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