Stories written by Wilbert Rideau

IS THE DEATH PENALTY A DETERRENT?

By Wilbert Rideau
When I was about fourteen, my mother took me to the black funeral home in Lake Charles, Louisiana, to see the body of Robert Lee Sauls, who had been executed in the electric chair for killing a white man who came upon him as he was sleeping in a car parked off the road in the man's field. I don't remember what, if anything, my mother said about the affair, whether she took me with her as a life lesson, or whether I was simply taken along as she paid her respects and prayed for the man's soul.

MY YEARS ON DEATH ROW

By Wilbert Rideau
Nothing in your previous life prepares you for living on death row. YouÂ're like a head of cabbage on a garden row: planted, forced to lead a static existence, every day exactly like the last and the next. Unlike the cabbage, though, your life is without purpose. You are a cipher merely holding a place, awaiting your turn in the execution chamber. Until that day comes, perpetual misery is your condition in life, and your reward for surviving today is that you get to suffer tomorrow as well.
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