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incarceration

On ‘In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance’

06/02/10

By Amy Bach

In the Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance
by Wilbert Rideau
Knopf

At one time, Wilbert Rideau was America’s most famous inmate.  While serving a life sentence for murder in Louisiana, Rideau became a journalist and editor of the prison magazine, The Angolite. He won honors for stories that exposed systemic brutality of prison life; in one issue, Rideau printed post-execution pictures of a deceased inmate so horrifying they prompted the state to switch from the electric chair to lethal injection. He appeared on Nightline and he worked on a film that was nominated for an Academy Award. And Life magazine ran a story and called him “the most rehabilitated man in America.” 

But the more successful he became, the harder citizens in the Lake Charles community fought to oppose his parole. I couldn’t figure out why Rideau, unlike others who’d committed similar crimes, stirred such fierce community sentiment. I visited Lake Charles in 2002 and wrote a The Nation magazine piece about Rideau and why he, unlike others who committed a violent crime in the 1960s, couldn’t get past the parole board.

Clearly race played a big part in keeping Rideau behind bars. Rideau’s victim was white -- and a woman. The prosecutors painted Rideau as a sociopath lacking the capacity for empathy. Sure, they conceded, Rideau was smart and savvy. But what type of man would rob a bank, line up his three hostages, shoot them execution-style, and then go on to slash one woman’s throat to the point of decapitation? 

I tried to get Rideau’s version of the crime he committed and interviewed him several times on the phone. Rideau said he couldn’t share any details. It would hurt his case, which was then set for trial, for the fourth time, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.  

I wrote my piece without Rideau’s side of the story. But I always wondered about him. He was philosophical on the phone. And I wanted to hear his version of what happened on the night of the murder. When In the Place of Justice arrived, I tore into it. Was Rideau a sociopath? Or was Lake Charles over-punishing him for the color of his skin and his newfound success? 

Certainly Rideau is, as the prosecutors said, savvy. As Rideau tells it, prison provided an excellent venue in which to test his writing, cunning, and political abilities. It is fascinating to read as he gains the trust and it seems genuine affection from a rich range of people including a federal judge, fellow inmates and many journalists. He acquires power in a context of utter subjugation. 

The heroes of this book are, surprisingly and in large part, prison wardens – people like C. Paul Phelps who, according to Rideau, tap him to educate him about the prison system. “You’ve demonstrated in your writing that you understand this world better than most,” Phelps says to him in one of many accolades Rideau describes.  Warden Phelps’ trust prevents Rideau from launching a plan to escape. It also results in a complete lack of censorship, which becomes a metaphor for freedom. Another warden, Ross Maggio, Jr., takes over when Phelps is promoted. Rideau continues to flourish and becomes, as he says, a “kind of an unofficial ombudsman for the prison, solving many inmate problems through low-level prison officials.”  Rideau advocates for the mentally ill who are given arduous fieldwork; as result of Rideau’s protests, these inmates are relieved of their labor. “Unlike the lives of those who labored at difficult or mindless jobs, mine was determined rather by the events, intrigues, and problems of the day.”  

The inner maneuverings of prison life – the slippery dealings that govern an unruly population: this is what interests Rideau most. In the Place of Justice reads, at times, like a business memoir. Rideau recounts, for example, the way in which he created an all black newsmagazine in prison. And, after prison officials offer him a job editing The Angolite, a historically white publication, Rideau chose instead to serve as the editor’s underling rather than shift the power structure too quickly.  (Ultimately, of course, Rideau, took over).  

Rideau’s chronicle is peppered with excerpts from his own writing. And Rideau can really write. I re-read one section about witnessing a rape again. I won’t forget it.

What the book is not is a revelation of the process by which a troubled man comes to grips with what he has done. One could easily imagine the book starting out with an expression of remorse.  Rideau begins instead with the words “Kill that nigger,” words troopers used to excite dogs that pursued Rideau after the murder.  The opening words set the tone for a book about a racist community which convicted Rideau of cold-blooded murder (a crime of intent) rather than manslaughter (a crime committed in the heat of passion) and carried a lesser, capped sentence. 

On his side were the nation’s greatest attorneys, including Johnny Cochran who appears in Lake Charles as a surprise member of team, and George Kendall, an endlessly creative advocate. At trial, the defense team says Rideau was an impulsive and confused teenager who’d grown up in racially oppressive community. In 1961, standing and waiting for a bus in Lake Charles was enough to incite abuse and threats from white passerby. Rideau decided to rob the bank so he could escape Lake Charles; he ended up with three hostages whom, he said, he hoped to release in the country side; but they tried to flee, so he panicked, and shot haphazardly at them.  Rideau says that when one of the victims, Julia Ferguson roused herself after she’d fallen to the ground, “I ran to her and I stabbed her.” Autopsy photos make it clear the stabbing was not a decapitation but a one-inch cut. “There was no rhyme or reason for what I did,” Rideau testified. “But I was scared to death.”  

The jury found Rideau’s story compelling and found him guilty of manslaughter, not murder. Rideau had already served the maximum sentence for manslaughter – 21 years – more than twice over. He was released in 2005 on Martin Luther King’s birthday.

Throughout the book, Rideau voices remorse for the family of the woman he killed; often, however, he mentions remorse in the context of his own destruction, his own losses. It is not until the very end when he moves in with his girlfriend (now wife) Linda LaBranche, a Shakespearean scholar who becomes his life-saving paralegal, that Rideau evinces any real awareness of what victim Julia Ferguson’s family must have suffered.  Rideau writes that when Linda’s cat dies she is “beyond the consolation of human words of kindness. Grief and loss define her. I think back forty-five years to the suffering, the sorrow I inflicted on Julia Ferguson’s loved ones and ask God, again, to forgive me.”  It’s almost as if – until this moment – he hadn’t had a glimpse of what it meant to lose a child. 

