From about.com:
January 16, 2005
Wilbert Rideau Released from Prison
Wilbert Rideau, who become famous as the editor of the prison magazine The Angolite, has been set free from Louisiana State Prison after 44 years when a jury found him guilty of manslaughter, instead of murder, in his fourth trial for the 1961 death of bank teller Julia Ferguson.
Rideau was tried four times for the death of Ferguson, who he stabbed to death after a botched bank robbery, and three times he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to the death penalty.
In his fourth trial, Rideau's defense sought a manslaughter verdict, which allowed him to be released for time already served. Rideau's attorney argued that racism played a role in Rideau's earlier convictions.
"You have to understand that time, and then it comes together," Julian Murray told the jury. "You think they would hesitate to exaggerate the facts of the case, to get the result they wanted?"
Murray said Ferguson's stabbing was "a terrible act, a criminal act, one for which he deserves great punishment, but not one for which he deserves to be locked up for the rest of his life," Murray said. "He did a terrible thing, but it wasn't murder."
Prosecutors attacked Rideau's contention that he acted in confusion when he killed Ferguson, saying the crime was deliberate and coldly executed as she begged for her life.
"I thought the most interesting part of his entire story was, `I didn't murder her, I killed her,'" Calcasieu Parish District Attorney Rick Bryant said in his closing argument, but seven whites and five blacks deliberated six hours before reaching an unanimous decision for manslaughter.
It's OK Julia. You're not really dead. You can come back now.