Wilbert Rideau released from prison

Wilbert Rideau, imprisoned since the days "whites only" signs hung across the South, enjoyed his first full day of freedom yesterday, after a jury effectively decided he had been punished enough for a killing that continues to divide his hometown along racial lines.

Rideau, a black man convicted three times in the case by all-white juries, transformed himself into an award-winning journalist during more than four decades in the nation's bloodiest prison.

He walked free on Sunday when a racially mixed jury found him guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter.

A quietly jubilant Rideau savoured his new freedom in Baton Rouge, relaxing at a friend's house and blinking in a world he left behind when John F. Kennedy was the new President.

Rideau, 62, never denied the killing but said it was an act of panic.