In the Place of Justice by Rideau Wilbert

Author:Rideau, Wilbert [Rideau, Wilbert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Autobiography, Social Science, Penology, African American Studies, General, Ethnic Studies, Publishers, Political Science, Biography & Autobiography, Law, Editors, Journalists
ISBN: 9781846684340
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2011-01-06T00:00:00+00:00

9

Soldiering On

1986—1990

Which is worse: death by execution or spending the rest of your life in prison? That was a question I was asked to answer on July 1, 1986, when I went to the studios of WBRZ-TV in Baton Rouge to appear by hookup on Nightline. With twenty-five years served on a life sentence, I was at that time one of the longest-serving lifers in America, which qualified me as an expert on the subject. Ted Koppel was exploring it because serial killer Ted Bundy was scheduled to be executed that night—a date with death he dodged only temporarily.

A couple of weeks later I received a note from Dr. Linda LaBranche of Northwestern University, a Shakespeare scholar who had learned from my Nightline appearance that I “wrote for the prison newspaper” and decided—against all her instincts, she later confessed—to write to me to offer whatever I might need in the way of pens, writing tablets, or books. She sounded like a prim and proper English teacher who was patting me on the head like a good little boy. I sent a return note thanking her for her interest and asked her to write again. I enclosed articles about me from The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor and the Times-Picayune editorial advocating my freedom. After reading the articles, she wrote back asking why my clemency had been denied. It made no sense to her. I wrote back, and she did, too—almost daily, telling me about her life and asking me for more information about my case. I sent her a two-inch-thick file of photocopied news clippings. In return, the following week, she sent me a thirty-page “briefing” on my case that she had prepared for the media, along with cross-indexed listings of the articles I’d sent.

I was amazed at the amount of work she’d done, even though the “briefing” was far too long to be of any value to the media. She said she was dividing the days of her summer vacation between scholarship and reading up on the criminal justice system, to which she’d never before given a thought. She found the whole thing fascinating. I wondered if she was just a crazy old lady, and if not, if she’d be willing to help me in some way that might lead to clemency. I didn’t know what that might be, but the biggest problem that every prisoner faces in trying to get out of prison is a lack of help on the outside—someone to write letters, recruit other supporters, show up at pardon hearings, gather evidence, organize. When I asked her to send me a photo of herself, she sent a one-inch-square mug shot from a school ID card. Quite possibly crazy, I thought, trying to discern from the miniature photo what she might actually look like.

C. Paul Phelps was going to a corrections convention in Chicago in October and I asked if he would check her out for me, if she was willing to meet with him.

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