Wilbert Rideau has served 44 years of a life sentence in a Lousiana Prison. During that time, he has become an acclaimed prison journalist, writing for the state penitentiary’s prison magazine, “The Angolite.”

Rideau arrived at the state prison at Angola at age 19 with an eighth-grade education and a death sentence. He taught himself to read and began writing while waiting for the electric chair. His sentence was changed to life in prison without parole in 1972, after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Louisiana's death penalty. Refused a job by whites at The Angolite prison magazine, Rideau founded The Lifer and began writing a weekly column for a group of black newspapers. In 1976, he was named editor of The Angolite and transformed it from a mimeographed newsletter into a slick magazine that has won a string of awards.

Under Rideau and Billy Wayne Sinclair, who became co-editor in 1978, the magazine won the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. The two also won the George Polk Award in 1979 for articles about homosexual rape and a killing in prison. The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and dozens of others have written glowing profiles of Rideau, as did Life magazine, which dubbed him "The Most Rehabilitated Prisoner in America."

His fourth retrial is currently taking place. It may wrap up today. His defense team is hoping for a conviction for manslaughter so that he can be released with time served. They are hoping the jury will agree the killing was the "chaotic act of a confused teenager" rather than a cold-blooded murderer. And they are making progress, according to all of the news accounts we've read.

This was a huge case in 1961 and resulted in a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 US 723 (1963)on prejudicial pre-trial publicity in which Justice Stewart, writing for the Court, called what happened to Wilbert in Calcasieu Parish, "kangaroo court proceedings." Local law enforcement made a recording of Rideau, "in jail, flanked by the sheriff and two state troopers, admitting in detail the commission of the robbery, kidnapping, and murder, in response to leading questions by the sheriff" which they then had played on television in the community.

The case now before us does not involve physical brutality. The kangaroo court proceedings in this case involved a more subtle but no less real deprivation of due process of law. Under our Constitution's guarantee of due process, a person accused of committing a crime is vouchsafed basic minimal rights. Among these are the right to counsel, 3 the right to plead not guilty, and the [373 U.S. 723, 727] right to be tried in a courtroom presided over by a judge. Yet in this case the people of Calcasieu Parish saw and heard, not once but three times, a "trial" of Rideau in a jail, presided over by a sheriff, where there was no lawyer to advise Rideau of his right to stand mute. The record shows that such a thing as this never took place before in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana.

For some statistics on the unequal justice accorded black murder defendants in Calasieu Parish, go here.

At trial Friday, Rideau's mother took the stand and described the atmosphere in Louisiana at the time of the crime:

Wilbert Rideau's defense portrays Lake Charles in 1961 as a hotbed of racism... a segregated community where blacks and whites didn't mix and one in which a black man's killing of a white woman inflamed the white community.

Wilbert Rideau's mother, Gladys Simien, took the stand to help her son. She says deputies brought her to the jail where there was a crowd of angry white men who were, in her words, "...cursing, saying they were going to hang that n*gger and kill him and shoot him."

The jury heard similar testimony from another witness.

As well, the jury hears from Jackie Lewis who was 14 years old and says after learning of Rideau's arrest, her father and others felt it necessary to protect their families' lives and property. Lewis says "My father got a gun I never knew he even owned and our neighborhood was overrun by people filled with hatred and violence and wanting to wreak havoc on the African-American community. There were crosses burned on Brick Street. There were crosses burned on Iowa Street in about a three block area. If one black committed a crime then we all committed a crime and we all should pay."

In addition, the forensic evidence came under attack when forensic expert Werner Spitz testified:

Gruesome details of how Wilbert Rideau fatally stabbed Ferguson and kidnapped her and two other bank employees have long been part of the crime’s story. Defense lawyer believe the details have helped harden opinion against him and keep him imprisoned.

...Dr. Werner Spitz said the cut on Julia Ferguson’s neck was “superficial” and appeared to be from a medical tracheotomy, based on photographs taken the night she died.

Wilbert Rideau has served more time in prison than any offender in history of Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana:

In 1988, the Shreveport Journal's editorial board wrote: "Numerous corrections officials - from every warden at Angola who has worked with Rideau to former Secretary of Corrections C. Paul Phelps - have said that if there is any prisoner in America who has been rehabilitated it is Wilbert Rideau, and that he is no threat to society. ... The average length of incarceration for a convicted murderer in the United States is roughly seven years. Rideau has served [many] times that long. This is a mockery of the corrections system because Rideau has done everything the judicial system asked of him and much more. ... His continued incarceration despite universal agreement of his rehabilitation is a black mark on the state's judicial system."

Yet the District Attorney has insisted on trying him again.

Wilbert's impressive resume is here. You can read about his case here. Some of his writings are available here. The 2000 decision of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordering Wilbert freed or retried is here.