On February 16, 1961, 19-year-old Wilbert Rideau was arrested in connection with the killing of white female teller Julia Ferguson in the aftermath of a bank robbery in which two other white bank employees were wounded.

Calcasieu Parish Sheriff "Ham" Reid instructed the arresting officers to meet him 11 miles outside of town so that he himself could bring in the teenager. The public was kept abreast of developments through news bulletins aired on local radio and television. By the time Ham Reid reached the courthouse in Lake Charles, a white mob had gathered out front. To elude the angry crowd, he had to sneak Wilbert in through the back door.

The young black suspect was not asked if he wanted a lawyer or told that he had a right to an attorney. He was not allowed to see anyone, not even his mother, who had gone to the jail for that purpose. Sheriff Ham Reid held Wilbert incommunicado until he could arrange for the local television station to secretly film him "interviewing" the teenager. Flanked by two state troopers, the sheriff described the crime by posing leading questions to the young suspect, who mumbled answers in agreement. This spectacle, which has widely been called Wilbert Rideau's "confession," was televised to the Calcasieu Parish community for three days running on KPLC-TV.

At just this time, Louisiana was waging a war with the federal government to prevent integration of the public schools. White parents kept their children out of school in protest; the state legislature passed a bill to abolish public education and to sell the school buildings rather than integrate. Racial tensions were at an all time high.

Sheriff Reid's televised "interview" further inflamed the community. Wilbert's family was harassed by callers who promised to "give him the rope if he doesn't get the chair." White men, who sat drinking in parked cars across the street from the Rideau home in an all-black neighborhood, shook their fists and hurled insults at the household.

Wilbert Rideau was indicted on March 1, 1961, by a grand jury selected from a pool hand-picked by five white jury commissioners who sat around a table and thumbed through race-coded cards they'd made up for that purpose. The only African American picked for that jury pool was a yardman who worked for one of the commissioners.

After he was indicted and arraigned, the court appointed two attorneys engaged in the practice of civil law to represent the black teenager. Neither had ever handled a criminal case. They were given less than six weeks to prepare for trial. They asked that the trial be moved away from Calcasieu Parish because of the sheriff's "interview," which had been broadcast repeatedly to an enraged community. They argued that the entire community was prejudiced by the inflammatory publicity. The court refused to move the trial.

The trial courtroom was standing-room-only. Space usually reserved for attorneys was roped off for additional spectators. Nearly 450 white people crammed themselves into a courtroom designed to hold 300. They stood against the walls and in the aisles, and overflowed into the corridor. An all-white, all-male trial jury was picked. The judge refused to disqualify persons who were friends or relatives of the victim or the witnesses. He refused to disqualify a man who had only months before printed campaign literature for the prosecutor. The defense quickly used up its allotted challenges. As a result, the jury included two Calcasieu Parish sheriff's deputies, a relative of the victim, a vice president of the largest bank in the area (who had known the wounded bank manager-a key witness for the state-for twenty-five years), and three persons who admitted they saw Ham Reid "interviewing" Wilbert on television.

It's not clear from court records whose decision it was not to make a trial transcript. The reason given was that the Rideau family was indigent and could not pay for it. The two civil lawyers handling the defense were not aware that no transcript was being made until jury selection was well underway because the court stenographer sat in her place, as usual, even though she was not recording the proceedings. As the trial continued, the lawyers laboriously made longhand notes of their objections. Had they not, there would have been no record at all upon which to appeal the jury's verdict.

Wilbert's lawyers did not cross examine the key witnesses against him, challenge evidence, or present a defense. As soon as the state finished presenting its case, the defense rested. The jury retired for an hour and Wilbert was convicted of murder, which carried a mandatory sentence of death.

In 1963, the United States Supreme Court called Sheriff Ham Reid's televised interview of Wilbert Rideau a "spectacle." Justice Stewart, writing for the Court, called what happened in Calcasieu Parish "kangaroo court proceedings" that rendered any subsequent trial in a courtroom "a hollow formality." The Court threw out the murder conviction and said Wilbert could not be tried anywhere within the reach of KPLC-TV. [Rideau v. Louisiana, 373 US 723 (1963).]

