Rideau was eventually stopped at a roadblock. For nearly two weeks, Rideau said, he saw no attorney. During the daytime, dark cloth was draped over his cell bars, he recalled. Rideau said he had been told it was to discourage snipers. When Sheriff Reid eventually came to get him, days after the arrest, Rideau said he imagined the worst: "I thought they were taking me out to do what they said they were going to do to me -- kill me."
He was taken to a room and ordered to sit in a chair. He saw lights -- which he didn't recognize at the time as being part of TV recording equipment -- and thought he was going to be electrocuted then and there. On the video recording made at the time, Reid can be seen describing aspects of the crime. He sits to Rideau's left and with two state troopers sitting beside them. The tape was shown repeatedly on local TV before the trial, prompting the Supreme Court to refer to the first trial as little more than "kangaroo court proceedings."
Wilbert Rideau, in an undated photo, was found guilty of the murder of Julia Ferguson three times, in 1961, 1964 and 1970, before becoming a free man on Saturday.
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In court last week, Rideau watched the tape for the first time as it was shown for the jury. The grainy footage showed a skinny and frightened man, his voice barely audible. His only movement was to flick ash from a cigarette. On the 2005 side of the camera, Rideau sat with his hands folded beneath his chin, prayerlike.
FBI agents questioned Rideau shortly after the arrest and wrote a report that would be presented as evidence at the first trial. "It'll be cool and quick," Rideau was reported by FBI agents to have said, just before stabbing Ferguson. On the stand Rideau denied ever using such hard-boiled language, proof, according to his attorney Murray, that the FBI used such language to inflame an all-white male jury.
The FBI report also said that Rideau ate a cheeseburger at Youngblood's Cafe the day of the crime. Rideau testified that would have been impossible, inasmuch as blacks were not allowed to eat at the cafe.
Rideau recalled that when he finally was allowed to see an attorney, after nearly 10 days in isolation, his attorney had but one question for him: "What in the hell did you go on television for?"
"I said, 'I didn't go on television.' "
The defense's goal in the latest trial was to counter the FBI report's portrait of a methodical, calculating killer. Before he stepped down from the stand, Rideau had painted a picture of a young man who lived an impoverished life, who felt "dead-ended" by life in segregated Calcasieu Parish, who was making $35 a week at the time while working as "more or less a janitor."
In the rain that fell outside the courtroom, many of the onlookers smoked cigarettes beneath umbrellas. Some walked over to the nearby Pujo Street Cafe and dined on crab cakes and sweet iced tea.
Years of Change
"Some people go to prison and put their life on hold," Rideau said yesterday. "I didn't want to do that. I wanted to do something with my life."
Word of Rideau's rehabilitation spread worldwide. His articles were cited by professors and reformers. Pardon boards recommended his release.
And the years passed.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund -- the group is distinct from the NAACP itself -- joined his cause in 1998. So did members of the clergy. The Rev. J.L. Franklin of Lake Charles, a rotund man given to colorful suits -- one day he came to court dressed in a green suit, the next day in a creamy beige number -- brought Johnnie Cochran to Lake Charles in 2003 for a church rally on Rideau's behalf.
"It's a judicial lynching," Franklin, 38, said in an interview on the eve of trial. "The only problem is in the '60s it was a rope. This year it's the law. You're talking about a man's life hanging in the balance. The DA's budget exceeds $4 million. You spend millions on a 40-year-old case. It's ludicrous."
