Wilbert Rideau, former Louisiana Death-Sentenced Prisoner, is Honored for Extraordinary Journalism During 44 Years at Angola Prison

On April 12, 2024, Long Island University cel­e­brat­ed the 2023 George Polk Awards in Journalism, hon­or­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists and rec­og­niz­ing six­teen for­mer win­ners, includ­ing for­mer­ly death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Wilbert Rideau. Mr. Rideau spent forty-four years incar­cer­at­ed in Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary where he cre­at­ed The Lifer, one of the first Black prison peri­od­i­cals. Sentenced to death in 1961 at age nine­teen, Mr. Rideau spent twelve years on death row before the United States Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia (1972), which struck down Louisiana’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment scheme. Mr. Rideau was resen­tenced to life in prison and moved to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion. Once there, Mr. Rideau tried and failed to get a job at The Angolite, an all-white prison mag­a­zine, and instead cre­at­ed The Lifer. Mr. Rideau also wrote as a free­lance jour­nal­ist for local news­pa­pers and mag­a­zines. In 1976, ​“reformist” offi­cial C. Paul Phelps took over as Angola Prison’s new war­den and named Mr. Rideau as The Angolite​’s new edi­tor. “[Mr.] Phelps felt there was a role for free­dom of expres­sion and jour­nal­ism in prison,” said Mr. Rideau. ​“Censorship, and keep­ing every­thing a secret, was coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to changings things.”

As the edi­tor of The Angolite, Mr. Rideau pro­duced a rich body of writ­ing from behind prison walls and proved a vibrant uncen­sored mag­a­zine was a pos­i­tive force in the prison set­ting. Mr. Rideau was giv­en unre­strict­ed access to phone lines, cam­eras, and tape recorders, and was giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave prison with unarmed escorts to inter­view indi­vid­u­als around the state and vis­it news­pa­per con­ven­tions. The Angolite gained nation­al recog­ni­tion for its report­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly after pub­lish­ing ​“Prison: The Sexual Jungle,” which described the sex­u­al vio­lence expe­ri­enced by pris­on­ers at the hands of oth­er pris­on­ers in Angola. In this piece, Mr. Rideau wrote that ​“the act of rape in the ultra­m­as­cu­line world of prison con­sti­tutes the ulti­mate humil­i­a­tion vis­it­ed upon the male.” In a recent inter­view, Mr. Rideau told The New Yorker that his goal was part­ly ​“to human­ize every­body in prison, whether it’s our­selves or the guards. Because that is part of the big­ger prob­lem: peo­ple in the streets did not see us as nor­mal, breath­ing human beings, like themselves.”

Sentenced to death just eight weeks after the crime in ques­tion, Mr. Rideau would ulti­mate­ly have three tri­als — all with juries con­sist­ing of twelve white men — all of which end­ed in death sen­tences. At his first tri­al, the jury returned a death ver­dict in an hour, but the Supreme Court over­turned his sen­tence, call­ing the pro­ceed­ings a ​“kan­ga­roo court.” In 1964, anoth­er all-white male jury returned a guilty ver­dict after fif­teen min­utes of delib­er­a­tion, once again sen­tenc­ing Mr. Rideau to death. Six years lat­er, a fed­er­al court threw out this death sen­tence, but anoth­er jury of twelve white men found Mr. Rideau guilty after just eight min­utes of delib­er­a­tion. ​“Three juries with all white men, in a state where half the peo­ple are women, and a third of the pop­u­la­tion was Black. That was jus­tice back then.”

With the sup­port and legal advo­ca­cy of Linda LaBranche, the woman who even­tu­al­ly became his wife, Mr. Rideau received a new tri­al after a fed­er­al court ruled the orig­i­nal indict­ment was flawed. In 2005, at his fourth and final tri­al, a jury con­sist­ing of one white man, one Black man, and ten white women, deter­mined Mr. Rideau’s case did not con­sti­tute mur­der. The jury found Mr. Rideau guilty of manslaugh­ter and sen­tenced him to twen­ty-one years in prison. Having been incar­cer­at­ed since the 60s, Mr. Rideau was imme­di­ate­ly released. Reflecting on his release and incar­cer­a­tion, Mr. Rideau reit­er­at­ed to The New Yorker the impor­tance of his rela­tion­ship with for­mer war­den Phelps. ​“Of all the peo­ple in my life, except my moth­er, I can­not imag­ine any­one who had a greater impact on the course of my life and the per­son I became than him,” Mr. Rideau said. In clos­ing, he also empha­sized the impor­tance of prison author­i­ties in cre­at­ing change. ​“Sell them on this idea, man! I mean, you can write this sto­ry about me and the award, but give cred­it to this thing that hap­pened, that has nev­er hap­pened since. Sell it to these war­dens who are going to be read­ing this. If it doesn’t ben­e­fit you, maybe it’ll ben­e­fit some­body else. Maybe one of these war­dens will say, ​‘Maybe I ought to try this.’”