In 1963, Louisiana law only permitted trials to be moved to an adjoining judicial district and no further. Because all the adjoining judicial districts fell within the broadcast range of KPLC-TV, the trial judge declared a judicial impasse, saying Wilbert could not be retried. The district attorney appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court, which basically suspended state law so that a retrial could go forward.

The district attorney insisted upon moving the 1964 retrial to Baton Rouge. The defense strenuously objected, both because KPLC-TV could be received in Baton Rouge and because there had been massive newspaper coverage of the case. Their objections were to no avail. During jury selection, the Baton Rouge DA, who was assisting the Calcasieu prosecutor, nonchalantly admitted that he was a member of the Citizens' Council, the genteel counterpart of the Ku Klux Klan. The second trial went pretty much the same as the first. A second all-white, all-male jury spent 15 minutes deliberating before convicting Wilbert of murder again.

That murder conviction was thrown out by a federal court in 1969. There was another trial in Baton Rouge in 1970. A third all-white, all-male jury "deliberated" for eight minutes before convicting Wilbert of murder. He was moved back to Death Row at Angola.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated all death sentences across America, saying that the way the death penalty was applied was capricious and unconstitutional. (Furman v. Georgia, 408 US 238.) Louisiana, instead of retrying those on Death Row, resentenced them to Life in prison. In May 1973, Wilbert Rideau was put into the general population of prisoners at Angola, which at that time was one of the most dangerous prisons in the country. Inmate cliques, sexual enslavement, and rifle-toting convict guards made violence a fact of daily life.

At this time, Louisiana had what was known as the "10-6" life sentence, meaning that lifers with clean conduct records were eligible for release after serving 10 years and six months. It was virtually automatic. Mr. Rideau had a spotless conduct record and a "10-6" date that had passed in mid-1971. He applied for a commutation of his sentence in 1974 and was turned down by the pardon board. The same thing happened in 1976. In 1979, according to the New York Times Magazine (11/18/80), Governor Edwin Edwards phoned a member of the pardon board known to favor clemency for Mr. Rideau and asked him to vote against the inmate, who had by now become a high-profile, award-winning journalist.

In 1984, 1986, 1988, and 1990, pardon boards recommended commuting Mr. Rideau's sentence so he could be released. A 1989 ABC-TV "20/20" investigation discovered that Edwin Edwards made a secret promise during an election campaign to the bank teller who had been wounded, saying that he would never release Wilbert Rideau, no matter what.

Governor Buddy Roemer denied clemency to Mr. Rideau in 1988 and 1990. In 1989, "20/20" asked him what more Wilbert Rideau could possibly do to "earn" clemency. This is what he said: "His only chance to overcome what he did is what he might propose he could do so that those kinds of crimes would happen less in the future, not more. Only he can address that." It was impossible for anyone familiar with Mr. Rideau's case to understand what Governor Roemer might have meant. Mr. Rideau had already spent more than a decade working with judges to deter kids from a life of crime.

In 1994, Wilbert Rideau filed a petition of habeas corpus in the U. S. Middle District Court for Louisiana, alleging racial discrimination in the way his grand jury was selected because the white commissioners used race-coded cards to pick anyone they wanted to sit on the grand jury panels. The case was assigned to a magistrate, who recommended in 1997 that the habeas be granted. In 1999, the chief judge overruled the magistrate and denied the habeas. On December 22, 2000, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overruled the Middle District judge, ruling that the state of Louisiana must retry Wilbert Rideau a fourth time or release him.

In 1988, the Shreveport Journal's editorial board wrote: "Numerous corrections officials - from every warden at Angola who has worked with Rideau to former Secretary of Corrections C. Paul Phelps - have said that if there is any prisoner in America who has been rehabilitated it is Wilbert Rideau, and that he is no threat to society. ... The average length of incarceration for a convicted murderer in the United States is roughly seven years. Rideau has served [many] times that long. This is a mockery of the corrections system because Rideau has done everything the judicial system asked of him and much more. ... His continued incarceration despite universal agreement of his rehabilitation is a black mark on the state's judicial system."

Now, the district attorney of Calcasieu Parish is saying he will retry Wilbert Rideau, who has already spent 40 years in prison - longer than any offender in the history of Calcasieu Parish.