moved to Lake Charles, Louisiana (a city in Calcasieu Parish in the west of the state. It is about 30 miles from the Texas border). He attended racially segregated public schools, according to state law: Second Ward Elementary School in the lower grades, and starting at W. O. Boston High School when he was in eighth grade. He soon started skipping classes. At 13, Rideau got a job at a grocery store and stopped going to school before finishing ninth grade. He became involved in petty crime. Rideau was 19 when he committed an armed bank robbery in Lake Charles in 1961. He forced three white workers into a car and drove away with them as hostages. In the course of their trying to escape, Rideau fatally shot and stabbed bank teller Julia Ferguson and wounded another teller and the manager. The survivors testified to Rideau's guilt, noting that Rideau first shot Ferguson and then plunged a knife into the woman's chest. The two other bank employees survived by pretending to be dead. Trials and imprisonment Before Rideau was arraigned, a local television news station, KPLC-TV, filmed his being interviewed by the parish sheriff at the jail. Rideau responded to leading questions and admitted to killing teller Julia Ferguson in the course of a robbery. He did not appear to know he was being filmed, and he was without counsel. This material was broadcast three times in Calcasieu Parish, exposing a large part of the population to the interview and confession before Rideau was arraigned or taken to trial. The defense requested a change of venue because of possible influence of the broadcast on potential jury members, which the court denied. Rideau was tried in 1961 before an all-male, all-white jury. At this time, blacks in Louisiana were still largely disenfranchised: excluded from voting, they were also excluded from juries and political office. He was convicted in less than an hour of first-degree murder in the death of teller Julia Ferguson. The jury included "two deputy sheriffs, a cousin of the dead victim and a bank vice president who knew the wounded manager". Rideau was sentenced to death, which is the punishment for first-degree murder. His 1961 conviction was ultimately appealed to the Supreme Court. In Rideau v. Louisiana (1963), the court ruled that the adverse pre-trial publicity and failure by the lower court to grant a change of venue