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Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil.
Speaker 3: I'm Evet Gentila and I'm Raschia Pecquerrero. This week we
Speaker 3: are talking about the unfortunate death of an infant named
Speaker 3: Ruderius Lott, and then we're going to talk about the
Speaker 3: trial of his father, Rodriguez Crawford, who was initially convicted
Speaker 3: of killing his own son in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: That's right, Rasia. It was believed that Rodriguez had killed
Speaker 2: his one year old son, and he was given the
Speaker 2: death penalty. However, there were a number of glaring ish
Speaker 2: us in his trial, which you know, we'll get too later,
Speaker 2: but luckily Rodriguez was exonerated. This case gets into another
Speaker 2: angle on the issue of wrongful conviction, which is why
Speaker 2: today we are talking with Maurice Shama, a staff writer
Speaker 2: for The Marshall Project and author of a book about
Speaker 2: the death penalty.
Speaker 3: Yes, and I am incredibly honored to be speaking with
Speaker 3: Maurice here today in just a bit. But first our
Speaker 3: producer Trevor is going to take us through today's case.
Speaker 4: He was arrested, tried, and convicted for killing his one
Speaker 4: year old son. He was sentenced to Angla's death row.
Speaker 4: After five years on death row, he is now a
Speaker 4: free man.
Speaker 5: If I were him, I wouldn't be able to sleep at.
Speaker 2: Night having put an innocent man on death row, and
Speaker 2: he could have very well been executed for that.
Speaker 4: And you send in the sale and they time about
Speaker 4: pen a need on you for some you didn't do,
Speaker 4: and then you lose your son, your child a sight.
Speaker 1: Roderius Lot was a one year old from Shreveport, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: who died mysteriously on the morning of February sixteenth, twenty twelve.
Speaker 1: His parents were Lecendra Lot and Rodrikus Crawford. The night before,
Speaker 1: Crawford had gone to sleep in the same bed as
Speaker 1: his infant son, but when Rodrikus woke up that morning,
Speaker 1: he found Rodarius unresponsive. Rodrikus's uncle called nine one one,
Speaker 1: and the operator instructed them to perform CPR and Rhodarius
Speaker 1: while they waited for help to arrive, but when paramedics
Speaker 1: finally got there, they determined that Rodarius had died. Police
Speaker 1: officers on the scene sought out Rodrikus for questioning. They
Speaker 1: discovered that he had an open warrant for marijuana possession.
Speaker 1: In the past. He'd also been arrested for battery and
Speaker 1: for minor traffic infractions such as driving with his head
Speaker 1: lights off or not wearing a seatbelt. Officers began to
Speaker 1: interrogate Rodrikus, asking him how Rodarius received ruses on his
Speaker 1: head and lip. Rodriquez told them that his son had
Speaker 1: slipped in the bathroom the day before, fell in between
Speaker 1: the tub and toilet, and hit his head. This account
Speaker 1: was corroborated by Lekendra, who also mentioned that Rhodarius was
Speaker 1: showing signs of a cold that day. But that same morning,
Speaker 1: an autopsy was performed by a police pathologist named James Traylor.
