Prosecutor to Appeal Ruling on Journalist

A prosecutor in Lake Charles, La., vowed to retry award-winning jailhouse journalist Wilbert Rideau, 58, to keep him in prison for the 1961 murder of a bank teller. Rideau’s conviction for abducting and killing bank teller Julia Ferguson was overturned last week by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said blacks had been improperly excluded from the grand jury that indicted Rideau, who is black. The 20-member jury had only one black member. Dist. Atty. Rick Bryant said that he would ask for a rehearing by the full appeals court and that, if he loses, he will go to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the highest court rules against him, he would have two options: retry Rideau or allow him to be set free.