In The Place Of Justice Part 3

My new trial was set for December 1, 1964, in East Baton Rouge Parish, the state capital. It was a new jurisdiction, but little else changed; it was still the Old South. Moreover, because of the bitterness in Louisiana over what the ruling white power structure felt was federal interference in state sovereignty regarding the racial integration of schools and public facilities, the tongue-las.h.i.+ng the Supreme Court gave Calcasieu Parish when it reversed my conviction made my case even more notorious all over the state.

Frank Salter had been insistent about moving my trial to Baton Rouge. But, then, he knew something about Sargent Pitcher, the East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney who would a.s.sist in prosecuting me-something that would emerge only in the trial courtroom. My defense lawyers, who lost every battle in their attempt to have the trial moved anywhere else, probably knew it, too.

Since the civil rights movement had gotten a toehold in Louisiana, the racial climate was worse than ever. Negroes made a significant encroachment on previously all-white territory during the summer of 1964, when Louisiana State University, the state's flags.h.i.+p inst.i.tution of higher education, enrolled its first colored undergraduates-under federal court order. As Negroes organized sit-ins, rallies, and voter-registration drives, whites banded together in violent supremacist groups and flexed their muscles, as Ralph Blumberg, who had purchased a radio station in Bogalusa in 1961, discovered when he publicly denounced the Ku Klux Klan in late 1964.

"We were called Communists, integrationists, 'n.i.g.g.e.r lovers.' We were threatened with death. Nails were put in our tires. Our car windows were smashed. Six sh.e.l.ls from a high-powered rifle were fired into our transmitter house. Due to a kidnapping threat, I had to send my family back to St. Louis," Blumberg said in a 1966 article in the magazine American Judaism American Judaism. The Klan boycotted and threatened his sponsors, and by early 1965 he had to sell his radio station and leave Louisiana. During this same time, the homes of numerous civil rights workers in Lake Charles were hit by midnight cross burnings, as was the home of the local NAACP president.

The Klan, which practiced violence and terror to ensure white supremacy and keep the coloreds "in their place," had its genteel counterpart in the White Citizens' Council, which employed the power of government to deprive blacks of their right to vote. Among its members and sympathizers were lawmakers, businessmen, governmental agency heads, law enforcement officials, and other movers and shakers.

The new trial judge, Elmo Lear, conceded he had serious reservations about the const.i.tutionality of the transfer, but pointed out that it had been done on the orders of the Louisiana Supreme Court, so he had no choice but to accept my case and try it. However, he expressed the hope that, if and when this case was reversed on appeal, it would be sent to Judge John Rarick, the renowned arch-segregationist of West Feliciana Parish.

Because of the cost and time required to mount a defense 125 miles from their Lake Charles law offices, Sievert and Leithead both asked Lear to relieve them of their obligation to represent me. The judge refused, but appointed two Baton Rouge attorneys-Elven Ponder and Kenneth C. Scullin-to a.s.sist them with the case. Three weeks before the trial began, my expanded defense team moved to have the 1961 indictment thrown out on the grounds that the method used to select the grand jury pool-five white jury commissioners and the clerk of court sat around a table and handpicked potential jurors by thumbing through race-coded cards made up for that very purpose-was racially discriminatory and therefore unconst.i.tutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The whole criminal justice system in Calcasieu Parish, as elsewhere in Louisiana, was all white-the robed white men who sat on the bench, their white clerks, the white jury commissioners. Grand jury foremen, personally chosen by the judges, had been white men as far back as Calcasieu Parish records and living memory stretched. So were all the sheriffs who tracked down and arrested suspects, and all the coroners who sat on sanity commissions and performed autopsies for the state, and all the district attorneys and their a.s.sistants who decided which suspects would stand trial for their lives and which would be tried for lesser penalties.

Sievert and Leithead nonetheless lost their argument about racial discrimination, and on December I I, my second trial began. We had not gone far in the jury selection process when the issue of race surfaced again. Prospective juror Eddie Bates told Elven Ponder that he had been a member of the Citizens' Council for about a year. Ponder pressed him about the purposes of the organization.

"Well, we flatly don't believe in integration of the races, if that's what you mean," prosecutor Pitcher said, coming to Bates's defense. "I'd like to state for the record the purpose of the Citizens' Council, of which I am a member, is the preservation of const.i.tutional government, and being a member of it is no more than being a member of the Presbyterian Church or any other organization." Pitcher sat on the board of directors for the Zachary, Louisiana, chapter.

Ponder jumped up and objected to Pitcher's gratuitous commentary. He moved for a mistrial on the grounds that the commentary was prejudicial and inflammatory. When the judge denied the motion, Ponder challenged the seating of Eddie Bates for cause. The judge denied that, too, and refused to let my lawyers ask Bates or any other potential jurors if they had friends and a.s.sociates who belonged to the Klan. In the end, an all-white, all-male jury was chosen, as everyone knew would be the case.

