Posted on 01/23/2005 12:12:12 PM PST by 4.1O dana super trac pak
Hallelujah! After 44 years one of America's most famous convicts, a black man named Wilbert Rideau convicted of murdering a white woman in Louisiana during the Jim Crow era, is free. Headlines worldwide proclaim justice has been done. But they couldn't be more wrong. Justice is weeping. For Rideau remains what he was when I knew him 17 years ago - a cold blooded murderer.
Three different juries convicted Rideau, now 62, of murder. But all were overturned on technicalities, providing Rideau an incredible fourth chance. This time he was convicted only of manslaughter, downgrading his sentence to a maximum of 21 years and thereby freeing him. But here are the uncontested facts of the case.
In 1961 Rideau robbed a St. Charles, Louisiana bank using a gun he'd purchased the day before along with a buck knife. He ordered three employees into his car and drove them to a bayou. There he emptied his gun into them a point blank range, hitting two in the neck and a third in the arm. One escaped into the water; one feigned death. The third, Julia Ferguson, made the mistake (according to others) of begging for her life. Rideau drew his knife and plunged it into her heart, killing her.
(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...
What if a fifth, racially-mixed jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death?
~ Blue Jays ~
The justice system has been damaged because it reinforces the legal precedent of freeing killers based on technicalities. The next one freed may only have spent five years in prison.
I wonder what technicalities got him off.
The 5th Circuit Court (the most Conservative court in the US) believes it and that is all that really matters.
Tango, Romeo, Oscar, Lima, Lima...on my smoke!
~ Blue Jays ~
What does that mean?
LOL!!! I got it.. not enough coffee ;-)
The facts of the case are that if the state had at least one member of the Grand Jury that was black the killer would still be at Angola. Unfortunately, the system was unfair back then and we must expect the state to be more just than any murdering scum.
There's no way that a jury made up of honest people with just average intelligence could come to any verdict but murder.He stuck a knife in the heart of a victim who was begging for her life after his bullet didn't kill her.If this animal ends up killing again I hope it's the jury members who suffer from it.People who shoot intruders are sentenced more harshly than this creep.
"...LOL!!! I got it.. not enough coffee ;-)
Nothing a quick trip to Dunkin' Donuts can't solve!
I'm still shaking my head about a FReeper who in some small "understands" why a violent predator should be out with us, mixing in society. The sad part is that he/she is "OK" with this resolution of the situation.
~ Blue Jays ~
And that getting an unfair trial in his eyes is worse than murder itself! Unbelievable.
Agreed.
What bothers me about the fourth trial is that Rideau received three trials, all resulting in convictions, and then on another appeal his original indictment is challenged. Why wasn't this matter reviewed or considered to have been precluded as a matter of law when the first re-trial occurred? Shouldn't a new indictment have been required which would have made the original indictment moot?
What a glorious crock of condescending you know what you are peddling here. Louisiana paying for its sins?? You make me want to throw up. I detest superciliousness in all its forms particularly the one you are sending out.
And I am born and bred in Louisiana my people having come here prior to the purchase. This bastard with a white or a black jury is guilty, he confessed and you are seeing his freeing as some weird punishment for Louisiana.
Black Louisianians were voting in the 60's. I was there.
See, Louisiana v. United States, 380 U.S. 145 at 151-52 (1965), in which the court found that interpretation tests, such as Louisiana's requirement that an applicant give a reasonable interpretation of any section of the state or federal constitution, were adopted for the frank purpose of disfranchising Negroes, it being understood that the registration officers would use their discretion for that purpose. And, when the United States attorney general succeeded in having a state literacy statute declared unconstitutional, another slightly different one would be enacted to take its place.
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