WILBERT RIDEAU ON CBS “SUNDAY MORNING”
To promote recently released memoir titled In The Place of Justice: A Story of Punishment and Deliverance (Random House 2010), Wilbert Rideau appeared on CBS’ Sunday Morning. The former prison journalist was interviewed by the network’s leading crime reporter, Erin Moriarty. I have in previous posts on this website reported about a legion of factual misrepresentations the famous journalist/author has inflicted on the public record—something he continued with in the Moriarty interview.
First, Rideau talked about the impact an article, “Conversations With The Dead,” published in The Angolite in 1978, had on other inmates. The compelling article, which featured one long-term inmate named “Cocky” who had spent 33 years in Angola at the time, garnered Rideau the 1979 American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award. Rideau told Moriarty that the article resulted in a lot of inmates being released, but quickly corrected himself to say a significant number of deserving inmates had been released because of the article. That was not true either.
The only inmate who benefited from the article was Cocky. His life sentence was reduced by the state’s pardon board to 99 years. Gov. Edwin Edwards signed the sentence reduction and the long term inmate was freed on parole. Rideau’s article triggered a New Orleans Times Picayune article about Cocky. That Picayune article had far more to do with Cocky’s commutation/parole release than “Conversations With The Dead.”
Through much of Edwards’ second term in office, between 1976 and 1980, the Picayune had published a series of investigative pieces that revealed the only inmates receiving executive clemency from the pardon board and the governor were those represented by the law firm of Alexandria attorney Camille Gravel, the governor’s “executive counsel” at the time, or those with other political connections to the governor.
Gov. Edwards did not release inmates because they either “deserved” it or because it was the “right thing” to do. The governor was repeatedly criticized by the media, especially the Picayune, and investigated by federal authorities, because of the political favoritism and corruption in his executive clemency process.
Edwards freed “Cocky” more to undercut the Picayune—because the newspaper had pointed out the “injustice” of Cocky’s long term incarceration—than because he believed the convicted murderer “deserved” to be released. Cocky was freed because the Picayune took up his cause (after the Angolite article) and Edwards wanted to send a message to the newspaper: that he didn’t release only those inmates with “connections” to the him.
Conservative Republican Dave Treen replaced Edwards as governor in 1980. There was a drought on clemency during his four years in office because the law-and-order governor had promised to end the “corruption” in the clemency process. Treen commuted only one life sentence during his four-year term in office: a convicted rapist on his last day in office. Ironically, the convicted rapist had personal ties to Treen’s pardon board chairwoman.
Rideau’s second misrepresentation was when he told Moriarty he was released from death row into Angola’s general population. That is not true either. He left death row in 1969 after his conviction was reversed a second time. He was convicted and sentenced to death following a third trial in Baton Rouge in June 1970. He was held in the parish jail until May of 1973 when his third conviction was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court but his death sentence vacated pursuant to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia in 1972, which effectively eliminated the death penalty in America. He was re-sentenced to life imprisonment shortly after the state supreme court decision. He was returned to Angola in early summer 1973. He was assigned to a dormitory on the prison’s Big Yard, the most violent section in the facility, but he became a trustee after a brief stint on the Big Yard. He became editor of The Angolite in 1976.
In response to a Moriarty question about why he had not been the target of homosexual rape, Rideau responded by saying other inmates did not mess with someone coming off “death row” because they were “dangerous.” Rideau was not “punk bait” because he was 31 years of age in 1973 and he quickly fell in the company of a number of other “lifers” who had social acceptance in the prison community. Rideau was no coward, but he was never considered “dangerous” because he had been on “death row.”
There is a flaw in Rideau’s character that makes the truth inadequate. He had to embellish the “impact” of “Conversations With The Dead” because it enhanced his status and power as a “prison journalist.” The truth is that the article indeed had impact: it not only created an awareness in the free world media about forgotten long term inmates but it earned Rideau a Silver Gavel Award. But that significant impact was just not enough. He had to misrepresent its impact by telling Moriarty it resulted in a significant number of other “deserving inmates” being set free. That did not happen.
As for the being so “dangerous” coming off “death row” thing, the truth is more compelling than a lie. Rideau was an intelligent, talented 31-year-old inmate who had the social skill set to put him self in a position to secure favorable attention from both influential inmates and prison officials that put him in a secure environment. He quickly moved from a job in the prison’s commissary to a job a clerk in the classification department. He published an article in Penthouse Magazine that garnered him a position writing a column (“The Jungle”) for a group of African-American newspapers. He then became editor of an in-house publication (even though he frequently misrepresented it as an “underground” publication) called The Lifer produced by an inmate self-help group, The Lifers. These 1974-75 writing successes were instrumental in his being named editor of The Angolite in 1976.
These skills are the reason why Rideau was not “punk bait” when he was placed in general population. Why isn’t that truth compelling enough? Perhaps he sees some benefit in having people see him as being so “dangerous” coming off “death row” that none of the other “dangerous” inmates would “mess” with him. Perhaps it enhances his professional stature. Only he knows why the truth is never quite enough to satisfy him.