The second trial was virtually a repeat of the first, but the jury was quicker, taking only fifteen minutes to conclude that I was guilty and I should die. I was returned to the East Baton Rouge Parish jail, atop the courthouse, to wait out the required appeal and review of my case by the Louisiana Supreme Court.

I had been kept in total isolation prior to the trial. After the verdict, I was instructed to pack my things because I was joining the jail's inmate population. Unlike in the Calcasieu Parish jail or Angola, prisoners here were generally kept in isolation cells for brief periods only for "mental observation" or punishment. All others were housed together indiscriminately, according to race-blacks in one part of the jail, whites in another. This marked the first time I would live among other prisoners and, like many before me, I feared entering that notorious world. The men on death row who had been in general population told me that if I entered one, especially because of my small size, I would be challenged until inmates learned I was from death row and charged with murder; that would imply I was dangerous, and therefore people would be less likely to mess with me. I began preparing myself right away. I traded some Playboy Playboy magazines on the black market for cash and a flat knife; I glued both inside the bottom flaps of the thick cardboard box that I would carry my personal possessions in. I was gambling that the deputies transporting me and those booking me into the jail wouldn't expect me to have contraband, since I was coming from Angola's death row, the most secure and restrictive lockup in the state. On September 29, 1964, when I entered the East Baton Rouge Parish jail, I received only a perfunctory inspection. magazines on the black market for cash and a flat knife; I glued both inside the bottom flaps of the thick cardboard box that I would carry my personal possessions in. I was gambling that the deputies transporting me and those booking me into the jail wouldn't expect me to have contraband, since I was coming from Angola's death row, the most secure and restrictive lockup in the state. On September 29, 1964, when I entered the East Baton Rouge Parish jail, I received only a perfunctory inspection.

Heading into general population, I cloaked the knife in a damp bath towel that I held against the underside of the box as I walked beside a deputy. When I stepped inside the large, poorly lit room as a steel door slammed shut behind me, a row of metal tables was to my left, and a young, muscular, clean-cut guy sat possessively on the first table, reading a newspaper. It was the dayroom, where everyone congregated, ate, and pa.s.sed time by playing cards or dominoes or talking. There were two showers against the rear wall. Large cells containing multiple bunks were on each side of the dayroom. They were sleeping quarters, where the inmates were locked in for the night. Until then, the doors remained open. More than a hundred men coexisted in quarters designed for far fewer. Many slept on the floor because there were not enough bunks.

Everyone halted his activities to see who the new person was. Their faces seemed ugly, fearsome. I was scared, but I knew that if I showed fear, they would chew me to bits. "I knew this was my lucky day!" said a young inmate sitting on the floor ten feet away, his back against bars, apparently taking part in a dice game. "There's fresh meat in the house! Lil' Man," he said, with his best tough-guy face, "there ain't enough bunks, but you can sleep in mine." There was a little laughter followed by a hush, as everyone waited for my response.

I dropped the box and towel to the floor, revealing the knife in my hand. I let a moment elapse for effect, as the youth's face turned serious, fearful. Trying to keep any trembling out of my voice, trying to sound calm and matter-of-fact, I said, "You must be tired of living." n.o.body moved. I hoped he didn't call my hand. I didn't want to fight; I had no experience in fighting. I did know, though, that this moment, this encounter, would define my life both in this jail and beyond. I was going to do whatever I had to. My mouth was dry, and my hands felt clammy around the knife's masking-taped handle. The silence seemed long.

"You Wilbert Rideau?" the newspaper reader on the front table asked.

"I am," I replied, not taking my eyes off the youth in front of me.

"I'm Billy Green, and the fat mouth on the floor is Chicken," he said. "He don't mean you any harm. He just has a habit of shooting off his mouth at the wrong time." He looked at Chicken, chiding him: "Didn't I tell you about messing with people you don't know, coming through that door? Do you have any idea who you f.u.c.king with?" He lifted the newspaper, pointing to the front page. "He's from death row, getting ready to go back to death row, and he ain't got a f.u.c.king thing to lose 'cause they can't burn him but once. You're sitting there playing stupid-a.s.s games with a dude who's gonna put your lights out. Now what is your dumb a.s.s gonna do?"

"I'm gonna apologize, man," the youth said, rising slowly, everyone laughing at him. "I'm sorry, man. I-I made a big mistake."

I nodded, relieved. "Let me have your attention a minute," I said loudly to everyone, exploiting the moment. "I'm not sleeping on the floor. I'm willing to pay five dollars for a bunk. I'm also prepared to take take one if I have to. So, who wants the money?" A ratty-looking guy walked up to offer me his bunk. I bought it. one if I have to. So, who wants the money?" A ratty-looking guy walked up to offer me his bunk. I bought it.

