a croak, and I cannot swallow back the tears that have come out of nowhere. I am embarrassed because I have trained myself for decades not to show emotion. A display like this would be regarded as weakness in prison, an invitation to trouble. Here, however, it seems cathartic for everyone, and no one appears to hold it against me. I hear myself say, “I can’t do this,” and a soft voice from the audience says, “Yes, you can—you can do it.” I stop for a moment to collect myself, then finish the speech.
Afterward, we meet up with my former partner in documentary filmmaking, Liz Garbus, who introduces me to her husband, Dan. It’s wonderful to see an old friend in a new setting, and like so many other longtime friends, Liz marvels that I am actually out of prison as I promised long ago I would be one day. It’s a thrill to be with f
riends who’d given up hope that I’d ever obtain my freedom. It restores their faith in miracles.
After dinner, out on the street, Dan shows me how to tie the tie I’ve been carrying around in my pocket all evening. At the hotel, I practice knotting and unknotting it for half an hour so I’ll remember how to do it.
The next morning when the wake-up call comes, I thank the operator. In turn, she says she hopes I’ll have a great day. “Well, thank you very much,” I say, impressed with the friendliness of these Big Apple folks.
“Who was that?” Linda asks. When I tell her, she breaks out in laughter.
“Mind telling me what’s so funny?”
“Sweetie!” she says. “That’s an automated system. You were conversing with a recorded message!”
“Well, hell, I didn’t know,” I say, laughing along with her.
I’m having the time of my life. I love New York—the grit and dazzle of Times Square, the grandeur of Grand Central Station, the solace of St. Paul’s Chapel across from Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers fell as I sat in jail watching, a world away. It’s a city to which Linda and I will return half a dozen times in my first year out, for various functions. At one, Barry Scheck presents me with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Champion of Justice Award for my quarter century of journalism about prison, and George Kendall is given a similar award in recognition of his heroic work. Julian has received comparable honors in Louisiana.
Wilbert Rideau Page 44