The weather turned cold, and with flu season approaching, I asked for an immunizing injection, which I had received every year at Angola because of my history of chronic bronchitis and my age. The parish coroner, who came around once a month or so to look after the health needs of the detainees, denied my request. I was told that the only way I could get a shot was to have a private physician come into the jail to give me one. I asked Linda and George to see if they could find a doctor willing to do this-a black doctor, because I didn"t feel that I could trust any white person from Lake Charles to stick a needle into my arm. The proceedings in my case and the reports on them by the local media had reignited my paranoia about local white folks. Everywhere I looked-in the jail, in politics, in local society-I saw a rift along racial lines that I hadn"t seen anywhere else in decades. A black doctor volunteered to give me a flu shot and continuing care for the length of my stay.
We had no heat. The floor crew told me it worked everywhere in the jail except our dorm. We just couldn"t warm up. Some men sewed caps out of the flimsy sweatshirts sold in the commissary, and I was able to buy one for some Bugler tobacco. I also scored a scanty cotton item that pa.s.ses for a blanket and an extra sheet, which, when placed outside the blankets, keeps enough body heat in to warm you if you sleep in the paper-thin thermal underwear sold at the commissary under two sets of orange cotton jail scrubs, along with two pairs of socks.
After a while, a trusty who worked in the clothing office got me a jacket, but it was too late. I had picked up a bug. I got my prescribed blood-pressure medication and baby aspirin from the nurse, but she had nothing to relieve my cold. She said the best she could do was to have me fill out a medical request form and pay $5, and she"d order me Sudafed through the medical process. By the time it arrived, my cold was gone.
In December, a random selection brought Judge Wilford Carter to preside over my case. I thought once again that Divine Providence was intervening to give me a judge who, first and foremost, had the reputation of being independent of the prosecutor"s office, and second, was one of the two African American judges in the district. Within days of Carter"s appointment, Bryant filed a motion to recuse him on the grounds that sixteen years earlier, when he was a state representative representing a black district in Lake Charles, Carter had appeared before the 1986 pardon board at his const.i.tuents" request to say that since other convicted murderers were routinely being freed on the grounds of rehabilitation, fairness dictated I should be freed as well, especially since my rehabilitation was universally acknowledged. The parade of thirty-five other witnesses appearing on my behalf amply proved his point. He told a Lake Charles television station: "We ought to have the same standard for everybody. We don"t do that in Louisiana.... We have one man who has been in prison longer than anybody else for the same crime under the same circ.u.mstances."
In his motion, Bryant accused Carter of working with Julian Murray in 1986 "to lobby for defendant"s release on the same charge for which he will stand trial," and demanded, "What is to stop them from working together toward that goal today, when they are in ultimate positions to accomplish that goal-trial judge and defense attorney?"
At a February 2002 hearing on the recusal, Carter addressed head-on the attack on his integrity-an a.s.sault that would have been unthinkable on any white Calcasieu Parish judge. He and Julian declared they had never met before that day and had never previously been in contact about me or anything else. Carter turned to chief felony prosecutor Wayne Frey, who was handling the recusal motion for the absent Rick Bryant: "Do you not think my oath of office would prevent me from collaborating with Mr. Murray? And if not that, that the laws of this state, which would make it a crime for me to communicate with Mr. Murray to get Mr. Rideau off, would? I would have to commit a crime; would you say that?"
Frey responded, "I would think that you would, yes, sir."
Carter pressed forward: "What facts do you have to support such a statement, other than the fact that I appeared at the pardon board meeting sixteen years ago?"
Frey said he had no other facts.
Judge Carter refused to recuse himself, saying the state had presented no evidence to suggest that he was not and could not be impartial in his duties as judge and that absent such a showing, he had not only the right but the responsibility under law to stay on the case. Bryant appealed the ruling to the Third Circuit. The mainstream white media in Lake Charles slanted their coverage against Carter, referring to him as my advocate. The black community was up in arms at the raw attack on Carter"s integrity, but there was little that they could do. Lawrence Morrow ran editorials in Gumbeaux Gumbeaux defending the judge. A white two-member majority of the Third Circuit panel, citing no law for their action, threw Carter off the case. We appealed to the state supreme court and waited some more. defending the judge. A white two-member majority of the Third Circuit panel, citing no law for their action, threw Carter off the case. We appealed to the state supreme court and waited some more.
Reverend J. L. Franklin, the thirty-six-year-old pastor of the Bethel Metropolitan Baptist Fellowship Church in Lake Charles, helped to fill the months of inactivity in my case. He had visited me one day and asked if I"d like him to pray with me, even though he was certain I had many other religious and spiritual advisors who came. I told him that the only other religious person who had come was a priest who"d been sent by his superior, at my mother"s request. The priest told me that jail authorities gave the clergy a ha.s.sle when they came, so they didn"t come regularly as a general practice.
Franklin and I hit it off immediately. He was a throwback to the ministers of the civil rights days, who took leadership on social and civic matters as part of their duty to their parishioners. He was deeply concerned about the poor quality of education in the black schools in Lake Charles and the indifference to it by the predominantly white school board. I urged him to run for a seat on the board in the upcoming elections. He knew nothing about politics, so I ran his campaign. We conferred during our weekly visits.