The jail population was a transient one. There was no society, no commonality, no values, nothing governing behavior but the law of the jungle: strength ruled, and the only order was what it imposed. The jail was constructed in a manner that made policing of inmate activity virtually impossible; access to the bullpen was restricted to a single door, which meant jailers could not see 90 percent of it without actually entering it, which they rarely did. Jailers therefore could maintain only some degree of order through the process of accommodation, allowing the strongest clique to practice their vice with impunity in exchange for maintaining peace and managing the lockup. Billy Green, an ex-con and local street gang leader from Baton Rouge, ruled here. He coordinated the inmates' lists of orders from the commissary and turned them in to a deputy, then made sure when the items came in that they were distributed properly; he saw to it that the weak as well as the strong got their meals and that cleaning supplies were distributed and used. In short, he served as liaison for the authorities in their dealings with the inmate population.

My first major adjustment to living off death row was, understandably, to the lack of privacy-the communal toilets, showers, living quarters. Sitting on a commode in public for a bowel movement was a new and difficult experience, resulting in bouts of constipation. And there was the need to be a little paranoid: The other occupants of death row told me never to let an enemy catch me sitting on a commode with my drawers pulled down around my ankles because then I could neither run nor fight. Shortly before my trial, I had sought medical attention for an infection on my foot from Baton Rouge coroner Dr. Chester Williams, who refused, explaining that Calcasieu Parish was not paying him to provide me medical care. Expecting the same response now, to protect against becoming infected I showered every day and refused to shake hands, which earned me the reputation of being a "neat freak."

Rule of the lockup was almost always decided by violent conflict. And the inability of different personalities to get along in a lawless, idle, overcrowded environment also generated violence. The major incubator of such conflicts, however, was unmet needs, the biggest being nicotine addiction. Just about all of us smoked. Men without resources generally devised methods to take from those who had-by trade, guile, theft, or force. I was no different. The time I spent reading on death row, coupled with my eighth-grade formal education, made me the best-educated inmate in my lockup. Two-thirds of the men were barely literate; a third were unable to read or write. That provided me an opportunity. I began writing letters for them: I got a pack of cigarettes for a family letter, two packs for business, and three packs for a romantic letter, which often went to female inmates in the women's lockup adjacent to ours.

In a caged population that included a lot of young, s.e.x-starved males at the peak of their s.e.xuality, it was to be expected that some used gays and the weak to satisfy their s.e.xual needs. A popular saying among the normally heteros.e.xual youths explained their behavior: "A hard d.i.c.k has no conscience." Some inmates willingly exchanged s.e.xual favors to provide for their other needs, but violence or the threat of it was the usual method employed to force the weak into s.e.xual slavery.

s.e.x was also used to express contempt. Child molesters-called "baby rapers"-were particularly reviled, but all s.e.x offenders were regarded with scorn by both prisoners and jailers. Many viewed the jail rape of s.e.x offenders as poetic justice, as I learned when a skinny seventeen-year-old Negro was placed in our lockup following his arrest for the rape of a fifty-two-year-old white housewife. It was like throwing meat to hungry dogs. He was locked in a cell occupied by several members of Green's clique, who took turns raping him during the night. The next night, he was placed in another cell so that other clique members could also "get their issue," after which Green announced that anyone wanting to have s.e.x with the youngster was welcome to do so.

When the raped youth was taken to court, he complained to the white jailers, who simply shoved him back behind bars and told him, "Get your a.s.s in there, b.i.t.c.h, and take care of those men. Now you know what that woman felt like." He did, but what his victim endured at his hands, as horrible as it was, paled in comparison to the nightmare of the ongoing violence and terror he was subjected to. He was beaten for "snitching" to the jailers, made a human toy in brutal games for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the men, and, of course, raped at whim, unable to resist because Green had decreed that he'd better not. When it was discovered that the youth's r.e.c.t.u.m was hanging several inches out of his backside, Green arranged for him to leave for medical treatment, after reminding him there was no percentage in snitching because the cops didn't care and the gang could get to him anywhere within the jail, on the streets, even in the penitentiary. The youngster eventually pled guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of release after ten years, six months. But the s.e.xual torment he endured changed him forever. He would, at Angola, go on to establish a pattern of violence with other inmates that would result in his spending most of his life in disciplinary cells, which doomed him to die in prison.

The men on death row had laughed and joked about prison s.e.x, but they had not prepared me for what I found. As badly as I craved s.e.x, I discovered that I didn't want it that that badly. "Hey, that was my first reaction," said Big Al, an ex-con who had invited me to use the services of his s.e.x slave. "But then, as time got hard and my d.i.c.k got harder, I realized a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Enough time pa.s.ses, you'll see it in a different light. Like they say, when you in Rome, you do as the Romans." His view was not atypical. badly. "Hey, that was my first reaction," said Big Al, an ex-con who had invited me to use the services of his s.e.x slave. "But then, as time got hard and my d.i.c.k got harder, I realized a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. Enough time pa.s.ses, you'll see it in a different light. Like they say, when you in Rome, you do as the Romans." His view was not atypical.