Speaker 1: Trailer determined that the bruises on Rhodarius's lips were the
Speaker 1: marks of smothering. He also noted that the baby had
Speaker 1: had pneumonia, but decided that the illness wasn't severe enough
Speaker 1: to cause death, but based on Traylor's findings, District Attorney
Speaker 1: Dale Cox charged Rodriquez with homicide and said that he
Speaker 1: would seek the death penalty. Cox was a notoriously strong
Speaker 1: proponent of capital punishment and a highly controversial da known
Speaker 1: for violent, racist, and often dogmatic behaviour. According to The
Speaker 1: New Yorker, in Caddo Parish, where Crawford was tried, more
Speaker 1: people have been sentenced to death per capita, seventy seven
Speaker 1: percent of them black, than in any other county in
Speaker 1: America between twenty eleven and twenty fifteen. Cox was responsible
Speaker 1: for more than a third of the death sentences in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Before the trial, Cox even went so far as to
Speaker 1: eliminate multiple black citizens from participating in the jury. The
Speaker 1: prosecution built their case on the testimony of pathologist Trailer,
Speaker 1: who claimed that the bruises found on Rhodarius were indicative
Speaker 1: of child abuse. They also used the fact that Rodrikus
Speaker 1: was chronically unemployed and a habitual marijuana user in order
Speaker 1: to paint him as an irresponsible father. The defense, however,
Speaker 1: argued that Trayler's report was fraught with mistakes. He mistated
Speaker 1: medical science, telling the jury that Rhoderius's brain had swelled
Speaker 1: as a result of suffocation, which is technically impossible, though
Speaker 1: the brain does well in cases of pneumonia. Despite strong
Speaker 1: testimony from the defense, a jury that consisted of nine
Speaker 1: white people and only three black people found Rodricus guilty
Speaker 1: of murdering Rhoderius. He was given the death penalty and
Speaker 1: spent years on death row. But in twenty fourteen, Crawford's
Speaker 1: lawyers appealed the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court. They
Speaker 1: introduced new medical evidence, including affidavits from numerous scientists, all
Speaker 1: of which said that Rodarius was the victim of bronco pneumonia.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned Crawford's conviction,
Speaker 1: and the following year, Crawford was formally exonerated on all charges.
Speaker 1: And so, why was Rodricus Crawford initially found guilty and
Speaker 1: how does his conviction and eventual exoneration reveal a troubling
Speaker 1: eagerness to enact capital punishment.
Speaker 2: Joining us to talk about this complicated and tragic case
Speaker 2: is Maurice Schima. Maurice is a staff writer for The
Speaker 2: Marshall Project and an award winning author of let The
Speaker 2: Lord Sort Them, The Rise and Fall of the Death Pennel.
Speaker 2: He also co founded the Insider Prize contest, which is
Speaker 2: for incarcerated writers, which is sponsored by American Short Fiction
Speaker 2: as well as he is the host of an upcoming
Speaker 2: podcast called Just Say You're Sorry. Maurice, Welcome to Facing Evil.
Speaker 2: Thank you for being here, Thanks so much for having
Speaker 2: me so Maurice. You know, I always like to start
Speaker 2: with how did you get to this journey? Like why
Speaker 2: are you so passionate and especially about the death penalty.
Speaker 5: So shortly after I graduated from college, I was an
Speaker 5: intern at a small nonprofit in Austin, Texas that covered
Speaker 5: death penalty issues. But it wasn't journalism. It was an
Speaker 5: oral history project, which meant that we were doing essentially two, three, four,
Speaker 5: even five or six hour interviews with people who had
Speaker 5: some connection to the death penalty or the criminal justice system.
Speaker 5: More broadly, this was family members of people who had
Speaker 5: been murdered, but also family members of people who had
Speaker 5: been executed. And it gave me this really deep and
Speaker 5: rich sense that one of these cases, when you see
Speaker 5: them in the news, there's a lot of people involved,
Speaker 5: and all of those people have really complicated, interesting stories
Speaker 5: and perspectives on what's happening. And then I realized through
Speaker 5: that work that I was interested in journalism, that I
Speaker 5: didn't want to go be a lawyer or do some
Speaker 5: of the other things that an interest in this topic
Speaker 5: may lead you to. And I was interested in other
Speaker 5: things too, I was a musician. But that said, I
Speaker 5: sort of as an intern at Publications and then as
Speaker 5: a staff writer with their Marshall project, really fell down
Speaker 5: this rabbit hole of capital punishment because sort of the
Speaker 5: extreme version of all of these other issues in the
Speaker 5: criminal justice system. So I'm interested in all sorts of issues,
Speaker 5: but often a death penalty case will be the sort
Speaker 5: of most extreme story that helps you understand or explore
Speaker 5: those issues. So, for example, if someone is innocent and
Speaker 5: convicted of a crime. There are many people who are
Speaker 5: innocent and convicted of crimes, and the reasons for that
Speaker 5: can be interesting to explore as a journalist, but a
Speaker 5: death penalty case, an execution is typically going to be
Speaker 5: the most dramatic version of the stakes of that problem.
