Wilbert Rideau Quotes

United States, Author
February 13, 1942

Wilbert Rideau is an American convicted killer and former death row inmate from Lake Charles, Louisiana, who became an author and award-winning journalist while held for 44 years at Angola Prison. Rideau was convicted in 1961 of first-degree murder of Julia Ferguson in the course of a bank robbery that year, and sentenced to death. He was held in solitary confinement on Death Row, pending execution. After the United States Supreme Court ruled that states had to rework their death penalty statutes because of constitutional concerns, the Louisiana Court judicially amended his sentence in 1972 to life in prison.

If you're gonna judge people by crimes, you get into a quagmire. If you're gonna judge people by themselves, by who and what they are, that's a different ballgame.

Wilbert Rideau
Crime is a social problem, and education is the only real deterrent. Look at all of us in prison; we were all truants and dropouts, a failure of the educational system. Look at your truancy problem, and you're looking at your future prisoners. Put the money there.

Wilbert Rideau
- Problem
- Crime
- Prison

Whatever you want, you can make things happen.

Wilbert Rideau
- Want
- Happen
- Whatever
The thing I've learned in life is that basically good people can do some really horrific things, and basically bad people can do some really good things.

Wilbert Rideau
- Things
- Learned
- Basically
You have a responsibility to act for others when you're the only person in a position to do so. It's how you handle it that separates the great from the mediocre.

Wilbert Rideau
Solitary confinement has been used extensively, it always has. I was in prison for 44 years; it was a normal part of life - the practice of it. They put you in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons, they put you in solitary confinement to protect you from violence or whatever, and they also put you in solitary confinement just to show you who has got the power ... It's not something new; it's just something that nobody really cared about in the past.

Wilbert Rideau
- Power
- Past
- Always
Life isn't that simple. Everybody has a dual potential to do good and bad and you're capable of doing both. But as to whether someone is beyond redemption, they're dangerous.

Wilbert Rideau