Having come from Angola's death row only to be reconvicted and again face the electric chair gave me stature among the other inmates. In the perverse convict culture, I was viewed almost as a martyr, since it was extremely rare for the state to seek the death penalty a second time rather than offer a plea for a life sentence. Bizarrely, it was believed that wisdom was attached to this sort of martyrdom. Inmates listened when I spoke, and my opinion was regularly sought to settle disputes. I acquired such influence that the inmates asked me to represent them in talks with jail authorities during troubled times.

Rebellious inmates would plug their commodes to protest jail conditions, flooding the courtrooms on the floors below and shutting down hearings and trials. Authorities decided I was the troublemaker, probably because the inmates often united behind me. In the wee hours one morning during a protest, I was awakened by a gloved hand over my mouth. Several deputies quietly carried me out of the lockup. Green followed us out. I realized that Green had engineered this betrayal. He later apologized, explaining that he had sold me out in exchange for leniency in his criminal case. But he had instructed all his followers in the jail to take care of me. If I needed anything, he said, I had only to send word to him.

I was taken to the Hole, an isolation cell that afforded no contact with others except when a prison guard or inmate orderly opened the metal hatch on the steel door, through which I received my food. Because of the extreme deprivation it imposed, punishment in the Hole was rarely more than a week or two, never more than thirty days. I was to become the exception.

The jail authorities had placed me in the all-white section of the jail, a move meant to isolate me and lessen my influence among the blacks. My first visitor was Sheriff Bryan Clemmons, who peered through the hatch of my cell door to tell me, "I'm the sheriff, and you're not gonna run my jail." He said I would remain in that cell as long as I was in his custody. He kept me there for more than two years. That made me special. The other inmates sympathized with me; the deputies grudgingly acknowledged my sheer endurance. After a while, many of the jailers-all of them white-came to feel I was being treated unfairly and started leaving the hatch on my door open so the white inmates could give me food or tobacco.

Some of the night deputies were Louisiana State University students. They began to let me read their textbooks while they were working. One book, The Fabric of Society The Fabric of Society by Ralph Ross and Ernest van den Haag, was especially compelling because it gave me a basic understanding of society and human behavior, including my own. I became so attached to the book that the deputy ultimately gave it to me. Other books that shaped my thinking and my life were Ayn Rand's by Ralph Ross and Ernest van den Haag, was especially compelling because it gave me a basic understanding of society and human behavior, including my own. I became so attached to the book that the deputy ultimately gave it to me. Other books that shaped my thinking and my life were Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged Atlas Shrugged and and Anthem Anthem, from which I took the message of self-reliance and the understanding that the world owed me nothing; from Machiavelli's The Prince The Prince I gained insight into the nature of power and politics, the forces that ruled my life; from Morris West's I gained insight into the nature of power and politics, the forces that ruled my life; from Morris West's Shoes of the Fisherman Shoes of the Fisherman I learned that pain is the price of living. I learned that pain is the price of living.

My education was advanced by the books I read, but even more by the actions of these Southern white men-"good old boys," many of them-smuggling those books in to me. It marked a turning point. From the moment I was arrested, no one from the Negro community except my family tried to help me or even visited me, not even a minister. I had been brought up in a world sharply divided by race and, for the most part, had seen white people as the oppressors. In the Hole, I saw "the enemy" trying to help me, at risk to themselves. That forced me to reexamine my racial stereotypes.

In November 1966, my attorneys appealed my conviction, specifying thirty trial errors. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled unanimously on December 12, 1966, that all of my legal complaints lacked merit. I was returned to Angola's death row, becoming C-48. The face of death row had changed dramatically. Nine of the twelve inmates who'd been there when I'd first arrived were gone.

The governor had found Delbert Eyer, the young, white, born-again Christian, to have been rehabilitated, and commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment in July 1966, allowing him to parole out in September 1966, a free man.

Seven of the Negroes-Alton Poret, Edgar Labat, Thomas Goins, Andrew Scott, Edward "Bo Diddley" Davis, Freddie Eubanks, and Woodman Collins-had their death sentences reversed either by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals or by the U.S. Supreme Court because of the systematic exclusion of Negroes from the grand juries that had indicted them (the same complaint my lawyers made in my case and which the state courts had denied). Their respective prosecutors did not pursue new death sentences. They instead struck plea bargains that gave Poret, Labat, and Goins immediate release and meant freedom for Scott, Davis, and Eubanks within less than a decade. Collins remained in prison with a life sentence, leaving death row.

The death sentence of Emile Weston was thrown out by the federal court because the state had not provided him with a complete verbatim transcript of his trial so that he could appeal his conviction (another ironic echo of my experience). He was a free man.

Roy Fulghum, Brodie Davis, and Ora Lee Rogers remained. They had been joined by many newly condemned men, and death row had been enlarged to encompa.s.s three tiers of cells instead of one. The men enjoyed many more privileges, including personal TVs, hot plates, and pots and pans for cooking in the cells. The atmosphere was more relaxed and boisterous. With the state slipping into an unofficial moratorium on executions, the death sentence was not taken as seriously.