Speaker 5: So I think I continually returned to these cases because
Speaker 5: it was like through the death penalty we can see
Speaker 5: a lot of other issues in a really complicated way.
Speaker 5: And so that is sort of what brought me into
Speaker 5: this topic, and it eventually led to the book about
Speaker 5: the death penalty. And then I'm always looking for cases
Speaker 5: to cover, and often not just the case itself, but
Speaker 5: for what it can tell us about the larger criminal
Speaker 5: justice system.
Speaker 3: I love that you walked into it, you know, with
Speaker 3: one type of you know, hat on, so to speak,
Speaker 3: but then you have all these different hats that you
Speaker 3: wear in telling the story, and it's all humanity, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I also think another piece of it is having
Speaker 5: grown up in Texas, which was the epicenter of the
Speaker 5: death penalty. I have memories from being a kid and
Speaker 5: executions being in the news.
Speaker 3: Maurice, can you walk us through, like what is the
Speaker 3: history of the death penalty in this country?
Speaker 2: Like why is Texas the epicenter of it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'll give you the kind of like cliff note version,
Speaker 5: because this could be a god I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: you could go on and on. So the death penalty
Speaker 5: has always existed in the United States. I think we
Speaker 5: always think of it as this just feature of our
Speaker 5: society and to some extent, but the history is actually
Speaker 5: very messy and by messy, I mean at different times
Speaker 5: and places people have been very supportive of the death
Speaker 5: penalty and very opposed to it, So that largely depends
Speaker 5: on where you live. Michigan, for example, where my in
Speaker 5: laws live, has not had the death penalty since the
Speaker 5: eighteen fifties, and there are many other states. Hawaii, I believe,
Speaker 5: has never had it since it's been a state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think we ever have. Yeah.
Speaker 5: We talk about it as an American phenomenon, but it's
Speaker 5: actually just within America a very sort of complicated maps.
Speaker 5: So like in the seventeen hundreds eighteen hundreds, you start
Speaker 5: to have a death penalty that grows out of the
Speaker 5: history of lynchings, so you have illegal mobs of people
Speaker 5: who are killing largely black and Latino Americans, although not exclusively,
Speaker 5: and over time this kind of starts to merge with
Speaker 5: the more legal version of the death penalty, the version
Speaker 5: where people are actually tried in courtrooms. When I was
Speaker 5: looking into the history, I found all of these really
Speaker 5: terrifying and awful cases from one hundred years ago that
Speaker 5: show how the version in the courtroom and the version
Speaker 5: of the mob in the courthouse square aren't so far apart. So,
Speaker 5: for example, there was a man in Texas who faced
Speaker 5: the death penalty and his trial was something like four
Speaker 5: hours long, and while he was in the courtroom, he
Speaker 5: could hear them constructing the scaffold to hang him outside
Speaker 5: the courtroom. Oh my goodness. So that shows you that
Speaker 5: the death penalty has always had this relationship to kind
Speaker 5: of mob justice, right, but over time it's gotten more
Speaker 5: and more folded into law. So by that I mean
Speaker 5: legislatures getting involved in saying we're going to write the
Speaker 5: rules around who can get the death penalty and who can't.
Speaker 5: And this all eventually leads to a point in the
Speaker 5: early nineteen seventies that's really kind of key for understanding
Speaker 5: the death penalty that we have today. The Supreme Court
Speaker 5: rules in nineteen seventy two that all death penalty laws
Speaker 5: across America violate the Constitution and basically throws out the
Speaker 5: death penalty entirely. It disappears from the map. And then
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court says, it's it's the way that it's
Speaker 5: being given out. It's not the death penalty itself. So
Speaker 5: if you can rewrite your laws, you know, state legislatures,
Speaker 5: congress to make it kosher go for it, and the states,
Speaker 5: and a lot of states go and write these new
Speaker 5: laws that make the death penalty sort of follow what
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court wants. And that's really led by the South,
Speaker 5: you know Texas where I'm from, Florida, you know, South Carolina,
Speaker 5: also some northern states. Ohio brings it back, but across
Speaker 5: the country the death penalty kind of returns with a force.
