Amazing: This monster murders a 19 year old girl and you Liberals turn him into a cause celebre for "black rights". Don't you Liberals understand anything anymore? Surely there was a time when we all understood that vermin like this should at least be put away forever.
And the left-wing wonders why normal decent Americans don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Freed After 44 Years, a Prison Journalist Looks Back and Ahead
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 17, 2005
Wilbert Rideau, an acclaimed prison journalist and confessed killer, walked out of the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles, La., a free man on Saturday night after serving 44 years for stabbing a bank teller through the heart in 1961.
In Mr. Rideau's fourth trial for the killing, a jury on Saturday found him not guilty of murder, which would have resulted in a life sentence. Instead, the jury convicted him of manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years, effectively freeing him.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Rideau, 62, said he had wasted no time in leaving Lake Charles, a racially divided city near the Texas border tAat remains fiercely split about whether he has paid his debt for the killing or whether he should have been executed long ago.
"The first thing I did when we left Lake Charles was stop and get some sun shades," Mr. Rideau said cheerfully over the phone, suggesting that he needed to disguise himself. "I should get a baseball cap, too."
Three all-white juries sentenced him to death for the killing in 1961, 1964 and 1970. All three convictions were overturned by appeals courts for government misconduct. The last conviction was thrown out in 2000 when a federal appeals court ruled that the exclusion of blacks from the grand jury that indicted Mr. Rideau was unconstitutional.
"The first trial, I think, the decision was in eight minutes," said Mr. Rideau, who is black. "This time, we had only one white male."
The latest jury, which also contained seven white women, two black women, a woman of mixed race and a black man, was from Monroe, in northern Louisiana, in deference to the tensions in Lake Charles.
"They came from one of the most conservative regions of Louisiana," Mr. Rideau said. "We had some nervousness about that. These things happened 44 years ago, before many of them were even born."
This time, the jury deliberated for five and a half hours, returning with a verdict at 10:40 on Saturday night.
Rick Bryant, the Calcasieu Parish district attorney, said the jury had ignored the evidence.
"The verdict makes no sense," he said yesterday. "It's a subtle jury-nullification type of thing. The jury basically said, there is still a conviction and he's done a lot of time."
Mr. Rideau has never denied that he robbed a Gulf National Bank branch in Lake Charles on Feb. 16, 1961, that he kidnapped three white employees of the bank or that he shot them on a gravel lane near a bayou on the edge of town. Two of the employees survived, one by jumping into the swamp, the other by feigning death. But Mr. Rideau caught and killed Julia Ferguson, a teller, stabbing in her in the heart.
The two sides at the trial last week agreed on those basic facts. They differed about whether the killing was part of a calculated plan or the result of a bank robbery gone awry committed by a hapless 19-year-old.
"I've been saying for 44 years that, yes, I'm responsible," Mr. Rideau said yesterday. "But it didn't happen the way they said it. They said I lined them up execution-style. The evidence never supported that. Between the local media and the legal system, though, they pretty much did what they wanted. A lot of what the community thought, through hand-me-down word of mouth, never really happened."
Mr. Rideau testified in his own defense, a potentially risky move given his acknowledged responsibility for the crime. But George H. Kendall, one of Mr. Rideau's lawyers, said the testimony was crucial.
"The state's narrative was a very simple, understandable narrative," Mr. Kendall said. "We had to have an alternative narrative, and the only way we could get that out was through our client."
Mr. Rideau said his initial plan was to lock up the employees at the bank and take a bus out of town with the $14,000 he had stolen. When that was foiled by an ill-timed phone call from the bank's main branch, he said, he came up with a second plan. He would drive the employees far out of town in a teller's car and escape as they walked back. But they jumped from the car before he could accomplish that, and he started shooting.
(Page 2 of 2)
"If I had intended to kill those people, eliminate witnesses, I would have done it right there in the bank," Mr. Rideau testified on Thursday, according to The Associated Press. "It never entered my mind that I was going to hurt anybody."
Theodore M. Shaw, the director-counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which also represented Mr. Rideau, said he found it hard to reconcile Mr. Rideau's crime with the thoughtful and accomplished man he has become.
"I've never lost sight of the fact that when Wilbert was 19 he did something incredibly stupid and tragic," Mr. Shaw said. "On the other hand, he's not the man he was then. It's a story of redemption."
Mr. Shaw pointed to Mr. Rideau's journalistic work as proof of his transformation. As editor of The Angolite, a prison newspaper, Mr. Rideau won the George Polk Award, one of journalism's highest honors. "The Farm: Angola, U.S.A.," a documentary he co-directed, was nominated for an Academy Award.
Mr. Bryant, the prosecutor, said Mr. Rideau's achievements were irrelevant. "Rideau's actions were driven by greed," Mr. Bryant said, referring to the robbery. "It's not like he's been some sort of civil rights pioneer. He's a crook."
Mr. Bryant said the prosecution had been at a disadvantage throughout the trial.
"It's very difficult to try a case that's 44 years old," he said. "We had 13 witnesses who were unavailable, including the two eyewitnesses, and we had to present them by reading transcripts." One of the survivors of the crime died in 1988, and the other was too ill to attend the trial.
Mr. Rideau said yesterday that he had not dared make plans for what he would do as a free man. The pardon board recommended clemency four times, he said, but governors rejected each recommendation.
"When you've been turned down and ridden that hope train for so long and keep getting knocked back," he said, "you stop making plans."
He declined to say where he planned to live. "Undisclosed location," he said.
Then he started to collect his thoughts.
"I'll be 63 in about three more weeks," he said. "I'm walking around in sweatpants. Most people my age are retired, and I have no health insurance, no pension, no Social Security. I've got to start producing. I've got to get a job. I'd like to write. I've got so much to say. I'm going to continue, to the extent that I can, to be a journalist."