Franklin ran on the theme that a good education is the best crime prevention and announced his candidacy in front of the jail. He pointed out that Louisiana spent only $5,200 a year to educate a child, claiming a lack of money, but could find $52,446 a year to incarcerate that child in one of its h.e.l.lish juvenile prisons should he steal a $500 television. He told me that a white judge had pulled him aside and told him not to mix the issues of public education and juvenile justice. "I disagreed," Franklin told me.
Franklin unseated the entrenched inc.u.mbent and immediately began working to improve education in the underperforming schools of the parish, which happened to be predominantly black. He became vocal about other local social issues, most often those concerning racial division or racial inequities. He visited me two or three times a week to consult, and he came to call me "The Professor." We became fast friends.
The state supreme court refused to consider our appeal regarding Carter, so it was back to a random allotment, now accomplished by computer. It selected Judge Patricia Minaldi. My team learned about that from media reports.
A transplant from Boston, Minaldi was reputed to be highly intelligent. She now lived in the overwhelmingly white, conservative enclave of Sulphur, Louisiana, and had ascended to the bench on a strident law-and-order platform. Because she had worked as one of Bryant"s prosecutors for a decade while my case was active, the law required her to step aside as judge. Julian sent her a letter requesting she do that without our having to file a motion to recuse her. (It was also rumored that she"d had an affair with Bryant, which some people thought still may have been ongoing.) After more than a month of silence, she denied the request and invited us to do whatever we felt we had to do.
George and Linda had broadened their contacts in the law enforcement and legal communities of Lake Charles and New Orleans in order to learn more about the rumored affair between Minaldi and Bryant. Linda also pored through the Lake Charles American Press American Press archives for every mention of Minaldi since her arrival in Calcasieu Parish. archives for every mention of Minaldi since her arrival in Calcasieu Parish.
By August 2002 she had learned that Judge Minaldi was given an award by Crimefighters, a victims" rights organization, whose Lake Charles chapter had come into existence with the express purpose of circulating a pet.i.tion to stop me from ever leaving prison. At that time, the president of the chapter was Beth Lundy, now sheriff, who was then an employee of Bryant.
"Because race is such an integral part of this case," Linda said, "Minaldi"s acceptance of an award from Crimefighters is further grounds for us to call for her removal."
Linda had identified several members of Crimefighters" board of directors who had ties to David Duke and white supremacist organizations and activities.
"We"ll put it in our recusal motion," said Linda, "and send the motion to the media and then hope they show up for the hearing. After all, Minaldi is rumored to be on a short list for a federal judgeship, which makes her of more than local interest. George decided it would be good to put Sheriff Lundy on the stand, since she"s the one who set up the Lake Charles chapter and gave Minaldi the award."
"You know," I said, "Lundy is going to claim she didn"t know about Crimefighters" affiliation with white supremacists. And so is Minaldi."
Linda laughed. "You think?" she asked mockingly. "How politically incompetent do you have to be to crawl in bed with someone without checking them out? Can you even imagine how Julian could shred them on the stand if they made such a claim?"
"I see where you"re coming from," I said. "Once we get either one in the witness box, it"s a no-win situation for them. If they knowingly embraced Crimefighters, they"ve married themselves to racists; if they say they didn"t know about the supremacists, they define themselves for their political adversaries as reckless and incompetent." We just needed the media to cover it.
We filed a motion to recuse Minaldi, claiming she should step aside because of her employment in the district attorney"s office while my case was active, because of the "close, personal relationship" between her and Bryant-which was, we said, an open secret in the Calcasieu Parish legal community-and because of the award she received from Crimefighters, given that the trial would require the presiding judge to rule on issues concerning race.
On September 9, 2002, Minaldi held a brief hearing. An a.s.sistant district attorney asked the judge to hold my lawyers in contempt, claiming the language in our motion was "abusive and insulting and discourteous" to both Minaldi and Bryant, and vowed to seek sanctions with the Bar a.s.sociation against them (he never did). Minaldi gave the state thirty days to file a response to our motion. She claimed that "there are things that are in this motion that are untrue and inaccurate," but she also said, "because they might establish grounds for recusal... I will refer it out to another judge, and that judge will make all the decisions regarding the conduct of [the defense attorneys]."
After the hearing, an incensed Rick Bryant went on the local FOX-TV affiliate and vehemently denied having had an affair with Minaldi-denying more than we had actually alleged-and insisted he would file an affidavit to that effect. An affidavit he eventually filed addressed only Minaldi"s employment in his office and made no denial of an affair or even a "close personal relationship" with her.
That same afternoon, deputy clerk of court Jeanne Pugh, who had worked Minaldi"s hearing, randomly allotted a judge to hear the recusal motion. The computer selected Al Gray, the only African American judge in the district besides Wilford Carter.
Chief Judge Fred G.o.dwin, with no standing in my case, called Pugh to find out which judge would preside over the recusal hearing. That is when, apparently, the idea of a black judge hearing any kind of motion in my case caused more than a little concern in some quarters. G.o.dwin talked with Bryant and then Minaldi. Then he instructed Pugh to undo the allotment of Gray, telling her that Minaldi intended to refer the case to another judge only after after the district attorney filed his response to our motion. Neither the chief judge nor anyone else ever explained why, even if that were true, a random allotment that was to take effect thirty days hence had to be rescinded and later redone. Finally, the chief judge called Ron Ware and told him about his various conversations. the district attorney filed his response to our motion. Neither the chief judge nor anyone else ever explained why, even if that were true, a random allotment that was to take effect thirty days hence had to be rescinded and later redone. Finally, the chief judge called Ron Ware and told him about his various conversations.