Speaker 5: There's almost this like backlash where people are like, how
Speaker 5: dare the Supreme Court stop us from having the death penalty?
Speaker 5: We want it more.
Speaker 3: Now the pendulum swings, right, It's very much.
Speaker 5: A pendulum swing. So then, really the history that I've
Speaker 5: spent a lot of my research trying to understand is
Speaker 5: starting in the seventies. After that moment, you see this
Speaker 5: climb where death sentences, people sentenced to death, the size
Speaker 5: of death row executions, all of that rises and rises
Speaker 5: throughout the eighties and nineties. It hits sort of a
Speaker 5: peak around the year two thousand and then it's been
Speaker 5: a long slow slide downward ever since.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's go back to Rodriguez Crawford, who was
Speaker 2: you know, put on death row for killing his son.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us your initial thoughts about this particular case.
Speaker 5: Sure, so, just to give the quick summary, Rodriguez Crawford
Speaker 5: was arrested for the murder of his son, who was
Speaker 5: one years old. They were my understanding is together in
Speaker 5: the same bed, not with the son's mother. They were
Speaker 5: living separately and sharing, you know, custody of this kid,
Speaker 5: and his uncle called nine one one after the child
Speaker 5: was not breathing, and the police come in and pretty
Speaker 5: quickly a pathologist medical examiner rules the cause of death
Speaker 5: to be homicide, whereas Rodriguez Crawford's claim is I woke
Speaker 5: up and my son wasn't breathing, And the police and
Speaker 5: the District Attorney's office in Caddo Parish, Louisiana decide that
Speaker 5: this was a murder, and they pursue the death penalty
Speaker 5: against Crawford, and then he is sent to death row,
Speaker 5: and on appeal, you know, his lawyers start to look
Speaker 5: under the hood of what happened and find that well,
Speaker 5: actually it was not a cut and dry murder like that.
Speaker 5: The scientific evidence that you see in this medical examiner
Speaker 5: report is as much an art as it is a science,
Speaker 5: and there are actually studies that show that medical examiners
Speaker 5: are sometimes more likely to rule it a murder if
Speaker 5: the parent is black as opposed to if they're white.
Speaker 5: So there's this subjective subjectivity that racial bias enters into.
Speaker 5: And then sort of luckily for Crawford he had good
Speaker 5: lawyers on appeal, it appears that he had a pretty
Speaker 5: shoddy lawyer at the trial who didn't push back on
Speaker 5: the state hard enough. The state also, Shreveport, Louisiana, where
Speaker 5: this was happening, is more than half black, but the
Speaker 5: I think, only had three black jurors.
Speaker 2: Three out of twelve, Yeah, exactly, and.
Speaker 5: That was largely because the prosecutors cut every potential black
Speaker 5: jur from the pool, so it wasn't really a jury
Speaker 5: of his peers. And so in a lot of ways,
Speaker 5: the racial dynamics of this kind of mirror the larger
Speaker 5: death penalty. It also feels like no accident that this
Speaker 5: was happening in a part of Louisiana that was known
Speaker 5: for lynchings historically, that had a severe amount of kind
Speaker 5: of racial animosity. And I recall that first learning about
Speaker 5: this case from a New Yorker article by Rachel Leviv
Speaker 5: maybe six seven years ago. She's one of my favorite journalists.
