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Wilbert Rideau

January 15, 2005

Justice Prevails In Louisiana: Rideau Is Free

(Lake Charles, LA) Wilbert Rideau, acclaimed as America's most rehabilitated prisoner, walked out of a Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish jail today, a free man after 44 years of incarceration and four trials for killing a white female bank teller in 1961. The verdict was delivered by a jury of ten women and two men (four of whom were Black) selected and transported to Lake Charles for the trial from the Northeastern Louisiana city of Monroe (because of intense pre-trial publicity in Lake Charles). All three previous death sentence convictions were delivered by all-white, all-male juries from Calcasieu Parish, and overturned by federal courts as unconstitutional.

"This was not a case about innocence," said Theodore M. Shaw, Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). "It was about fairness and redemption--fairness, because even the guilty are entitled to a trial untainted by racial discrimination and misconduct, and redemption, because in a real sense the teenager who committed the tragic crime died while incarcerated for 44 years and was reborn as the man who paid the price and struggled for redemption. Wilbert Rideau's case goes to the core of the nature of our criminal justice system--to issues of fairness, punishment and rehabilitation."

LDF has represented Rideau since 1998 and won the December 2000 ruling by a federal appeals court, which found that purposeful racial discrimination had tainted the grand jury process for his third trial. The State of Louisiana was ordered either to free Rideau or retry him in a constitutional manner. It opted to retry him for a fourth time.

"We are overjoyed that this jury finally saw the truth in this case and issued a just verdict that was responsive to the facts and embodied the reality of what happened on February 16, 1961," said LDF Assistant Counsel Vanita Gupta.

Upon his release, an emotional Rideau expressed "remorse and deep sympathy to the families of the victims and the community of Calcasieu for their suffering," regrets that he has not been allowed to personally deliver for the past four decades.

Rideau was 19 years old at the time he was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white male jury for the 1961 killing of a white female bank teller following a bank robbery, a crime that he has never denied committing. The United States Supreme Court overturned his conviction, calling the trial proceedings a kangaroo court because the trial court refused to move the trial after the sheriff allowed a local television station to secretly record an interrogation session and repeatedly air the tape on the evening news. The local news station in the months leading up to this trial again repeatedly broadcast the same tape.

In 1969, a federal court overturned a second conviction and death sentence returned by an all-white male jury because the prosecution unnecessarily removed numerous qualified jurors who said they would be hesitant --- but not completely unwilling --- to impose the death penalty. In 1973, Rideau's third death sentence, from his 1970 retrial, was overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court after the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down the death penalty as then administered in this country, in Furman v. Georgia, a case won by LDF attorneys.

While incarcerated in one of America's toughest prisons, Rideau educated himself, and became an award-winning journalist, documentary filmmaker, and model prisoner. For 25 years he was the editor of the Angolite, the official news magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he earned it a national reputation. In 1993, Life Magazine declared Rideau "The Most Rehabilitated Prisoner in America." He was often released by Louisiana prison officials to participate in public discussions and even appeared on national television with the late U.S. Chief Justice Warren Burger.

"We felt a great sense of responsibility in this case because had we lost and Rideau returned to prison, the inescapable message to those incarcerated was that whatever you do, it doesn't matter," said George Kendall, lead counsel from the New York law firm Holland and Knight. "We thought that if we could free Rideau, it would provide hope for those in prison who genuinely work to redeem themselves."

In the time that Rideau has been incarcerated, more than 700 other prisoners convicted of murder have been released from Angola State Prison. Many did not serve as much as 20 years in prison, and only a handful has served more than 30.

Today's jury found Rideau guilty of manslaughter and not murder, which permitted his immediate release for time served. The maximum sentence for a manslaughter conviction in Louisiana is 21 years. A murder conviction would have allowed the State to continue his incarceration for the rest of his life.

Rideau was represented at trial by former LDF Assistant Counsel George Kendall, now with Holland and Knight; Julian Murray, one of Louisiana's top defense attorneys; Ron Ware, local counsel and Calcasieu Parish's public defender; LDF Assistant Counsel Vanita Gupta; and Parisa Dehghani-Tafti of Holland and Knight. LDF board member Johnnie Cochran, Jr. was also counsel on the case.