My lawyers appealed this conviction, too, to the U.S. Supreme Court. On October 9, 1967, the court declined to hear the case, and Frank Salter clamored on the front page of the Lake Charles newspaper for an execution date to be set. A gubernatorial election was less than a month away. Arch-segregationist and white supremacist congressman John Rarick was challenging the inc.u.mbent, John J. McKeithen. Since I had met McKeithen when he visited death row shortly after taking office in 1964, I wrote to him. I asked for neither reprieve nor clemency, only that I not be sacrificed to the politics of the moment.

Elven Ponder, one of my Baton Rouge attorneys, who had the offensive habit of calling Negroes "nigras," told me the governor, after reading my letter, said he was not going to sign my death warrant because he had serious legal reservations about my case. Ponder a.s.sured me that no matter what Salter said in the media, McKeithen would not execute me. William "Hawk" Daniels, the investigator for the Baton Rouge district attorney's office, had already told me, "They've done things in your case, like bringing you here, that've never been done before; things you probably can get a new trial on. I fully expect Calcasieu is going to have to try you again before it's over because there are so many issues in your case. I'm fairly certain you'll get another trial on appeal." Ponder agreed. I was heartened.

On December 8, 1967, my lawyers filed for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court in Baton Rouge, raising the issues of racial discrimination in the selection of my grand jury and the unprecedented change of venue to East Baton Rouge Parish. Case law on the grand jury issue was clear-cut and stretched back a hundred years. My lawyers' brief, however, landed on the desk of E. Gordon West, one of the most conservative law-and-order judges in the federal court system, a segregationist who customarily refused to see racial discrimination.

While I awaited his decision, I settled in. My first stint on death row had been submerged in reading and learning. By now I had acquired a different kind of pa.s.sion. I had been defined as criminal, but I knew I wasn't an evil or monstrous person, despite my crime. I wanted the same things that everyone else wanted in life. But those things had eluded me, propelling me toward more desperate behavior that isolated me even more. I only wanted to change the way I was living. Who was criminal? I asked myself. Everyone who broke the law? Was there a criminal personality? I became intrigued by the idea of answering this question, seeing it as a way of making amends with a contribution that could help society. And I had my own personal laboratory.

I began working on an a.n.a.lysis of criminals. I wrote in longhand in the dead of night, when it was relatively quiet. I thought I could educate society about who turns to crime and why. That gave me a purpose and gave my mind something to fasten on.

Judge West took no action on my case for almost a year and a half. He set no date for a hearing, asked for no clarification of issues, made no ruling. I asked Ponder to do something to speed things up. He said that as long as my case was sitting there, I never had to worry about being scheduled for execution. But I didn't like being in limbo. On March 27, 1969, Ponder filed a motion with West asking to have the case transferred to another court. West denied the motion the day it was filed; he also issued an order requiring the state to show cause by May 12, 1969, why the habeas corpus should not be granted. Ponder had found a way to jump-start my case.

Less than a month later, during a hearing West called for the purpose, Ponder filed a motion to amend my habeas pleading: The U.S. Supreme Court had just made a ruling in another case, Witherspoon v. State of Illinois Witherspoon v. State of Illinois, overturning a death sentence because persons with conscientious scruples against capital punishment had been excluded from sitting on the trial jury. Ponder pointed to the verbatim transcripts of my Baton Rouge trial to show that eighteen such individuals had likewise been barred from my jury. One of Salter's a.s.sistants conceded the violations had occurred and fell under Witherspoon Witherspoon. Listening to my lawyer, the judge, and the prosecutor, I could tell that the amended habeas corpus had been filed at West's suggestion and the entire proceeding had been prearranged; they were bad actors following a script. West reversed my conviction that day in a manner that allowed him-and Salter-to sidestep the issue of racial discrimination at a time when race was a political hot b.u.t.ton in Louisiana. By tying his ruling to the Witherspoon Witherspoon case, Judge West made the U.S. Supreme Court responsible, for the second time, for overturning my conviction. Instead of resentencing me to life imprisonment, as a number of Louisiana condemned men had been because of that case, West gave Salter the right to retry me, and a third chance to put me in the electric chair. case, Judge West made the U.S. Supreme Court responsible, for the second time, for overturning my conviction. Instead of resentencing me to life imprisonment, as a number of Louisiana condemned men had been because of that case, West gave Salter the right to retry me, and a third chance to put me in the electric chair.

By this time my case had developed notoriety on the sheer strength of the state's inability to make a conviction stick. It reemerged on the front pages of the Lake Charles and Baton Rouge newspapers. I was moved back to the parish jail in Baton Rouge to await a new trial. I was well received there by the inmates, respected as a veteran sage-so much so that I was placed in my own cell to reduce my influence.