Speaker 5: So I sort of was reading everything that she wrote
Speaker 5: at the time, and I thought she did a really
Speaker 5: good job of situating this case in the history and saying,
Speaker 5: you know, yeah, it's no accident that Cato Parish, Shreveport,
Speaker 5: Louisiana is this epicenter of the death penalty when you
Speaker 5: look at the history of lynchings, and often the cities
Speaker 5: and counties that are producing a lot of death sentences
Speaker 5: have this kind of history.
Speaker 3: Wow, that was going to be my next question, which
Speaker 3: you pretty much just answered it, because I was going
Speaker 3: to be like, well, how common is it for, you know,
Speaker 3: prosecutors to weave this narrative of guilt.
Speaker 5: So there are the cases where somebody is definitely guilty
Speaker 5: and you can have a debate about whether they deserve
Speaker 5: the death penalty based on you know, what we call
Speaker 5: in the legal framework mitigating factors like their childhood or
Speaker 5: their remorse or whatever. Then you have the cases where
Speaker 5: somebody is definitely innocent, was a thousand miles away when
Speaker 5: this crime was committed, or the science suggests that there
Speaker 5: wasn't a crime at all. But a lot of times
Speaker 5: you have this ambiguous situation where you know, Rodriguez Crawford
Speaker 5: was in his early twenties.
Speaker 3: I think because a baby himself.
Speaker 5: I remember one lawyer telling me about this case and saying,
Speaker 5: you know, maybe he's guilty of bad parenting, maybe he
Speaker 5: wasn't the best parent, But should you get the death
Speaker 5: penalty for that? You know, no, right, Like who among
Speaker 5: us has not made mistakes as a parent. Apparently the
Speaker 5: child had some bruises that was from falling in the
Speaker 5: bath room the day before. You're often as you're looking
Speaker 5: at these cases, you're sort of assessing, well, there may
Speaker 5: be kind of scientific reasons why they're just actually innocent
Speaker 5: of the crime, or there may be some guilts but
Speaker 5: not evil intent in the way that the prosecutors are traying.
Speaker 5: And often there's kind of a whole spectrum sort of
Speaker 5: in between. And it really gives you a kind of
Speaker 5: humility about the death penalty because I think we have
Speaker 5: this idea. Certainly, I remember culturally, you know, from movies
Speaker 5: and TV, getting this idea that the people who are
Speaker 5: sentenced to death are Hannibal elector right. It's the sort
Speaker 5: of idea we have that it's a bunch of Ted
Speaker 5: Bundye psychopath types. And the reality is that many many,
Speaker 5: many of them, even when they're guilty of the crime,
Speaker 5: which Ridriguez Crawford appears not to be. Even when they
Speaker 5: are guilty, it's probably a more ambiguous, trauma filled, very
Speaker 5: very tragic situation. It's not somebody who you know, wakes
Speaker 5: up one day decides they like killing people and then
Speaker 5: like has a glass of red wine at the end
Speaker 5: of it, like Hannibal elector.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: It's that that is just so far from real life.
Speaker 2: Got I know, I just think about you know, Rodriguez,
Speaker 2: and it's like, I remember the prosecutors were like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, he's living at home with his mom, he
Speaker 2: doesn't have a job, and you know, he has some
Speaker 2: type of thing with marijuana, you know, on his record.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, oh, so that's why you're gonna put
Speaker 2: this young kid on death row.
Speaker 5: And it's easier to sell that story when you've staffed
Speaker 5: the jury.
Speaker 2: Right, let's talk about that, so we can talk about
Speaker 2: the prosecutor, Rightdale Cox, who is beyond shady, and he
Speaker 2: was the one right who had the nine white jurors
Speaker 2: and the three the three black jers. But like, how
Speaker 2: do they do that? And is that legal? It just
Speaker 2: seems like that is above the law to me.
