Justice Undone 2

Rideau is free. Yesterday's report on All Things Considered left out a few things from last Friday's report. Notably this line:

Ronald Gillery (Lake Charles barber): How can a man kidnap three people, take 'em out in the woods, shoot 'em all, cut one with a knife, slit one's throat to where her head almost fell off when the coroner picked it up, and that's not murder?

Jonah Goldberg picked up on this story today on NRO (maybe he read my blog?). He got one thing wrong - Rideau didn't just stab Julie Ferguson (see above). He received this email in response:

You must be the only person on earth with the correct mixture of shallowness, bloodthirstiness and pretension to assert (correctly) the value of "Groundhog Day" -- a beautiful tale of redemption -- fast on the heels of your previous post, which expressed your preference that a dubiously convicted killer (19 at the time, and black in 1961 Louisiana) be executed rather than permitted to reform himself and contribute to the world.

Unfathomably disgusting.

Needless to say -- as I'm sure you know it deep down --(but it feels good to say it anyway) at the end of his life Rideau will have contributed more to the health of humanity's soul than you, our wife and parents combined. By rather a lot. (I leave your daughter out of it, in case she diverges from the family tendencies.)

I'm sure Julie Ferguson's family appreciate his "contribution to the health of humanity's soul." Rideau's free, he's giving interviews, getting his prescriptions filled, learning to use a cell phone, spending the weekend with friends and family, and I guess will produce more documentaries for NPR. Julie Ferguson is still dead.

The jury in this latest retrial didn't think Rideau meant to shoot the three bank employees. Did he mean to cut Ferguson's throat? Three convictions were overturned on racial grounds, but no one, not even Rideau, denies he comitted murder. TANJ.