The next day G.o.dwin, with clearer eyes, told Pugh he was retracting his previous instructions to her. He said it was the clerk of court"s responsibility to make a determination concerning the allotment based on Judge Minaldi"s statements during the hearing. Pugh"s boss then withdrew the allotment "on his own authority."
This Keystone Kops routine would have been funny if the rest of my life were not at stake.
Months pa.s.sed and still there was no resolution from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals as to whether Gray would be reinstated to hear the motion to recuse Minaldi. Over our objection, Judge Kent Savoie, a former prosecutor from Sulphur, was brought into the case. He set a hearing on our motions for February 13, 2003-my sixty-first birthday.
George came down from New York, as he did nearly every month, for a brainstorming session before the hearing. He had taken about a dozen "John Doe" affidavits, mainly from persons in the legal community who had heard about the affair between Minaldi and Bryant, in some cases from one of the princ.i.p.als. After Minaldi was nominated for a federal judgeship in January 2003, some informants began reaching out to the defense team. They wanted the protection of anonymous affidavits because they were afraid to anger either a sitting judge or the district attorney, two of the most powerful people in the parish. But if push came to shove, our John Does were willing to take the witness stand under a subpoena. We also put Bryant"s wife on our subpoena list.
"I"ve talked to Julian and to Linda," George said, looking across the table at Linda, "and we all agree that we need to bring Johnnie in now."
I had met Johnnie Cochran in 1999 after The Farm The Farm was nominated for an Academy Award. He came to my was nominated for an Academy Award. He came to my Angolite Angolite office to interview me for two hour-long segments on his television show. After the interviews, he gave me the pin off his lapel, which said office to interview me for two hour-long segments on his television show. After the interviews, he gave me the pin off his lapel, which said EXPECT A MIRACLE EXPECT A MIRACLE, and told me that if I won a new trial, he"d be there for me.
"I thought we were going to save him for trial," I said.
"The problem is," said George, "if we get stuck with Minaldi, she"s too smart ever to let Johnnie come in as counsel. She"ll keep him out."
"How can she do that?" I asked.
"He"s coming in as counsel pro hoc vice pro hoc vice, like me, which only means that he"s not a member of the Louisiana bar but the court recognizes his credentials from other states and allows him into the case kind of like a guest. No judge has to permit someone with out-of-state credentials to practice in their courtroom. And Minaldi will realize immediately that Johnnie Cochran will rearrange the dynamics of media coverage of the case, meaning scrutiny of what is going on down here by outsiders rather than sanitation of their hijinks by the hometown cheerleaders at the American Press American Press and KPLC-TV," said George, referring to Lake Charles"s two main media outlets. "We"re going to sneak Johnnie into Lake Charles for the hearing on the thirteenth." and KPLC-TV," said George, referring to Lake Charles"s two main media outlets. "We"re going to sneak Johnnie into Lake Charles for the hearing on the thirteenth."
George motioned across the table toward Vanita Gupta, a young NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorney he had brought into the case, and Laura Fernandez, who began working on my case in 2001 as an intern at LDF and now worked on the case in the pro bono section of her new employer, Holland and Knight. "Johnnie"ll fly straight into the airport in Lake Charles, where Vanita and Laura will pick him up and bring him to the hotel. They"ll use their room key to bring him through the back door, bypa.s.sing the front desk. The next morning, we"ll all meet at Ron"s office and walk over to the court."
"You can"t let Ron know about this ahead of time," I said. "We can"t trust him not to tell someone he trusts, who will tell someone they trust, and before you know it, the secret"s out. Our strength here is the element of surprise, and we have to do whatever we can to keep this quiet."
"That"s understood. In fact, what we"ll do is have Ron meet us that morning at the hotel to prep for the hearing at one-thirty. That should prevent anyone in his office from finding out about Johnnie and getting on the phone. As you know, we"ve been contacted by a relative of one of Ron"s employees who told us that Bryant has Ron"s employee spying for inside information on your case."
"Did you ever tell Ron about that?"
"No. We don"t tell him anything, anyway, except on a need-to-know basis."
"George," I said. "Do you seriously think we can sneak Johnnie Cochran into this one-horse town without everybody and his in-laws knowing about it?"
"Well, my friend," said my ever-optimistic attorney, laughing, "we"re going to try."
They succeeded. When Johnnie entered the small courtroom on the thirteenth, smiles broke out on our side of the aisle, and jaws slackened or fell agape on the prosecutor"s side. As word spread that Johnnie was in the courtroom, it quickly filled to standing room only.
Johnnie took his seat next to me at the defense table. "I told you I"d be here for you," he said, smiling. "I"m your birthday present!"
We had subpoenaed both Judge Minaldi and Bryant as witnesses. Minaldi had reached 125 miles to Baton Rouge to hire one of the top criminal defense attorneys in the state, Jim Boren, to represent her. Cochran called Bryant to the stand to ask him about the affidavit he"d submitted. Looking wan and uncharacteristically anxious, Bryant asked the judge if he could have a cup of water from the pitcher on the bench, which he proceeded to spill all over himself and the witness stand. A collective gasp and several giggles escaped from spectators as deputies went scurrying for towels to sop up the mess. Johnnie whipped his handkerchief from his pocket and offered it to an unaccepting Bryant, then turned his back on the district attorney and walked to the defense table, a barely perceptible smile on his face. I remained impa.s.sive, but it wasn"t easy.
