Wilbert Rideau's Fourth Murder Trial Begins

Tuesday January 11, 2005

Wilbert Rideau, the editor of the award-winning prison magazine The Angolite at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, faces his fourth trial for the 1961 death of a bank teller during a robbery. His murder trial began Monday with opening arguments.

Rideau may be one of Louisiana's best known inmates, and most accomplished. He was an uneducated, almost-illiterate janitor when he robbed the bank in 1961. He educated himself in prison, became a writer, and turned The Angolite widely acclaimed publication.

Rideau co-directed the prison documentary "The Farm," which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1999. He also wrote and narrated a National Public Radio documentary that also won awards.

But for three separate, all-white juries Rideau was a cold-blooded killer who shot and wounded two bank tellers and cut the throat and killed another after he ran out of bullets, as they begged for their lives following the bank robbery in Lake Charles.

All three juries sentenced him to death in his previous trials. His death sentence was commuted to life when the Supreme Court overturned death penalty in 1972.

His first two convictions were overturned on appeal. A third convicted stood until 2000, when a federal court ruled he was entitled to another trial because blacks were excluded from the original grand jury that indicted him.

On October 4, 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Rideau's argument that another trial would constitute double jeopardy. The state argued that another trial was necessary because his previous convictions were overturned on technicalities.