But maybe this is the point. When we treat people as if they have no humanity, they remain in war-mode, unable to truly bond with others. Or appreciate anyone’s heartbreak but his own. The miracle is that people do change in such an undignified context. It’s a lesson “free” people often forget. Even in prison, things change. So do people. Wilbert Rideau’s story reminds us of this in a most remarkable way.  

Amy Bach’s book Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court (Metropolitan) was awarded the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 2010.

Tags: Amy Bach, civil rights, crime, In the Place of Justice, incarceration, Prison reform, Wilbert Rideau, Book Briefs

Rift? What Rift?

04/22/10

by Jonathan Hafetz
co-editor, The Guantanamo Lawyers: Inside a Prison Outside the Law (NYU Press)

Hafetz looks at news of reported rift in US counter-terror policy:

The New York Times recently reported on a “deep divide” on counter-terrorism policy among senior Obama administration lawyers. But while there may be some disagreement at the margins, the real story is the absence of any real division on the most fundamental issues surrounding Guantánamo and U.S. detention policy. In fact, if accurate, the recent news of a “rift” actually suggests a troubling consensus on continuing essential components of Bush’s post-9/11 policies.

President Obama has taken some significant steps in the right direction. Upon taking office, he announced that he was ordering the closure of the Guantánamo detention center within a year. That followed his inaugural address in which he told the American people that, “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.” Last April, in an important speech at the National Archives, Obama reminded the country that “the existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained.” President Obama also, upon taking office, took steps to ban torture. Together, these moves suggested Obama saw a clear contrast between Bush’s lawless “war on terrorism” and his new, rights-respecting approach to national security.

But, despite these actions, the president’s policies today have produced little actual change. A year after Obama announced he would close Guantanamo, the base remains open and there is no date scheduled for its closure. And while there is no indication that the administration intends to abandon that goal, it plans to continue to hold detainees indefinitely without charge or trial, including on American soil at a prison in Illinois. The Obama administration also continues to defend the extrajudicial detention of hundreds of prisoners at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. These prisoners include people seized in Afghanistan as well as prisoners collected in faraway locales – like Thailand – that officials brought to Bagram specifically so as to avoid habeas corpus review. The result: prisoners are held at Bagram, for years, without access to justice or a court, either U.S. or Afghan.

The administration plans to prosecute some detainees in a second-class system of military commissions rather than in the federal criminal courts. Indeed, the administration suggests it may retreat from its earlier decision to prosecute Khaled Sheikh Mohammed  -- and four other Guantánamo detainees accused in the  9/11 attacks -- in federal court, even though these courts have, on hundreds of occasions, successfully handled terrorism-related cases without sacrificing due process rights or endangering national security. Such a reversal would represent a catastrophic setback for the rule of law and U.S. security.

To date, no senior lawyers in the Obama administration appear to have questioned the decision to subject suspected terrorists to indefinite military detention or to limit such detention power to a specific country in which U.S. forces are engaged in hostilities. The changes that have been implemented so far have mostly been cosmetic. The government now calls detainees “unprivileged belligerents,” and not “enemy combatants.” Current debate centers on tweaking the contours of the government’s military detention authority: Can an individual be detained indefinitely merely for providing support to al Qaeda?  Or, must that support be such that it constitutes “membership” in the organization (whatever “membership” may mean in this context)? Should the asserted justifications for this sweeping new detention power rely on international law even though it does not support it? Worse, some media have reported the administration is paying close attention to proposals from Senator Lindsey Graham that would contemplate instituting indefinite detention policies as part of a political deal to close Guantánamo. This could expand the government’s detention powers in radical and dangerous ways and also make them permanent.

In short, there appears to be a consensus among administration lawyers that the Bush policy of military detention without trial for terrorism suspects captured far from any battlefield should be extended; the “debate,” such as it, concerns solely what legal rationale should be advanced in support of that policy.

Meanwhile, the “war paradigm” from which so many of the evils of Guantánamo flowed -- prolonged arbitrary detention, abusive interrogations, and excessive secrecy -- remains; so too does unprecedented executive power that threatens core constitutional safeguards. The administration—and the nation—gain nothing by trying to fix Guantánamo or recreate Guantánamo in the United States by moving prisoners there to Thomson, Illinois, or another location inside the country. Guantánamo is predicated on the assumption that the United States can and should detain indefinitely people whom it suspects may be dangerous without charging such people with any crime, even if they were picked up far from any active battlefield. This assumption violates the essence of its legal tradition embodied in the Bill of Rights.

Obama inherited a colossal mess. No question about that. And the efforts he has put forth -- like those to close Guantánamo -- have been met with significant obstacles both from within his administration and from Congress. But the administration must not fall victim to these obstacles or to political pressure to continue illegal policies like indefinite detention. It must adhere to constitutional principles and the rule of law, and that means reconstructing files and prosecuting -- in federal criminal courts -- cases in which there is reliable evidence, and repatriating or sending to safe havens detainees against whom no credible evidence exists. That is how a democracy functions.

It is time to turn the page on policies that have been an enormous detriment to our country in terms of our standing in the world, our commitment to upholding our values, and our security. So if reports of a “divide” within the administration meant officials were fighting for these principles, this would be a “divide” worth having. And a fight worth winning. So far though, there is no indication any one is fighting this fight.

Jonathan Hafetz is a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union and Co-editor, The Guantanamo Lawyers - Inside a Prison/Outside the Law (NYU Press). 

Tags: Executive Power, incarceration, Jonathan Hafetz, justice, Summary Judgment, Barack Obama