WILBERT RIDEAU AND ALBERT WOODFOX
The crime of Wilbert Rideau was horrific, no matter how his supporters try to color it. On February 16, 1961 he robbed the Gulf South National Bank in Lake Charles, Louisiana; took three bank employees hostage (two female tellers and a male vice president); took the hostages to a remote area in Calcasieu Parish; grievously wounded two of the hostages as they tried to flee for their lives; and killed the third employee by stabbing her through the heart and cutting her throat. By Rideau’s own admission, it was a senseless, coldblooded, and methodical “hate crime” murder.
On April 17, 1972 a group of black inmates on the Big Yard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary walked into Pine 1 dormitory and stabbed a prison guard named Brent Miller 32 times killing him. Four inmates were arrested for the murder: Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, Chester “Noxema Black” Jackson, and Gilbert Montegut. Jackson took a plea deal to a lesser charge and Montegut was acquitted. Woodfox and Wallace were tried and convicted in a West Feliciana Parish courthouse and sentenced to life terms. They were placed in solitary confinement immediately after their arrest and have remained there since 1972, probably the longest period of time any inmates have been held in solitary confinement in American penal history. Serious doubts have been raised through the years about their convictions.
Between 1961 and 2000, Rideau’s murder conviction was reversed three times by federal courts: first, by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1962; second, by a U.S. District Court in Baton Rouge in 1969; and third, by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2000. In each of these reversals the federal courts bent over backwards to give Rideau the constitutional benefit of the doubt.
In 1992 Woodfox’s murder conviction was reversed by a state district court based on ineffective assistance of counsel. He was re-indicted in 1993.
In the wake of Rideau’s third reversal, the famed prison journalist was put to trial in Calcasieu Parish in January 2005 for a fourth time for the murder of Julia Ferguson. He had a “million dollar” defense team led by NAACP Legal Counsel George Kendall defending him. He was found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, sentenced to 21 years, and because he had already served more than enough time to discharge the sentence, he was released from custody.
Woodfox was retried for the murder of Brent Miller in December 1998. He was convicted and re-sentenced to life imprisonment. He was represented by a pro bono attorney.
The difference in the treatment of these two cases by the federal courts is striking. Wilbert Rideau during his 44-year incarceration in the Louisiana prison system was the “black darling” of the predominantly white liberal news media—continuously praised as an inmate who achieved incredible heights in the penal “rehabilitation” arena. He was hailed in the media, and recognized by some state and federal judges, as “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner.”
Albert Woodfox, on the other hand, was a seen by the mainstream media and the state’s legal system as a “black militant”—a dangerous member of the Black Panther Party who killed a white prison guard as part of a “revolutionary” act.
In 1999 a U.S. Magistrate named Christine Noland recommended that Rideau’s conviction be reversed and his life sentence set aside. U.S. District Court Judge Frank J. Polozola rejected Noland’s recommendation. Rideau appealed to the Fifth Circuit. A three-judge panel of that court in December 2000 reversed Polozola’s ruling and granted Rideau a new trial.
In 2008 Magistrate Noland recommended that Woodfox’s conviction be reversed and his life sentence set aside. U.S. District Court Judge James L. Brady accepted Noland’s recommendation and set aside Woodfox’s conviction and sentence. In June 2010 the Fifth Circuit reversed Brady’s ruling and reinstated Woodfox’s conviction and sentence in a 2-1 panel decision.
Both cases had major procedural legal hurdles to overcome in the federal courts: Rideau faced the fact that he had waited so long between his third conviction and his efforts to secure a fourth trial. The term coined at the federal level for this state inmate behavior is “delayed petition.” The former convict editor had in fact deliberately “delayed” his post-conviction efforts for at least two decades until he exhausted his clemency efforts before seeking a reversal of his conviction. As for Woodfox, he faced even greater procedural obstacles: he had to overcome the harsh effects of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 which make it virtually impossible for a state prisoner to secure a reversal of his conviction at the federal level. Rideau spent those two decades “delaying” as the “most privileged inmate” in American penal history while Woodfox spent the same two decades in a brutal solitary confinement trying to prove his innocence. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, as evidenced by the stark contrast of its rulings in each case, went out of its way to excuse Rideau’s delay while going to extraordinary lengths to hold Woodfox’s feet to the fires of AEDPA.
The irony and contrast of the two cases are stunning. Rideau was clearly guilty of the murder of Julia Ferguson while there have always been disturbing doubts about Woodfox’s guilt in the murder of Brent Miller. Rideau was not only embraced by the Louisiana prison system but given every opportunity to succeed in his rehabilitation efforts. Woodfox, on the other hand, was not only rejected by the Louisiana prison system from the very beginning as a “black militant” but was, and continues to be, brutalized by that system because of his perceived dangerous militancy.
If nothing else, these two cases illustrate that the historical notion of justice being blind and all people are treated equal under the law in this country is a myth. When an undeniably guilty individual is given preferential legal treatment over a potentially innocent one, then it cannot possibly be said that justice is blind and equal. In a nutshell, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals embraced Wilbert Rideau because he upheld the “values” of the criminal justice system while the court shunned Albert Woodfox because he challenged those same values at every turn. That’s why their cases were handled so differently by the court: rehabilitation over militancy.