Although blacks had begun to enter some of the official corridors of power and privilege-in 1968 the capitol seated its first black state legislator since Reconstruction-the racial climate in Louisiana was as bad as ever, if not worse. As the doors to equal education and equal job opportunities were forcibly opened to blacks by a series of federal court decisions, resentment against such change festered in the hearts and minds of a large segment of white Southern society. Baton Rouge, because it housed the capitol, had become a magnet for the forces visibly, vociferously, and sometimes violently opposed to racial desegregation. As members.h.i.+p in the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan swelled in the mid- and late 1960s, the organization staged ma.s.sive rallies in the white suburban neighborhoods south of Louisiana State University. Kleagles, Grand Dragons, and Imperial Wizards, their hooded robes glowing in the night against the blaze of forty- and fifty-foot kerosene-soaked, fire-torched crosses, revved up the pa.s.sions of people resistant to the dismantling of America's caste system. The Klan members burned in effigy congressmen whose seats they had targeted, among them Jimmy Morrison, who lost the seat he had held for twenty-four years when what he intended as a negative characterization of his opponent, Indiana native John Rarick, "The Klan's Man from Indiana," backfired and swept the white supremacist to victory. The Klan met blacks head-on in the town of Satsuma, as civil rights activist A. Z. Young led a march from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge in 1967. Klansmen staged well-attended rallies-there were six hundred people at one, in 1967, just before Judge West first considered my case. Racial tension ruled in the capital city.

In 1970, at the time of my third trial, the Klan was using the kind of intimidation for which it was famous. It invaded North Baton Rouge-the black part of town-and plastered the utility poles and other upright surfaces with signs showing a rearing white-hooded horse carrying a hooded white rider, his left hand holding aloft a fiery cross. Beneath the horse's feet was the Klan's motto: FOR G.o.d AND COUNTRY. FOR G.o.d AND COUNTRY. The poster was dominated by the horse and rider and by big, bold print in the upper left corner that read The poster was dominated by the horse and rider and by big, bold print in the upper left corner that read SAVE OUR LAND SAVE OUR LAND, and beneath the picture it read JOIN THE KLAN JOIN THE KLAN.

In the Baton Rouge courthouse, where my trial began on January 5, the only strand of continuity in my defense was Lake Charles civil attorney James Leithead. All of the other court-appointed attorneys had asked for and received permission to withdraw from the case. Leithead had asked to withdraw, too, on the grounds that his law partner was a special a.s.sistant attorney general, which, he argued, presented a conflict of interest; the court refused his request.

The new judge was John S. Covington, who appointed two new Baton Rouge attorneys to a.s.sist Leithead with my defense: James Wood, two years out of law school, and maritime lawyer James George. The prosecution was represented by four attorneys: Frank Salter and three prosecutors from the East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney's office. The jury for the third trial, like the other two, was composed entirely of white men. The trial, which took three days, was largely a repeat of the two earlier trials. The prosecution's case was not challenged, nor was a proper defense mounted on my behalf. The third jury returned their death verdict in a record eight minutes.

My lawyers once again began the long process of filing a mandatory appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court, while I waited in the East Baton Rouge Parish jail. I expected this appeal, as all my others to the state's highest court, to fall on deaf ears. Here, the reading materials I had come to rely on at Angola-a wide variety of books, magazines, and newspapers-were restricted. I filed a lawsuit demanding them, contending I had a const.i.tutional right to educate myself. I was in court for a hearing on the issue when the judge, before the start of the formal proceedings, told attorneys representing the East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff that they had better have something to counter the merit of the suit. The parish attorneys asked for a short recess, during which I was whisked from the Baton Rouge courtroom to the airport, where a waiting airplane took me not to Angola but to Lake Charles. The East Baton Rouge Parish district attorney, with agreement from the Calcasieu Parish district attorney, but contrary to law and without telling my lawyers, had made a successful motion during the recess to have me sent back to the Calcasieu Parish jail.

To thwart any potential influence I might have among black prisoners in the Calcasieu Parish facility, Sheriff Reid shut me in a solitary-confinement cell on the jail's second floor, which housed only white inmates. I was back in enemy territory, and utterly alone.

3.

Solitary JANUARY 1972.

It's late, and raining. The buildings before me have been abandoned. Life has drained from the traffic arteries below. The wet pavement of empty Lake Charles streets and parking lots doubles the glare of street lamps and neon signs, intensifying the darkness.

It's quiet. Profoundly so. Rain whispers against the open window a few feet away. The only other thing you can hear is your own heart, thumping. I've known men who could not stand this silence, but I've grown accustomed to it. I scratch a fingernail on one of the bars, to rea.s.sure myself I haven't gone deaf. I've stood here many nights staring out my second-floor window at the same scene below, week after week, month after month, year after year...after year. Except for the rain, it never changes.

