Өмір бойы сотталған журналист: Уилберт Райдоның тарихы

American convicted killer and author

Wilbert Rideau (born February 13, 1942) is an American convicted killer and former death row inmate from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who became an author and award winning journalist while held for 44 years at Angola Prison. Rideau was convicted in 1961 of first degree murder of Julia Ferguson in the course of a bank robbery that year, and sentenced to death. He was held in solitary confinement on death row, pending execution. After the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that states had to rework their death penalty statutes because of constitutional concerns, the Louisiana Court judicially amended his sentence in 1972 to life in prison. During his 12 years on death row, Rideau had begun to educate himself, by reading numerous books. After being returned to the general prison population, from 1975 Rideau served for more than 20 years as editor of The Angolite, the magazine written and published by prisoners at Louisiana State Prison (Angola); he was the first African American editor of any prison newspaper in the United States. Under his leadership, the magazine won the George Polk Award and Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for its reporting, and it was nominated for others. Rideau appealed his case four times. The Supreme Court of the United States and lower courts ordered a total of three new trials; SCOTUS overturned his conviction and ordered a new trial because of adverse pre trial publicity. He was convicted again of murder two more times, in 1964 and 1970, each time by all male, all white juries. He served more than 40 years in the State Penitentiary; parole was never approved. In 2005 Rideau was tried a fourth time. He was unanimously convicted by the jury of the lesser charge of manslaughter; they did not believe he had planned the killing. Rideau was sentenced to the maximum of 21 years; as he had already served nearly 44 years, he was freed. A Life magazine article in March 1993 referred to Rideau as "the most rehabilitated prisoner in America." He has written several books and edited compilations of articles. He participated in making two documentaries, including The Farm: Angola, USA (1998), about the lives of six men at Angola, including himself. It was drawn from his memoir Life Sentences (1992) and much of the film was made at the prison.

Wilbert Rideau was born in Louisiana in 1942. When he was six, his family moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana (a city in Calcasieu Parish in the west of the state. It is about 30 miles from the Texas border). He attended racially segregated public schools, according to state law: Second Ward Elementary School in the lower grades, and starting at W. O. Boston High School when he was in eighth grade. He soon started skipping classes. At 13, Rideau got a job at a grocery store and stopped going to school before finishing ninth grade. He became involved in petty crime. Rideau was 19 when he committed an armed bank robbery in Lake Charles in 1961. He forced three white workers into a car and drove away with them as hostages. In the course of their trying to escape, Rideau fatally shot and stabbed bank teller Julia Ferguson and wounded another teller and the manager. The survivors testified to Rideau's guilt, noting that Rideau first shot Ferguson and then plunged a knife into the woman's chest. The two other bank employees survived by pretending to be dead.

Before Rideau was arraigned, a local television news station, KPLC TV, filmed his being interviewed by the parish sheriff at the jail. Rideau responded to leading questions and admitted to killing teller Julia Ferguson in the course of a robbery. He did not appear to know he was being filmed, and he was without counsel. This material was broadcast three times in Calcasieu Parish, exposing a large part of the population to the interview and confession before Rideau was arraigned or taken to trial. The defense requested a change of venue because of possible influence of the broadcast on potential jury members, which the court denied. Rideau was tried in 1961 before an all male, all white jury. At this time, blacks in Louisiana were still largely disenfranchised: excluded from voting, they were also excluded from juries and political office. He was convicted in less than an hour of first degree murder in the death of teller Julia Ferguson. The jury included "two deputy sheriffs, a cousin of the dead victim and a bank vice president who knew the wounded manager". The court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial. The District Attorney of Calcasieu Parish, Frank Salter, Jr., reindicted Rideau for the killing of Ferguson. In 1964 another all male, all white jury quickly convicted Rideau again of first degree murder. That conviction was overturned by appeal, and Rideau was tried a third time in 1970.

Rideau's criminal case reached the Supreme Court on appeal. In Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 U. S. 723 (1963), the court made a landmark ruling related to the effects of adverse pre trial publicity and the refusal of the court to agree to a change of venue, which it ruled was a denial of due process of law for the defendant. The Court overturned Rideau's 1961 conviction because of the repeated broadcasts by the local television station of the sheriff's "interview" with Rideau in jail, and with no counsel. The Court said this resulted in "Kangaroo Court proceedings" and a kind of public trial in the media before his case ever reached court. In addition, the Parish Court had refused the defense attorney's request for a change of venue. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial. Rideau was retried by the Parish District Attorney for first degree murder in 1964 and again convicted. After another appeal because of errors, he was retried in 1970; each of those convictions for first degree murder were also by all male, all white juries. The Lake Charles, Louisiana, community divided largely along racial lines for four decades over the Rideau case. The parole board had repeatedly recommended he be given parole, but two Louisiana governors declined to approve it, largely due to strong local pressure from whites in Calcasieu Parish. Rideau had always admitted robbing the bank, fleeing with hostage employees, and killing one of them. Attorneys in the final trial presented two versions of these events. The prosecution held that Rideau used premeditation to line up his victims before shooting them, and that Ferguson had begged for her life. The defense said that Rideau had panicked and reacted impulsively first, when a phone call interrupted the robbery, and then when hostage Dora McCain jumped from the get away car and ran, followed by the other two employees. He said that Rideau killed in panic rather than by premeditation. The defense urged a verdict of manslaughter. The jury unanimously convicted Rideau of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to the maximum of 21 years. As Rideau had already served more than twice that long, he was immediately freed.

