DEFENDING SISTER HELEN PREJEAN
I have always known that Wilbert Rideau is an incurable psychopath. He is a remorseless, emotionless individual who has used his recently released memoir, In The Place of Justice (Random House 2010), to attack and demean people who have, in one way or another, stood in the way of his pursuit of power, fame and glory. The man’s ego is as insatiable as a shark’s hunger.
There have been personal and professional differences—some would call it “bad blood”—between me and Rideau for the past quarter century. My wife and I expected criticism from his memoir (a project that took five years to complete and subsidized by the Soros Foundation to the tune of $75,000). We were not disappointed when we saw the lion’s share of his literary wrath devoted to us.
But when I read some of the backhanded and pointed criticism Rideau directed at Sister Helen Prejean, the famed author of Dead Man Walking, I was incensed. Sister Helen has done more for inmates and the very sanctity of human life than Wilbert Rideau could ever hope to do over the span of a dozen lifetimes. The first reference he made to Sister Helen in his memoir was at page 172 when he called her a “naïve, fresh-faced Catholic nun” who was the spiritual advisor to a condemned inmate named Elmo Sonnier who was eventually executed by the State of Louisiana.
In 1991 inmates assigned to the welding shop at the Louisiana State Penitentiary were ordered to construct a gurney that would be used in lethal injection executions at the prison. The inmates refused. They were locked up. A significant number of other inmates staged a general strike in support of the inmates who had refused to built the death gurney. One of those inmates was Eddie Sonnier, the brother of Elmo who had been executed by the State of Louisiana. Sister Helen had also become Eddie’s spiritual advisor.
A number of anti-death penalty activists, including Sister Helen, announced a “demonstration” in support of the striking inmates. Representatives of the Southern Center for Human Rights threatened legal action against prison officials. Angola Warden John Whitley was not pleased by either prospect. Rideau quotes Whitley as asking: “What do you make of the nun?”
The question alone is so dismissive, so patronizing as to gag the proverbial maggot. More to the point, it implies a “warden/snitch” relationship between Whitley and the famed convict editor. And how did the famed convict editor, who never missed an opportunity to suck up to prison authorities, reply?
“Sister Prejean, like most activists, means well and wants to help the inmates, but she’s operating on half-baked information.”
Rideau added that he told Whitley that “some opportunist” had “gotten into her ear” and filled her head with this “half-baked information.”
That exchange between Rideau and Whitley underscore the very nature of the Rideau beast. He is an individual incapable of understanding why other people act on principle, not merely self-interest. Sister Helen was willing to stand on the front lines and lead what Rideau called a “demonstration” in support of the inmates who had refused to build the death gurney. Rideau couldn’t comprehend the principle. His only concern in his description of the chronology of events surrounding the strike was to return the prison to its “status quo” because that was in his interest, the interest of The Angolite, and the interest of Warden John Whitley (the “master” he was serving at the time).
Had Rideau been faced with the stark choice of building the gurney or going to the “hole,” he would have built the gurney. Since he’s incapable of understanding those people who act on principled beliefs (those who would not build the gurney), he must “spin” the events to make them appear as “activists” operating with “half-baked information.” In this particular episode, the target of his spin was Sister Helen—she was so “naïve” that she didn’t possess the intelligence to know that “some opportunist” had “gotten into her ear” and filled it with “half-baked information.”
It is utterly shameful that a man like Wilbert Rideau, who has been foisted off on the American public by a condescending news media as some sort of “prison expert,” can use his “memoir” to criticize the single most important anti-death penalty voice in America while the same news media embraces the criticism as an “informed” opinion by the famed prison journalist.
Did any news media representative read Rideau’s role in this “death gurney strike” episode? He portrays himself as a “lackey” to the prison administration. A journalist reports the news. He does not “break bread” with the warden to resolve a strike to make the warden look good at the expense of someone like Sister Helen. A prison publication, by its very nature and for the sake of its very survival, must engage in a lot of “kiss ass” journalism, but that does not mean its editors must be lackeys for the warden.
I would suggest that journalists like CNN’s Roland Martin and Associated Press’ Mary Foster and New York Times’ Dwight Garner either read for the first time or re-read Wilbert Rideau’s self-proclaimed role in the “death gurney strike” and ask themselves if that was the appropriate role for a journalist to play in a major news event.