I came from that world, was once a part of it. But it's strange to me now, like a foreign country I've only read about. I feel no love, no hate. What lies outside that window represents all of my soul's yearnings: freedom, joy, home, love, friends.h.i.+p, satisfaction, peace, happiness. But I feel nothing as I look. To me it is inanimate, like a picture on a wall. I'm barred from that world and old memories no longer bridge the gap. I can't relate to that world, any more than I can imagine what it would feel like to walk down one of those streets, the rain in my face. It's been too long.

I turn my attention to squas.h.i.+ng my cigarette b.u.t.t in the ashtray, then look around my cell. This is my reality. Solitude. Four walls, gray-green, drab, and foreboding. Three of steel and one of bars, held together by 358 rivets. Seven feet wide, nine feet long. About the size of an average bathroom or-and my mind leaps at this-the size of four tombs, only taller. I, the living dead, have need of a few essentials that the physically dead no longer require-commode, shower, face bowl, bunk. A sleazy old mattress, worn to thinness. On the floor in a corner, a cardboard box that contains all my worldly possessions-a writing tablet, a pen, and two changes of underwear. The mattress, the box, and I are the only things not bolted down, except the c.o.c.kroaches that come and go from the drain in the floor and scurry around in the shower. This is my life, every minute of the year. I'm buried alive. But I'm the only person for whom that fact has meaning, who feels it, so it's immaterial.

My eyes return to the open window across the catwalk outside the bars. A block away, twin lights appear as a car cautiously finds its way down the rain-slicked street. A gust of wind whips at me, ice on its lash. I look at my gray, jail-issued coveralls hanging on the wall hook. I should put them on to be warmer, but I don't. After what I've been through, why should I cringe before a simple thing like cold? Strength and the spirit of contest surge through me. This is a challenge, and knowing that the cold cannot defeat me gives me pride. I remain in my T-s.h.i.+rt and shorts, unyielding, feeling strong and powerful. That's what I've been reduced to.

It's hard to believe that I once experienced a life in that world outside my window. Would I even be able to recognize the neighborhood I grew up in? Are kids playing hooky still shooting c.r.a.ps on those old tombs? Is Old Man Martello still peddling cigarettes three for a nickel to underage smokers? I wonder, but there's no one to ask. Everyone but my mother has abandoned me.

I turn from the window and walk slowly toward the heavy steel door. I'm restless again. One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... turn. Walk back. One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... stop. I reach for the pack of cigarettes. Light one. Puff deeply. Fan out the match, flip it out into the catwalk. I exhale the smoke, looking idly out the window, thinking of nothing, then turn lazily toward the center of my cell.

Suddenly, adrenaline is coursing through me. I freeze, like a feral cat who spots a stray dog. It's the walls! They're closer! They're moving in on me, closing up the tomb. Panic is suffocating me. This is what they want; they want to kill me This is what they want; they want to kill me. Somehow, I will my muscles to relax, and my mind follows. The tension dissipates. It's just my imagination. Steel walls don't move. s.h.i.+t, no. I should know that better than anyone. Ridiculous. I just need something to do, that's all. But what? I look around the cell, wondering what to do. I can read, walk, shower again, or think. And I'm tired of reading, so ...

One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... turn. One ... two ... three ... It's not right to make a man live like this, alone. But I can take it. I can whip this motherf.u.c.ker. I am stronger than anything they can do to me. The more they do, the stronger they make me. I actually smile. Haven't I endured and risen above an experience that would crush most men?

One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... turn. Yeah, I've seen men broken, destroyed by solitary. Some have come to fear every shadow. Others have committed suicide. Some men would do anything to escape this cell. Some feigned insanity so they could go to a mental inst.i.tution. Even more cut themselves, over and over, until the Man, fearing a suicide on his watch, moved them out of solitary. Others stayed doped up, whenever they could get the dope. Engaging in such tricks, though, is beneath my dignity; it's unmanly. I am stronger than the punishment. The only way to beat it, to rise above it, is to regard the punishment as a challenge and see my ability to endure it while others cannot as a victory. Whenever another man falls under the pressure, it's a triumph for me. Callous, some would call me. A man falls, broken, insane, or dead, and I feel nothing except triumph. But this is no place for pity-not for the next man, nor for myself. It would break me. The hard truth about solitary is that each man must struggle and suffer alone.

One ... two ... three ... four ... five ... turn. I wonder what time it is. It doesn't matter, except knowing the time allows me to mark the progress of the night. Breakfast shouldn't be too far off. Then lunch. Then supper. I look forward to mealtime. The food tastes awful, but I always try to eat it because I have to guard my health. Next to insanity, sickness is most to be feared in solitary, where medical help is hard to come by.

I stop at the bars, grind out my cigarette, look out the window. The rain is falling a little harder. There ought to be something I can do. Turning, I see my bunk. That's it. I drop into it, lie down. The mattress makes little difference; I'm lying on steel. I close my eyes and let my mind roam freely in search of distraction. I reject thoughts and images of past experiences as they move across the screen of my mind. Good memories are excellent distractions from this grim reality, but I possess very few of them and can't conjure one up tonight. Restless, I get back up, pace the floor for a while, then go to the steel rail that connects the two steel walls of the shower. I heft myself up, over and over, until I am in a sweat. Chin-ups have made my arms almost as strong as the steel bars that hold me. I move to the sink and push the b.u.t.ton for some water.