Speaker 5: So when a jury is selected, you know, you go
Speaker 5: into the jury room, there's maybe fifty sixty seventy people,
Speaker 5: and each of them answer questions that the prosecutor and
Speaker 5: the defense asks them. And one thing that I think
Speaker 5: is increasingly the focus of people who who look into
Speaker 5: this is that there's a Supreme Court case that says, basically,
Speaker 5: it's okay to cut people from the jury if they
Speaker 5: say they could never give the death penalty. So in theory,
Speaker 5: this sounds right, because you know, you want a jury
Speaker 5: of people who can who say they could give both
Speaker 5: of the punishments that are on the table, the death
Speaker 5: penalty or life in prison. But practically what that means
Speaker 5: is that everybody who is opposed to the death penalty
Speaker 5: gets cut, and so all the people that are left
Speaker 5: are for the death penalty, and studies have shown that
Speaker 5: those people are more likely to find someone guilty and convict.
Speaker 5: And so often you see black potential jurors cut from
Speaker 5: the pool and they don't get onto the jury because
Speaker 5: they say they couldn't give the death penalty. And it's
Speaker 5: a cycle where maybe they don't support the death penalty
Speaker 5: because they've heard stories like Rodriguez Crawford's right, or their
Speaker 5: loved ones have been hassled by the police, or you know,
Speaker 5: it's all kinds of reasons they wouldn't support the death penalty.
Speaker 5: That make a lot of sense when you think about
Speaker 5: black Americans today, but that ends up biasing the juries.
Speaker 5: That's like round one, round two. Is that each side.
Speaker 5: And this is not true of every state, but it's
Speaker 5: true most of the country gets a certain number of
Speaker 5: what are called strikes peremptory strikes peremptory just being a
Speaker 5: fancy word for you don't have to explain it. And
Speaker 5: for years and years and years across the country, prosecutors
Speaker 5: were striking black jurors. And I found in my research
Speaker 5: this astonishing basically memo guide to prosecutors out of Dallas
Speaker 5: from the nineteen sixties, where the prosecutor is basically giving
Speaker 5: his peers advice on who to cut from the jury.
Speaker 5: And it's not just black citizens, it's also women's And
Speaker 5: then there's all these like very like gross claims, like
Speaker 5: people who are overweight, you should kick them off the
Speaker 5: jury because they're more likely to be sympathetic, or there's
Speaker 5: just all of these weird ideas about people. So eventually
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court does step in and says you can't
Speaker 5: kick people off of a jury just because they're black.
Speaker 5: There were some really big scandals related to this, and
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court steps in. So then what prosecutors start
Speaker 5: doing is saying, well, I'm kicking this person off the jury.
Speaker 5: They are black, but I'm kicking them off because X
Speaker 5: and this other new reason can feel a little flimsy.
Speaker 5: I actually found another prosecutor guide from the early two
Speaker 5: thousands that was just like a list of all the
Speaker 5: things you can basically say. And one that also sticks
Speaker 5: with me is things that are they're not the race
Speaker 5: of the person, but they imply the race of the person. So,
Speaker 5: for example, did the juror agree with the OJ Simpson verdict?
Speaker 5: So both sides ask, remember the O. J. Simpson case?
Speaker 5: What did you think of that case? And the person
Speaker 5: can say I thought he was guilter, I thought it
Speaker 5: was innocent, and we all kind.
Speaker 2: Of know that which way they lean.
Speaker 5: There was a tendency among black Americans. It was at
Speaker 5: least a stereotype that black Americans thought he was railroaded
Speaker 5: and white Americans thought he was guilty, and that can
Speaker 5: become a kind of proxy for race, so that the
Speaker 5: prosecutors don't have to say they're kicking someone off because
Speaker 5: of their race. And so now we're in this situation
Speaker 5: where someone like this prosecutor Deale Cox can do this
Speaker 5: and often get away with it, and occasionally, when it's
Speaker 5: really egregious, the Supreme Court will step in and say, Nope,
Speaker 5: this is too far. But there's no real logic to
Speaker 5: which cases they pick.
Speaker 3: So with everything that you just shared with us, I
Speaker 3: would love to know, like, how does one actually overturn
Speaker 3: a death penalty conviction with all of the as our
Speaker 3: new friend Jason Flahm likes to call it junk science.