Once Bryant and the furnishings were dried off, Johnnie began his direct examination of the district attorney, who had sworn in his affidavit that Minaldi did not begin her employment in his office until September 3, 1986. The date was important, because we claimed in our motion that she began in February, before before the date of my clemency hearing in May of that year. Our implied argument was that Minaldi"s presence in the office-her brain was clearly superior to anyone else"s there-was a factor in how Bryant proceeded. the date of my clemency hearing in May of that year. Our implied argument was that Minaldi"s presence in the office-her brain was clearly superior to anyone else"s there-was a factor in how Bryant proceeded.
I was blessed to have an army of help, not only some of the best lawyers in the country, but also young New York lawyers and law students who were working for free on my case. And, of course, Linda, who had encyclopedic knowledge of my case, was working for the defense full-time. We were in the fortunate position-rare for an indigent defendant like me-of having ample manpower to check out the prosecutor"s statements. We had been told by a former prosecutor that Minaldi began work in February, and it was Linda who took Laura Fernandez to the courthouse and pulled a doc.u.ment signed by a.s.sistant District Attorney Minaldi in March March 1986. Confronted with this doc.u.ment, Bryant blamed his payroll accountant for providing him with incorrect information. Bryant had also claimed in his affidavit that he and Minaldi had never discussed my case, but Laura had tracked down a court transcript where Bryant and Minaldi were cocounsel and argued about a change of venue based on what had happened in my case. Finally, Bryant had claimed that my case wasn"t active in his office after I filed my pet.i.tion for habeas corpus in 1994, during the time Minaldi was there. Johnnie presented him with the docket sheet from the federal court showing all the status conferences in which the district attorney"s office took part, the motions they filed and responded to, and case records they submitted during Minaldi"s tenure with his office. 1986. Confronted with this doc.u.ment, Bryant blamed his payroll accountant for providing him with incorrect information. Bryant had also claimed in his affidavit that he and Minaldi had never discussed my case, but Laura had tracked down a court transcript where Bryant and Minaldi were cocounsel and argued about a change of venue based on what had happened in my case. Finally, Bryant had claimed that my case wasn"t active in his office after I filed my pet.i.tion for habeas corpus in 1994, during the time Minaldi was there. Johnnie presented him with the docket sheet from the federal court showing all the status conferences in which the district attorney"s office took part, the motions they filed and responded to, and case records they submitted during Minaldi"s tenure with his office.
When Johnnie entered the docket sheet into evidence, Judge Savoie remarked, "The only purpose of this is to show that you quibble with what Mr. Bryant calls a nonissue?" to which Johnnie retorted, "I wouldn"t call it quibbling, Your Honor."
In the end, Judge Savoie said he would require the district attorney to furnish us with certain information to answer the claims in our recusal motion. When it came time to consider whether Minaldi would have to do likewise, Jim Boren sent a note to the judge, who then said court would recess for ten minutes so he could read a motion Boren had filed that morning. In fact, the judge now met in the corridor behind the courtroom with my attorneys, Bryant and his team, and Boren. Boren said he was sure our evidence about Minaldi"s service in the district attorney"s office was sound. If the judge was recused on that basis alone, none of the other more sensational issues would have to be aired in court. Bryant was adamantly against this. Julian, who embodies old Southern gentlemanliness, was outraged that Bryant would allow his wife to be grilled in open court when he was being given a face-saving way out. Back in the courtroom, Savoie severed the grounds for recusing Minaldi and said the issue would be addressed at a hearing on February 28, which it was. After nearly eight months of combat, Minaldi was recused.
Of course, it didn"t end there. When Minaldi ascended to the federal bench in April 2003, Bryant appealed Savoie"s decision, arguing that only Minaldi, the individual, was recused. The division in which she served was not recused, and the judge who would replace her after a special election should inherit the case. This meant that another white judge from Sulphur would preside over my trial.
As the two-year anniversary of my return to Calcasieu approached, depression began to overtake me. My mother and Linda visited me, as did Sister Benedict Shannon, who had been my steadfast friend and supporter for thirty years-she came from Houston every other month with another friend, Geri Doucet. Reverend Franklin was a G.o.dsend. But I was increasingly fearful now that I was going to be railroaded by a system controlled by people who made up rules to suit them as they went along. I felt abandoned by the state and national media for not covering my hearings and for simply repeating what the local newspaper sent over the wire. After I talked to the Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times, whose reporter exposed the vein of racism that cut from the present all the way back to 1961 in my case, the sheriff shut the lid on me completely, telling me and my attorneys that if I spoke to any more media, I risked losing all of my phone privileges, including the privilege of calling my defense team. I found this ironic, because the warden himself suggested that I put the Times Times reporter on my visiting list and because the article insinuated that I was some kind of con artist. I wanted to sue the sheriff, but my defense team convinced me that would just be one more distraction. reporter on my visiting list and because the article insinuated that I was some kind of con artist. I wanted to sue the sheriff, but my defense team convinced me that would just be one more distraction.
