Wilbert Rideau is a cause celebre among death penalty opponents, NAACP leaders, and the MSM.

In 1961, he robbed a bank in Lake Charles, La., kidnapped three employees and made one of them drive the group to a remote spot. He shot all of them. Two survived. The other, Julia Ferguson, was stabbed to death in the heart with a hunting knife. Rideau was convicted of her murder and sentenced to die.

But he walked free this week. The courts overturned three convictions on various procedural and race-based grounds. In a fourth trial that took place nearly half-a-century after the murders, a jury found him guilty only of manslaughter. Since he had already served more than the maximum term for that crime, he was released.

Michael Fumento has the gory details of Rideau’s crimes, unrepentant stand, and victim-card playing.

Leonard Pitts has a squishy column expressing discomfort with Rideau’s release.

And libertarian, anti-death penalty columnist Steve Chapman explains why Rideau’s release is bad news for his colleagues:

Wilbert Rideau, a convicted killer, was spared the electric chair thanks to a 1972 Supreme Court decision invalidating capital punishment as it was applied then. That outcome gratified opponents of the death penalty, a group that includes me. But this week, Rideau walked out of a Louisiana prison, an outcome that ought to disturb opponents of the death penalty. His release will strengthen support for capital punishment by demonstrating that the alternative can’t be trusted.

The alternative, of course, is life imprisonment without parole. Most critics of capital punishment understand that permanent confinement serves to punish the killer, prevent him from taking other lives, and deter others from killing. A lot of Americans who support the death penalty would actually be content with something else: Though 73 percent say they favor it for murder, the figure drops to just 53 percent if the alternative penalty is life without the chance of parole.

So why does capital punishment remain popular? One big reason is that many Americans don’t believe life without parole really means life without parole. They fear that some way or another, by hook or by crook, some vicious killers will be allowed to walk the streets as free men. Wilbert Rideau stands as proof that they’re right…

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