Speaker 2: Is that how you overturn a death conviction or what?
Speaker 2: I know? It's an open ended question.
Speaker 5: But no, no, of course, it's one of the many
Speaker 5: ways that a death sentence can be overturned. So someone
Speaker 5: is sentenced to death and there is a very very
Speaker 5: long process of appeal and I won't get into the
Speaker 5: history because I don't really know it of how we
Speaker 5: got the system that we have because it's so convoluted.
Speaker 5: But there's just all of these different rounds where you
Speaker 5: go to this court and then this court, and some
Speaker 5: of them are state courts and some of them are
Speaker 5: federal courts, and pretty much every case goes to the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court. Usually the Supreme Court says, no, we're not
Speaker 5: going to look at it, but at least as a
Speaker 5: matter of like process, it passes by, and usually after
Speaker 5: their sense to death, they get a new defense team.
Speaker 5: There has definitely been a long standing since among judges
Speaker 5: and even the public. I would say that no one
Speaker 5: should be executed without access to a lawyer, absolutely, and
Speaker 5: over time the standards for how good those lawyers kenon
Speaker 5: should be has grown and grown and grown so where
Speaker 5: they're often very seasoned and skilled, and typically they do
Speaker 5: a new investigation during the appeal, and they typically find
Speaker 5: things that become claims. And these claims could be this
Speaker 5: person's innocent and there was junk science. And when I
Speaker 5: say jump science, I mean sometimes it's like that science
Speaker 5: has changed over time. We don't know as much. We
Speaker 5: now know more about X than we did in the
Speaker 5: seventies or eighties, because again time frames are so long,
Speaker 5: and so almost always we know more by the time
Speaker 5: of appeal about whatever science. Sometimes we knew all along
Speaker 5: that it was bad. Forensic science, and it passed by anyway.
Speaker 5: Sometimes the claim is around the science. Sometimes the claim
Speaker 5: is that prosecutors did something they shouldn't have, like hid
Speaker 5: evidence that they should have given to the defense. Sometimes
Speaker 5: it's that they cut blacktures in a way that they
Speaker 5: shouldn't have. And then a really common one is what's
Speaker 5: called ineffective assistance of counsel, which is the term of
Speaker 5: art for the defense. Lawyers did a bad job at
Speaker 5: the trial, and did such a bad job that it
Speaker 5: violated this guy's constitutional right to a lawyer. So, you know,
Speaker 5: we all have a right to a lawyer when we
Speaker 5: go to trial. This is like something we all know,
Speaker 5: but in death penalty cases you have a right to
Speaker 5: a better level of lawyer, you know, with more of
Speaker 5: a resume, at least in theory. But in reality often
Speaker 5: they don't do a very good job, and so you
Speaker 5: see on appeal this comes up. So in Audricus Crawford's case,
Speaker 5: I remember reading that his lawyer at the trial, you know,
Speaker 5: didn't really do a lot of interviews with witnesses, didn't
Speaker 5: apparently do a very good job of challenge challenging the
Speaker 5: forensic science.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of pushback, not a.
Speaker 5: Lot of pushback, and so that is something you see,
Speaker 5: and sometimes it rises to the level of this violated
Speaker 5: the guy's constitutional rights. But even when it's not that bad,
Speaker 5: often in these appeals, the person is guilty. There's no
Speaker 5: real question that they committed the crime. But a huge
Speaker 5: version of this that I really could talk for hours
Speaker 5: about is the topic of what's called mitigation evidence, which
Speaker 5: is when the defense lawyer basically brings up factors that
Speaker 5: would convince the jury to not seek it, not give
Speaker 5: the death penalty, whether it's the childhood of the person,
Speaker 5: the remorse they feel, the good things they've done while
Speaker 5: in prison, the fact that they were only nineteen years old,
Speaker 5: or whatever it is. And frequently I'm seeing more and
Speaker 5: more in these cases. The claim that the lawyers on
Speaker 5: appeal make is that at the original trial, the defense
Speaker 5: team didn't do this research and they should have, and
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court has broadly supported that and said that
Speaker 5: you are entitled to this kind of investigation into your childhood.