I realized about this time that if I were reconvicted, I would be sent to Wade Correctional Center, a small prison in the northern part of the state where high-profile prisoners are sent to live in solitary cells, for their own safety. Life there is very hard, with little in the way of clubs, activities, and the kind of opportunities to learn and grow that are part of the Angola world. This was a crushing weight on me. I came to think of suicide as an option if I wound up there. It was only when I thought of Linda and everything she had sacrificed to stand by me-her career, her pension, her savings-that I fell to my knees at the side of my bunk one afternoon and pleaded with G.o.d to show me the way out, for her sake. I was about as demoralized as I"d ever been. I"d lie in bed for hours, listless and rumpled. I went a week without shaving, wandering aimlessly from my bunk to a stool at one of the steel tables, then back again. I was physically, emotionally, and mentally adrift.
One day my dorm mate Albert Bradley said to me: "Say, man, what the f.u.c.k"s wrong with you, anyway?"
"Bradley," I said, "these motherf.u.c.kers got a cake baked for me out here."
"So you just gonna lie down and die for them? Look at yourself, man. Did you lose your razor? Where are the creases in your clothes? You look like s.h.i.t."
"Well, I feel like s.h.i.t. Besides, I"ve got no visitors coming today. No one"s gonna see me like this."
"What the f.u.c.k you talking about, man? I I see you. More important, all these motherf.u.c.king inmates and jailers around here see you. Dawg, you can"t go around here looking just any kind of way. You"re Wilbert Rideau. You represent us all. Get your s.h.i.t together." see you. More important, all these motherf.u.c.king inmates and jailers around here see you. Dawg, you can"t go around here looking just any kind of way. You"re Wilbert Rideau. You represent us all. Get your s.h.i.t together."
His words snapped me out of my funk. I cleaned up and dug into my pile of legal notes and began looking for something that we could use against the district attorney. I began at the beginning. I scrutinized the indictment and Canaday"s court order to return me to Calcasieu from Angola.
"This order is illegal," I told Linda on her next visit. "Look: It says that the federal court ordered me returned to Calcasieu Parish. The federal court never made such an order. What it said was that the state either had to retry me or release me. This case should have been returned to East Baton Rouge Parish, where I was tried after a change of venue in 1964. The law in 1964 was that a case could not be moved away from the changed venue under any pretense whatsoever under any pretense whatsoever. The law"s been changed, but that is not supposed to apply in this case. These suckers have literally stolen this case and brought it back here illegally."
George and Julian agreed. But we were caught up in a judicial catch-22. We would have to litigate the legality of the actions of Calcasieu officials in Calcasieu Parish in Calcasieu Parish, meaning we would have to get the guilty parties to judge themselves guilty! It was at times like this that the judicial process dumbfounded me.
On May 31, 2003, Julian, George, and Johnnie held a press conference in New Orleans to announce that Ron Ware was filing a motion in Calcasieu to return the case to Baton Rouge, where the Louisiana Supreme Court had sent it because of state misconduct after the 1961 kangaroo court proceeding in Lake Charles. The motion accused Bryant of hijacking the case to Calcasieu for political purposes.
The next day, Johnnie and Julian joined Ron in Lake Charles for a prayer rally to support me, organized by Reverend Franklin and sponsored by a coalition of local black churches. The event, held at the Evergreen Baptist Church, drew more than eight hundred people to listen to a Catholic nun, a Catholic priest, a Muslim imam, numerous Baptist pastors, a civil rights advocate, and Johnnie, who told the audience: "Many white people do not understand African Americans" distrust of the justice system, especially about all-white juries. What do you think would happen if the shoe were on the other foot? What would white folks think if white defendants, their sons, their fathers, their brothers were tried by all-black juries and black prosecutors, given the issue of race relations in America? Would they have confidence that a fair and just proceeding would take place? Of course they wouldn"t."
After the rally, Johnnie joined a protest march to the old courthouse led by Franklin, who said the statue of a Confederate soldier on the lawn out front, with its pedestal inscribed THE SOUTH"S DEFENDERS THE SOUTH"S DEFENDERS, was a visible and constant reminder of white oppression to every defendant, lawyer, and visitor in the court. "It"s time for this statue to come down," he said, "and time for Johnny Reb to stop standing guard over the halls of justice. All Americans deserve to be treated equally in the justice system. We"ve not seen equal justice here or anything remotely resembling equal justice." Franklin decried the harsher treatment given to blacks accused of crimes against whites and noted that black-on-black crimes received relaxed punishment. He pointed to a current case in which four black defendants were indicted for the murder of four black adults and an unborn baby, noting that although there was an eyewitness to the crime, Bryant had cut manslaughter deals with all the defendants, meaning none would serve even half as long as I had already served.
The prayer rally buoyed my spirits even though I wasn"t able to attend. It was touching to know that so many people wished me well, and I was humbled that Johnnie and Julian took time out of their demanding schedules to partic.i.p.ate. (George was representing an indigent in another state that day.) Ron"s presence was an act of courage-and not his first on my case-as the rally and march were negatively received by much of the white community, judging from commentary in the newspapers.
The state supreme court appointed an ad hoc judge to hear our motion. Charlie Quienalty, a retired district judge from Calcasieu who had earned a reputation among defense attorneys as a hanging judge, surprised everyone when he decided after a September 5, 2003, hearing that my case did indeed belong in Baton Rouge. He also forced the clerk of court to turn over copies of all public records in their files from 1961 onward when he learned that the district attorney had given us only those snippets of the 1970 trial transcript that he intended to use at trial. We were ecstatic. We needed to escape the toxic atmosphere of Lake Charles if we were to see justice served.
