Jury never believed award-winning
prison journalist Rideau meant to execute victims
By Doug Simpson
ASSOCIATED PRESS
1:37 p.m. January 19, 2005
NEW ORLEANS – The jurors who freed
a renowned prison journalist after 44 years behind bars opted for
leniency because they believed the defendant was in "panic mode" and
not his normal frame of mind when he killed a bank teller, the jury
foreman said Wednesday.
The jury also discounted race and
Wilbert Rideau's rehabilitation as factors in convicting him on a
lesser charge of manslaughter, Percy Ritchie said in a telephone
interview with The Associated Press. The verdict allowed Rideau to be
freed since he had already served more than double the 21-year maximum
sentence for manslaughter in effect when the crime occurred.
Rideau, who became famous for his
work on the prison magazine "The Angolite," is black and the three
juries that convicted him of murder for killing white bank teller Julia
Ferguson were all white; the murder convictions all had been overturned.
"I think there was a concerted
effort by both sides to play the race card, but we really just
discussed the testimony and the evidence," said Ritchie, who is white.
The evidence focused on a 1961 bank
robbery in Lake Charles in which Rideau took three people hostage and
stabbed Ferguson to death. All three were shot.
Ritchie said a key piece of
evidence was a statement by one of Rideau's hostages that Rideau told
him before they left the bank to take his coat "because it's going to
be cold walking back" to town.
That indicated Rideau never
intended to kill the hostages, Ritchie said. "That's probably what
swayed us more than anything else," he said.
Ritchie said he and the other
jurors have been criticized for their verdict, reflecting the anger and
racial overtones that still linger over the crime.
"It's been a traumatic time for me
and all the other jurors," Ritchie said.
The jury was made up of eight
whites and four blacks.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20050119-1337-prisonjournalist-juror.html