As I drink, I see a black man peering at me from the polished-steel mirror over my sink. I put down my cup and carefully remove my handcrafted covering from the light fixture. The room is now flooded with light. I take a long, scrutinizing look at this fellow as he does the same to me. There's a weary slump to his shoulders. Deep furrows are etched across the brown forehead, and small wrinkles accentuate the subtle desperation in his dark eyes. Suffering is what I see in his eyes. I don't like that. If I can see it, others can also. On second thought, maybe they can't. I care care, so I'm looking for it; but they barely even see me, much less my suffering. No, they won't see it. Satisfied, I replace the cover on the light fixture and throw the cell into twilight darkness again. It's a twilight of my own choosing, fas.h.i.+oned with a razor blade and cardboard-a snug-fitting cover to keep the glare of reality at bay. "Mankind cannot stand too much reality," as T. S. Eliot wrote.

I walk over to the bars, stick my arms through, lean upon them, look out the window. It's still raining. My ears suddenly pick up the distant sound of a key being fitted into a door down the catwalk. The door clangs shut. Footsteps ... approaching. It's the Man, making his rounds. I instinctively pull my arms back into the cell. A man with his arms hanging outside the bars is vulnerable; they can easily be broken. Keys jangle loudly and another door, closer, creaks open. There are voices, movement; a door bangs shut. Men awakened down the line, outside solitary, shout curses into the night. It must be Old a.s.shole. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d. None of the others on this s.h.i.+ft would slam doors like that. He does it deliberately, to wake me up if I am sleeping. I'm the only one back here now. Another of Old a.s.shole's petty tricks. I mustn't show my anger.

The trusty appears first, as usual, on the catwalk outside the bars. The trusty is the Man's first line of defense in case of danger. He's a faithful lapdog, this one, always eager to do his master's bidding. He nods at me, his eyes searching my cell, hunting for something to tell his master about. I look through through him. Old a.s.shole appears at his side. He looks at me, and I look right back at him, straight into his blue eyes. I don't like him, and he knows it. He wants to be important, to feel superior, and the only way he can do it is to grind down the prisoners in his charge. He doesn't like me because I won't feed his ego. him. Old a.s.shole appears at his side. He looks at me, and I look right back at him, straight into his blue eyes. I don't like him, and he knows it. He wants to be important, to feel superior, and the only way he can do it is to grind down the prisoners in his charge. He doesn't like me because I won't feed his ego.

"Still woke, huh, Rideau?"

I nod.

"How you gettin' along? Doin' all right?"

It's a meaningless greeting the world over, even among free people. But here it's stupid, too. What prisoner locked in a system designed to brutalize, crush, or destroy him has ever been "all right"?

"I'm doing just fine."

"It's pretty chilly back here. Want your window closed?"

"If you want to. It don't really matter to me."

"It's turning cold. You're gonna freeze your a.s.s off with the window open."

"Do whatever you want. It doesn't make any difference."

He turns to his lapdog and tells him to close the window. Relief flows through my body as my muscles, taut in their struggle against the cold, begin to relax. My face remains expressionless.

Old a.s.shole turns back to me. "They tell me your buddy cracked this morning. Tore up his cell. Went stone crazy."

I nod.

"Guess he couldn't take that cell no more."

"Guess not."

"How long had he been in solitary? About a year, huh?"

"About."

Old a.s.shole shakes his head slowly like a snake charmer and tries to pin me with his gaze. "A long time. Course, that ain't nothing compared to how long you been locked down. What is it now? Ten, twelve years?"

"Something like that."

He turns his eyes away from mine, shaking his head. "I don't see how you held up this long."

I could tell him that he can't understand it because he doesn't understand what it's like to be your own man. I could tell him that he's never been a man and never will be, that he doesn't have the strength.

Take away the social props that hold him up and he'd go down like a line of dominoes. Deep down he knows it, and he expects everyone to possess the same weakness. He can't understand why I don't, and it aggravates his fears about himself and his own sense of inferiority. I could tell him all this about himself, but I say nothing.

He looks at me. "Think you'll end up like him?"

"Nope."

A smile brushes his lips. He nods his head, like he knows something I don't. I feel the urge to slap that smug look off his face.

"You think you're tough, huh, Rideau?"

"No. Just competent."

His eyes study my cell, then me. "Everybody else in this place gives, lets themselves go a little. Their cells, their appearance. I even let go sometimes, and I ain't a prisoner. But you gotta be different. Your cell always gotta be neat and clean, everything in its place. You stay shaved, hair combed-always fixed up like you wait-in' to go somewhere. You don't ever bend, not even a little, do you?"

"What have you seen since you've been here?"