Bryant appealed Quienalty"s ruling and an all-white panel of the Third Circuit obligingly reversed it. The state supreme court refused to consider our appeal. So we were stuck in Calcasieu. In the election to replace Minaldi, her husband, a vice president and corporate attorney for Jack Lawton, Inc., which owned the biggest bank in the parish, ran against David Ritchie, a young Republican city councilman from Sulphur who had a private practice and also worked in Ron Ware"s office as a public defender. On November 15, 2003, Ritchie won the race and inherited my case.
Ritchie arrived with some baggage. Two years earlier he had told Linda and George that when he was a law clerk, a very emotional Dora McCain came to see him when I was up for clemency and argued pa.s.sionately against it. As a result, Ritchie had made it clear to others, including Ron, that he didn"t think I should ever go free.
Linda and I felt Ritchie should recuse himself. George had a different take. "Look, the difference between Ritchie and the other judges in the pot-and let"s be honest, we"re looking at a white judge because it"s not going to go any other way out here-is that Ritchie admitted his bias up front. All these other guys are too clever and too experienced to put their prejudice on the record. They"ll just screw us without ever leaving a trace. And remember, until a few days ago, Ron Ware was Ritchie"s boss and they had a good relationship. For that reason, if no other, maybe our new judge will want to make at least a show of fairness." We stuck with Ritchie.
Although Calcasieu"s indigent defender system was financially strapped and other trials had to be put on hold, Ritchie found a funding source so the forty-three-year-old charge against me could go to trial. Things did not start well for us. Bryant made a motion, which Ritchie granted, that no mention of my rehabilitation could be made at trial; it was judged irrelevant to the question of whether I should go back to prison. Likewise, we were not allowed to bring in statistical data showing that I had already served nearly twice as long as any other man from Calcasieu serving time on a murder conviction; nor that some local boys convicted of murder since my 1961 conviction served as little as four years. We were to be confined to the crime itself. Character witnesses on my behalf would be allowed to testify only to my reputation for truthfulness.
In return, we filed a battery of motions. We argued that because of state misconduct in three previous trials, a sort of three-strikes-and-you"re-out rule should apply. We moved to have Bryant recused on the grounds of prosecutorial vindictiveness, given his impa.s.sioned opinions and bitter statements, many factually untrue, about me to media over the past twenty-five years. We moved to dismiss the case on the grounds that after more than four decades, it was impossible to have anything resembling a fair trial since many of the state"s witnesses were deceased and, although the prosecutor would be able to use their previous testimony by reading it for the jury from old transcripts, we could not cross-examine those witnesses, who had never been effectively cross-examined before because I had never had an adequate defense. Moreover, we argued, there was a mountain of evidence the state had not preserved that was no longer recoverable because the 1961 crime scene was now an interstate on-ramp, and none of the other pertinent sites-the bank, the fabric shop, the p.a.w.nshop, the sheriff"s office, and the 1961 jail-still existed. In short, there was no longer any way to investigate adequately the facts of the crime. A new trial would be little more than reading the old transcripts into the record for a new jury, which, of course, was exactly what the district attorney wanted.
It would take more than six months for our motions, each denied by Judge Ritchie, to make their way through the rubber-stamp process of appeal in the Third Circuit and for the state supreme court to either deny them or refuse to hear them.
While there was little to do on my case except wait, Reverend Franklin provided me another opportunity to make a difference for the citizens of Calcasieu Parish. Early in 2004, he told me he was frustrated about the substandard education the students in his district were getting and the fact that the superintendent of schools was ignoring the problem. He handed me a sheaf of papers that included statistical breakdowns on the parish"s school performances. The black schools performed abysmally compared to the white schools.
"Get rid of the superintendent," I told him.
"How? He"s been an icon out here for a decade, a local hero who writes Cajun cookbooks on the side," he said. "They"ll never fire him."
"They will if you bring enough heat on him," I said. "Get your Coalition of Pastors for Action involved. These statistics are a scandal. The kids in the black schools are even outperformed by kids in all of the surrounding parishes, where the schools have less money and fewer resources. Educate your preachers."
Sixty pastors joined Franklin in the campaign to oust Superintendent Jude Theriot. They kept the issue on the front pages of the newspaper, circulated pet.i.tions, and would not be ignored. In June, the school board voted that Theriot would have to leave within a year.
After I helped with that campaign, I occupied myself with some other local politics. I advised the black community in the race for the congressional seat of southwestern Louisiana held by Democrat Chris John, who was making a run for retiring John Breaux"s spot in the Senate. But during that contest, on July 1, 2004, we had a hearing that concerned a portion of some interviews with Billy and me that Jodie Bell Sinclair had conducted in 1981 and shared with Bryant to help prosecute me. Although the tape contained nothing that had not already appeared in print, the district attorney apparently thought that my taped admission that I killed Julia Ferguson was a smoking gun. During a break in the hearing, a.s.sistant District Attorney Wayne Frey managed to get a copy of Jodie"s tape to a reporter for local TV station KPLC, in blatant violation of the gag order that had been imposed in the case. In shades of 1961, KPLC-TV a.s.sisted the district attorney in further poisoning the potential jury pool against me not only by repeatedly airing out-of-context sound bites from the tape, but by posting them in streaming video on its website. Judge Ritchie learned of the leak only when he saw the footage on TV.