And the left-wing wonders why normal decent Americans don't want anything to do with them anymore.
Freed After 44 Years, a Prison Journalist Looks Back and Ahead
By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 17, 2005
Wilbert Rideau, an acclaimed prison journalist and confessed killer, walked out of the Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles, La., a free man on Saturday night after serving 44 years for stabbing a bank teller through the heart in 1961.
In Mr. Rideau's fourth trial for the killing, a jury on Saturday found him not guilty of murder, which would have resulted in a life sentence. Instead, the jury convicted him of manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 21 years, effectively freeing him.
In an interview yesterday, Mr. Rideau, 62, said he had wasted no time in leaving Lake Charles, a racially divided city near the Texas border tAat remains fiercely split about whether he has paid his debt for the killing or whether he should have been executed long ago.
"The first thing I did when we left Lake Charles was stop and get some sun shades," Mr. Rideau said cheerfully over the phone, suggesting that he needed to disguise himself. "I should get a baseball cap, too."
Three all-white juries sentenced him to death for the killing in 1961, 1964 and 1970. All three convictions were overturned by appeals courts for government misconduct. The last conviction was thrown out in 2000 when a federal appeals court ruled that the exclusion of blacks from the grand jury that indicted Mr. Rideau was unconstitutional.
"The first trial, I think, the decision was in eight minutes," said Mr. Rideau, who is black. "This time, we had only one white male."
The latest jury, which also contained seven white women, two black women, a woman of mixed race and a black man, was from Monroe, in northern Louisiana, in deference to the tensions in Lake Charles.
"They came from one of the most conservative regions of Louisiana," Mr. Rideau said. "We had some nervousness about that. These things happened 44 years ago, before many of them were even born."
This time, the jury deliberated for five and a half hours, returning with a verdict at 10:40 on Saturday night.
Rick Bryant, the Calcasieu Parish district attorney, said the jury had ignored the evidence.
"The verdict makes no sense," he said yesterday. "It's a subtle jury-nullification type of thing. The jury basically said, there is still a conviction and he's done a lot of time."
Mr. Rideau has never denied that he robbed a Gulf National Bank branch in Lake Charles on Feb. 16, 1961, that he kidnapped three white employees of the bank or that he shot them on a gravel lane near a bayou on the edge of town. Two of the employees survived, one by jumping into the swamp, the other by feigning death. But Mr. Rideau caught and killed Julia Ferguson, a teller, stabbing in her in the heart.
The two sides at the trial last week agreed on those basic facts. They differed about whether the killing was part of a calculated plan or the result of a bank robbery gone awry committed by a hapless 19-year-old.
"I've been saying for 44 years that, yes, I'm responsible," Mr. Rideau said yesterday. "But it didn't happen the way they said it. They said I lined them up execution-style. The evidence never supported that. Between the local media and the legal system, though, they pretty much did what they wanted. A lot of what the community thought, through hand-me-down word of mouth, never really happened."
Mr. Rideau testified in his own defense, a potentially risky move given his acknowledged responsibility for the crime. But George H. Kendall, one of Mr. Rideau's lawyers, said the testimony was crucial.
"The state's narrative was a very simple, understandable narrative," Mr. Kendall said. "We had to have an alternative narrative, and the only way we could get that out was through our client."
Mr. Rideau said his initial plan was to lock up the employees at the bank and take a bus out of town with the $14,000 he had stolen. When that was foiled by an ill-timed phone call from the bank's main branch, he said, he came up with a second plan. He would drive the employees far out of town in a teller's car and escape as they walked back. But they jumped from the car before he could accomplish that, and he started shooting.
(Page 2 of 2)
"If I had intended to kill those people, eliminate witnesses, I would have done it right there in the bank," Mr. Rideau testified on Thursday, according to The Associated Press. "It never entered my mind that I was going to hurt anybody."
Theodore M. Shaw, the director-counsel of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which also represented Mr. Rideau, said he found it hard to reconcile Mr. Rideau's crime with the thoughtful and accomplished man he has become.
"I've never lost sight of the fact that when Wilbert was 19 he did something incredibly stupid and tragic," Mr. Shaw said. "On the other hand, he's not the man he was then. It's a story of redemption."
Mr. Shaw pointed to Mr. Rideau's journalistic work as proof of his transformation. As editor of The Angolite, a prison newspaper, Mr. Rideau won the George Polk Award, one of journalism's highest honors. "The Farm: Angola, U.S.A.," a documentary he co-directed, was nominated for an Academy Award.
Mr. Bryant, the prosecutor, said Mr. Rideau's achievements were irrelevant. "Rideau's actions were driven by greed," Mr. Bryant said, referring to the robbery. "It's not like he's been some sort of civil rights pioneer. He's a crook."
Mr. Bryant said the prosecution had been at a disadvantage throughout the trial.
"It's very difficult to try a case that's 44 years old," he said. "We had 13 witnesses who were unavailable, including the two eyewitnesses, and we had to present them by reading transcripts." One of the survivors of the crime died in 1988, and the other was too ill to attend the trial.
Mr. Rideau said yesterday that he had not dared make plans for what he would do as a free man. The pardon board recommended clemency four times, he said, but governors rejected each recommendation.
"When you've been turned down and ridden that hope train for so long and keep getting knocked back," he said, "you stop making plans."
He declined to say where he planned to live. "Undisclosed location," he said.
Then he started to collect his thoughts.
"I'll be 63 in about three more weeks," he said. "I'm walking around in sweatpants. Most people my age are retired, and I have no health insurance, no pension, no Social Security. I've got to start producing. I've got to get a job. I'd like to write. I've got so much to say. I'm going to continue, to the extent that I can, to be a journalist."