In the early 1970s, Rideau wrote a column, "The Jungle", for a chain of black weeklies in Louisiana. and Penthouse. A headline referred to him as "The Wordman of Angola", saying "Rideau is Angola Penitentiary's Birdman of Alcatraz. He is a prisoner who has transformed the dark, drab, terror filled life of prison into a greenhouse for the flowering of his talent." Rideau had not gone beyond the ninth grade in his formal education before his arrest and incarceration. He educated himself by extensive reading while in prison. In 1975, a federal court ordered the Angola prison to be reformed, the result of a civil suit by the ACLU because of the high level of violence and abuse of prisoner rights. The consent decree required the prison to institute desegregation of programs and work assignments. The outgoing warden appointed Rideau as editor of The Angolite; he was the first African American editor of any prison journal in the United States. The incoming warden ratified the choice and, with a handshake, gave Rideau freedom from censorship. This warden's progressive administration supported the nation's only uncensored prison publication. In 1979, Rideau and co editor Billy Sinclair won the George Polk Award for the articles "The Other Side of Murder" and "Prison: The Sexual Jungle". In addition, the magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award, The Angolite was the first prison publication ever to be nominated for a National Magazine Award, and it was nominated seven times. Rideau and co editor Ron Wikberg were named "Person of the Week" for their journalism on Peter Jennings's World News Tonight in August 1992. Wikberg was the Angolite associate editor from 1988 to 1992 (he was paroled that year). He died in October 1994. It won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was shortlisted for the British CWA Gold Dagger prize for non fiction. With Ron Wikberg, associate editor, Rideau edited The Wall Is Strong: Corrections in Louisiana (1991), used as a textbook. This textbook was a compilation of magazine and newspaper articles, and papers from the Center for Criminal Justice Research of University of Southwestern Louisiana. About half of the book's articles were first published in The Angolite. Rideau and Wikberg collaborated on the book with Professor Burk Foster of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Rideau and Wikberg also collaborated on Life Sentences: Rage and Survival Behind Bars, a 1992 anthology of articles from The Angolite. It was published in 1992 by Times Books, a subsidiary of Random House, but went out of print. He collaborated on creating and producing two documentary films, Final Judgment: The Execution of Antonio James (1996), directed and produced by filmmakers Jonathan Stack and Elizabeth Garbus, and The Farm: Angola, USA (1998), directed by the same pair, with credit also to Rideau. The latter drew from Life Sentences, the book which he and the late Ron Wikberg had edited together. The Farm won an Emmy Award and several others, as well as being as nominated for an Academy Award.

Mother Jones said in 2010 that "a mix of racial politics and tough on crime posturing blocked [Rideau's] release for more than three decades", even though several LSP wardens had said that Rideau was completely rehabilitated. The parole board recommended parole for him, but two governors declined to approve it. Many local people in Calcasieu Parish opposed any parole for him. Rideau remained incarcerated through the mid 1990s, while other inmates with similar sentences were paroled in this period. An investigation by 20/20 revealed statements by Governor of Louisiana Edwin Edwards, who said that he believed that Rideau was rehabilitated, but that he would not release him "under any circumstances'. Rideau said that governors did not advocate for his release because he had become "a political football" due to his appeals and retrials. He believed that it would be difficult for any prisoner in Louisiana to be released from prison.

In 2008 Rideau married Linda LaBranche, a former college professor who had become one of his supporters years before. In 2009, he co directed and was included in the documentary The Farm: 10 Down (2009), Jonathan Stack's follow up to the survivors among the six men he had featured in his earlier film on Angola. Rideau was the only one among them to have left the prison alive. Since his release, Rideau has continued to write. He published a memoir, In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (2010), about his years at Angola. He has frequently been asked to speak about his experiences, and his work to rehabilitate himself while in prison. In 2011 Rideau was one of the invited speakers at the Newark Peace Education Summit in Newark, New Jersey. In April of that year, he was invited to the Roosevelt Hotel to receive the George Polk Award for journalism and give a long overdue speech. He had won the journalism award in 1980 for a series of essays titled The Sexual Jungle, which he published in The Angolite when he was still in prison.