The result of this collaborative undermining of the justice system was the same as it was in 1961-a change of venue. Bryant was willing to go along with it only if he and Judge Ritchie were to retain control of the case and merely import a jury from elsewhere. We argued that an impartial jury, alone, would not ensure the fair trial demanded by law. The state had demonstrated its malfeasance over and over again. Like so many of our pleas for simple fairness, this one also fell on deaf ears. Judge Ritchie would not send my case elsewhere, and no higher Louisiana court would make him do it.
As it became clear that none of our motions to fend off a fourth trial would succeed, we began preparing in earnest for the courtroom battle. I pored over the old trial transcripts and identified for Linda where the defense team needed to focus-on "facts" that, although untrue, had been accepted as gospel for more than forty years.
Linda moved to Lake Charles for a week, typing into her laptop during our visits not only the fabrications, exaggerations, or outright lies I found in the old trial transcripts, but also everything I remembered about growing up in Lake Charles in the 1940s and 1950s. We covered my home life, school life, work life, events leading up to the crime, and everything that happened in its wake, both immediately and during the three previous trials. Linda was a thorough inquisitor, forcing me to remember more than I ever would have believed I could. Every night she returned to my mother"s house, where she was staying, typed up a report, and sent it along with our day"s work to Julian and George. These materials, together with the scant remaining physical evidence in the case, which George and Linda scrutinized, became the basis for our defense. George sought out the top experts in the country to evaluate the autopsy reports and photos, the handling of the crime scene and evidence, even the language used in various 1961 police reports and witness statements, which, surrealistically, we acquired from a reporter who got them from Bryant, who wouldn"t disclose them to us. Linda was struck by the uncanny similarity not only in the diction and phraseology of the statements given to police first by Hickman and then McCain, ten days later, but also by the identical linear progression of the statements. The two statements, she felt, were similar far beyond what coincidence could account for. She saw that as evidence that Frank Salter had orchestrated the testimony of witnesses just as he had orchestrated the secretly filmed and televised "interview" between Sheriff Reid and me that led the Supreme Court to declare my 1961 trial "kangaroo court proceedings." Julian, who was to question me on the witness stand, began studying the earlier trial transcripts and my life and times as Linda and I set them down in the interview room.
When we were all together in Lake Charles, George and Julian were concerned that we didn"t have a silver stake to drive through the prosecution"s story. They felt it would be a very delicate matter to confront Dora McCain about her statements; the jury might well interpret our questions as an attack on an old woman who"d been victimized. Getting at the truth was not going to be easy.
"We"ll have to hope they give us gifts at trial," George said. "Their fatal flaw-what has always caused them to lose their convictions-is that they go overboard in their rhetoric, their claims, their att.i.tude. None of that matters when they"re pitching to a hometown jury, but outsiders may not like it. We"ve seen that happen before. We have to hope that in this trial Bryant and his team will stay true to their tendencies to overreach, and that we can exploit them."
Shortly before trial, we learned that Dora McCain would not be appearing in the courtroom. She"d had open heart surgery a couple of years before, and a doctor said she was too frail for the stress of a trial. Her "testimony" would be that old transcript. One of our few opportunities to attack the prosecution"s story had suddenly disappeared.
As things continued to go against us, I wondered, in the solitude of jail, why I had previously been rescued from the forces in Calcasieu that had tried so hard, so many times, to kill me. I had long since come to believe that I had been saved too many times to chalk it up to chance. Who would have thought that a bankruptcy and real estate lawyer would have hit upon an issue of interest to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1961 and that my case-over all others presenting the issue of pretrial publicity-would have been selected for review? And who would have thought after my second trial, as I waited on death row, that the Supreme Court would make a ruling in an Illinois case that would give me a new trial? And who would have guessed that after my third trial the U.S. Supreme Court would have, seemingly out of the blue, abolished the death penalty as it was then applied? And how could a man who had served forty years on a murder conviction get a federal court to set aside that conviction because the system used to select the grand jury that returned the indictment in 1961 was unconst.i.tutional? All of this, together, led me to believe that a higher power than man was at work in my life. Now, lying on my bunk, I wondered: What if I had been saved only to portray prison life from the inside and never to go free? Everything in me cried out that there had had to be more than that for me, that Providence had not saved me for a purpose that would forever chain me to guard towers and locked gates. to be more than that for me, that Providence had not saved me for a purpose that would forever chain me to guard towers and locked gates.
And yet, the judge and the prosecutor were making it almost impossible for us to mount a defense, moving us closer to yet another judicial lynching. I thought of everything I"d given up at Angola for what was my last shot at freedom. I was at the top of the pecking order in Angola"s inmate society. I had the best job in the prison, where I could weave meaning into my existence. I sat on the boards of several inmate clubs, which expanded my ability to make a difference in the quality of prisoners" lives. I was the president of the Human Relations Club, which enabled me to bring resources to bear to help elderly prisoners and hospice patients. I was one of a handful of inmate leaders who worked together for the good of the whole inst.i.tution, inmates and staff alike, rather than for their own personal ends. We worked to keep peace and order in the prison, though this was sometimes misunderstood by inmates who saw Angola only through the narrow lens of their personal pain. And I had perks. I worked in an air-conditioned office rather than in the field. Even though my traveling was cut out and media access to me increasingly restricted and monitored after Burl Cain"s arrival in 1995, and even though The Angolite The Angolite was increasingly censored, what I left behind at Angola was a relative paradise compared to what I could look forward to if we lost this trial. I had to believe Providence had something better in store for me; still, the specter of a cell at Wade haunted my waking thoughts and gave me night sweats whenever things took a turn for the worse. was increasingly censored, what I left behind at Angola was a relative paradise compared to what I could look forward to if we lost this trial. I had to believe Providence had something better in store for me; still, the specter of a cell at Wade haunted my waking thoughts and gave me night sweats whenever things took a turn for the worse.
