pre-trial publicity and the refusal of the court to agree to a change of venue, which it ruled was a denial of due process of law for the defendant. The Court overturned Rideau's 1961 conviction because of the repeated broadcasts by the local television station of the sheriff's "interview" with Rideau in jail, and with no counsel. The Court said this resulted in "Kangaroo Court proceedings" and a kind of public trial in the media before his case ever reached court. In addition, the Parish Court had refused the defense attorney's request for a change of venue. The Supreme Court ordered a new trial. Rideau was retried by the Parish District Attorney for first-degree murder in 1964 and again convicted. After another appeal because of errors, he was retried in 1970; each of those convictions for first-degree murder were also by all-male, all-white juries. He remained on death row at Angola. In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that state laws for the death penalty were unconstitutional as currently written. States were ordered to judicially amend death sentences to the next level of severity, generally life imprisonment. Rideau and hundreds of other persons (mostly men) on death row across the country had their death sentences changed to life imprisonment. In 2000, a federal appeals court ruled that Rideau's original indictment was flawed, because blacks had been excluded from the 1961 grand jury, which had indicted him on first-degree murder charges. (These charges were repeated by the prosecutor in subsequent trials.) The Lake Charles, Louisiana, community divided largely along racial lines for four decades over the Rideau case. The parole board had repeatedly recommended he be given parole, but two Louisiana governors declined to approve it, largely due to strong local pressure from whites in Calcasieu Parish. In the fourth and final trial in January 2005, most white spectators sat behind the prosecutor's table and most blacks sat behind the defense. Rideau had always admitted robbing the bank, fleeing with hostage employees, and killing one of them. Attorneys in the final trial presented two versions of these events. The prosecution held that Rideau used premeditation to line up his victims before shooting them, and that Ferguson had begged for her life. The defense said that Rideau had panicked and reacted impulsively - first, when a phone call interrupted the robbery, and then when hostage Dora McCain jumped from