Prison Journalist May Be Freed

A federal appeals court threw out the murder conviction of an award-winning prison magazine editor on Friday, saying the grand jury that indicted him in 1961 violated the Constitution by excluding blacks from the panel.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that Wilbert Rideau must be freed if he is not retried within a reasonable period of time.

Rideau, who is black, was 19 when he was convicted by a nearly all-white jury of killing a bank teller. In nearly four decades at Angola’s Louisiana State Penitentiary, Rideau has seen his death sentence overturned, received the coveted Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for editing the Angolite prison magazine, and gleaned an Oscar nomination for co-directing a 1998 film on Angola called “The Farm.”

Also during those years, parole boards have recommended Rideau for parole three times, only to be turned down by a series of Louisiana governors. Of 31 murderers sentenced to death or life in prison at Angola in 1962, only Rideau has not been released, according to the Rideau Project, a nonprofit group associated with Loyola University’s Twomey Center for Peace Through Justice.

“Mr. Rideau has made it very clear for a long time that he wants no special treatment,” said George Kendall, an NAACP attorney who represents Rideau. But, Kendall said, “he has paid his debt to society. He has distinguished himself as no other prisoner has.”

The three-member panel of appeals court judges ordered U.S. District Judge Frank Polozola to release Rideau if he is not retried. On Friday, Calcasieu Parish District Atty. Rick Bryant had not read the ruling yet, but he planned to petition the U.S. Supreme Court, a spokesman said.

Rideau long ago confessed to fatally stabbing bank teller Julia Ferguson in a Lake Charles holdup. After stealing $14,000, he had forced Ferguson and two other employees into a car, driving them to a desolate bayou. All three knew Rideau and begged him for mercy. Instead, he lined them up and shot them. Then he stabbed Ferguson in the heart and slit her throat. The other woman, also a bank teller, feigned death and survived. The lone man in the group, the branch manager, managed to escape despite his arm wound.

Although Rideau never denied his role in the murder, his lawyers protested the circumstances around his trial: a widely televised pretrial interrogation by the parish sheriff and indictment by a 20-member grand jury that included only one black person. Rideau received the death penalty.

In all, Rideau was tried three times for the murder, his first two death sentences overturned because of pretrial publicity and improper jury selection. He was again sentenced to death after a third trial, but in 1972, his death sentence was commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court abolished capital punishment.

In recent years, Rideau has launched new appeals of his conviction, arguing that the grand jury that indicted him had systematically excluded blacks. Last year, in a courtroom filled with Rideau supporters, including clergy, civil rights activists and academics, Judge Polozola rejected the inmate’s bid for a new trial.

But Rideau attorney Julian Murray appealed the ruling, and the federal appeals court supported him. “Rideau’s conviction must be reversed and his unconstitutionally obtained indictment quashed,” the court said.

During the years he believed he was going to be executed, Rideau, who had little formal education, taught himself to read and write. A prison warden recognized his talents and made him editor of the formerly whites-only Angolite newspaper. Under Rideau’s stewardship, it became a glossy magazine, produced in a sophisticated computer room and showered with honors and free-world journalism awards.

In the magazine, Rideau has published accounts of prison rape, pardon peddling, and the spiritual and emotional battles of inmates in a prison once famous for its brutality.

Rideau has also written several books, including the 1992 “Life Sentences,” which attracted the attention of New York filmmakers Liz Garbus and Jonathan Stack. In 1998, they and Rideau co-directed “The Farm,” a documentary tracing the experiences of six Angola prisoners either facing death or the rest of their lives in the system. The film was nominated for an Academy Award, which catapulted Rideau to national attention and brought Warden Burl Cain to Los Angeles for the awards ceremony.

Rideau, 58, was “delighted” Friday by the ruling and hoped it would result in freedom, attorney Kendall reported.

“He’s still young enough and still got his health,” Kendall said. “He could likely get employment as a writer and has a few more books in him. He writes like an angel and has great insight into the workings of correctional institutions.”