Judge Ritchie asked both sides to submit a list of possible places from which to draw a jury. Bryant"s list included the whitest judicial districts in the state, beginning with Jefferson Parish, which had gained infamy even in Louisiana as the district that sent David Duke to the state legislature. Small, rural, heavily white judicial districts completed his list. Our list included all the metropolitan areas of Louisiana. Judge Ritchie refused even to consider New Orleans, where nearly 60 percent of the voters, and potential jurors, were black. Nor would he send the case back to Baton Rouge, where it belonged. Lafayette, he said, was too close to Lake Charles; Shreveport was out, doubtless because Johnnie Cochran was its most famous native son.
In the end, Ritchie ruled that we would select a jury from Monroe, in the conservative Bible Belt reaches of the state. Carla Sigler, the prosecution team"s newest a.s.sistant district attorney, hailed from there. For us, it looked like the worst of the state"s metropolitan districts. One of our chief barometers for trying to gauge the jury pool was the race for governor between Edwin Edwards and David Duke in 1991. The Monroe area went solidly for Duke.
Just days before the trial was to begin, George and Julian came to the jail for a conference and gave me the dark news I"d long feared: Johnnie Cochran was too ill to partic.i.p.ate in the trial. He"d been battling a brain tumor with experimental treatments when conventional medicine had failed him, and although he had rallied a few months earlier and even went back to work briefly, he"d gotten much worse. He was not even going to be able to travel from California to sit at our defense table. I returned to my dorm and lay on my bunk, staring into empty s.p.a.ce, remembering the lapel pin Johnnie had given me years before that said EXPECT A MIRACLE. EXPECT A MIRACLE. I remembered his deep faith and prayed for a miracle to heal him, and another to help me since he couldn"t. I remembered his deep faith and prayed for a miracle to heal him, and another to help me since he couldn"t.
13.
Deliverance 2005.
Deputies roused me out of my bunk one Sunday morning, trussed me up with cuffs and shackles, and stuffed me in the back of a sheriff"s car for the four-hour trip to Monroe, where we were to pick a jury. I felt I was heading into still another jail autocracy where I was friendless and vulnerable to being set up or sucked into violence. There was always the chance that some inmate would cooperate with Bryant in exchange for a deal, planting dope on me or making up some damaging story. I also had to be on the lookout for something the deputies might do to hurt me or set me up.
My fears were unfounded. Almost all of the jail staff knew who I was, and every one of them treated me courteously. I was held in a solitary cell-the largest cell I"d ever seen-where at the end of each day in court I could think calmly about the day"s events and jot down ideas for my lawyers. Even though I sometimes returned from court after supper was served, I was always given a tray of hot food to eat, unlike the bologna sandwiches I"d gotten after a day in court in Lake Charles. I was also given medical attention. The jail would not release me for court each morning until the jail"s nurses drained and bandaged an inflamed blackhead on my back. I was then able to sit attentively in court for the long days of jury selection.
On the day I arrived, there was a front-page a.s.sociated Press story about me in the Monroe News-Star News-Star, which the newspaper followed up with a story of its own on Monday. The two articles had an impact on the potential jurors, many of whom were dismissed for cause, either because they were convinced of my guilt or because they thought I had served enough time and weren"t willing to send me back to prison whether I was guilty or not. Bryant amazed me by instructing the potential jurors that the burden was on him to prove every element of the crime with which I"d been charged and asking them, should they have any any doubt at all about my guilt or if he failed to prove doubt at all about my guilt or if he failed to prove every element every element of the case, whether they could release me. He did this with an air of graciousness that I"d never seen in him, as though he wanted the jury to bend over backward to be fair to me. On the heels of that thought came the realization that he was acting so graciously because he was absolutely confident that he would be sending me back to prison for the rest of my life. of the case, whether they could release me. He did this with an air of graciousness that I"d never seen in him, as though he wanted the jury to bend over backward to be fair to me. On the heels of that thought came the realization that he was acting so graciously because he was absolutely confident that he would be sending me back to prison for the rest of my life.
After five days, we ended up with a jury of two black women, one mixed-race woman, one black man, seven white women, and one elderly white man named Percy Ritchie-no relation to the judge-who became the foreman. Six of the whites were registered Republicans. The jurors were bused to Lake Charles on Sunday, January 9, to begin the trial the next morning. Our defense team worked out of Ron Ware"s office during the day and a bloc of rooms at the local Holiday Inn at night. With Julian, George, and Ron were Vanita Gupta, now a lawyer at the Legal Defense Fund; Parisa Tafti and Chris Hsu, young lawyers George had brought on board from his new employer, Holland and Knight; and, a.s.sisting the lawyers, a battalion of New York University law students whose boundless energy and eagerness gave buoyancy to the whole team. Linda was the only non-lawyer on the team, the fact expert and a contributing strategist. Laura Fernandez, now clerking for a federal judge, came to offer moral support.