Speaker 5: So I think this has actually been a major reason
Speaker 5: why the death penalty is disappearing, because more and more
Speaker 5: defense teams do get that human picture and they bring
Speaker 5: it in front of the jury. This is like the
Speaker 5: case I described in Florida last year that I watched,
Speaker 5: so it was subject to the sort of dynamics I've
Speaker 5: been talking about, and yet he didn't get the death
Speaker 5: penalty because they gave that jury this full human picture
Speaker 5: of his life and spared him.
Speaker 2: But how often does that really happen?
Speaker 5: Not that often, I want to say. The statistic last
Speaker 5: I checked was something like one exoneration from death row
Speaker 5: for every nine executions.
Speaker 2: That breaks my heart.
Speaker 5: That's a lot of people. And the thing about exonerations
Speaker 5: are those guys are lucky in the sense that they
Speaker 5: had a defense team come in and do a good
Speaker 5: job and convince the courts that they were innocent. But
Speaker 5: that just implies that there's more cases we don't know about. Right.
Speaker 5: I will occasionally in my work stumble across a case
Speaker 5: from twenty years ago that seems really really sketchy and
Speaker 5: shoddy and worrisome, and the person was executed, And when
Speaker 5: someone is executed, the system generally kind of moves on.
Speaker 5: So if this person was innocent and was executed, or
Speaker 5: if their constitutional rights were violated in an egregious way
Speaker 5: to where they're guilty, but we really would wouldn't in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty three feel good about that execution. Those stories
Speaker 5: just sort of end up kind of lost in the archive.
Speaker 2: Do we know how many people are on death row
Speaker 2: at this time?
Speaker 5: It's around twenty five hundred.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: A lot of those are in states like California that
Speaker 5: don't actually carry out executions, so those people are effectively
Speaker 5: serving a life sentence. And then I don't have the
Speaker 5: number of people serving a life sentence just generally though
Speaker 5: that number is much much higher. Just to give another
Speaker 5: sort of number sense of the situation, between ten and
Speaker 5: twenty people are executed a year across the United States.
Speaker 5: That number is much lower than it once was. The
Speaker 5: number was in the nineties, and then a lot fewer
Speaker 5: people are sentenced to death than used to be. I mean,
Speaker 5: when Rodriguez Crawford. An element to that case that's worth
Speaker 5: mentioning here is that a court overruled death sentence, and
Speaker 5: then the district attorney's office was allowed basically to make
Speaker 5: a choice like are we going to seek a new
Speaker 5: death sentence for him? They were able to it basically
Speaker 5: just wiped the death sentence clean. But then there was
Speaker 5: still sort of the question of punishment and so that
Speaker 5: the district attorney could go for it again. Dale Cox,
Speaker 5: the one who had sought that death penalty, I believe,
Speaker 5: wasn't in the office anymore. There was a new district
Speaker 5: attorney who said, we're not going to seek the death penalty.
Speaker 5: We're just going to let I believe drop the charges.
Speaker 5: Because eventually Rotricus.
Speaker 2: Was released, right, yeah, yeah, five years.
Speaker 5: Often in these cases, if the person isn't innocent, if
Speaker 5: they are guilty, the prosecutor will say, we're going to
Speaker 5: drop the death penalty and just let you spend the
Speaker 5: rest of your life in prison. That is a common
Speaker 5: outcome to So when people think about what they can do,
Speaker 5: I think the piece of advice that I also give,
Speaker 5: regardless of your position, I mean, this is actually a
Speaker 5: piece of advice if you support the death penalty too.
Speaker 5: It's just to pay attention to who your district a
Speaker 5: jorney is. Maybe most of us can't name that person,
Speaker 5: but you probably live in a county, and in that
Speaker 5: county there is probably a district attorney, and that person
Speaker 5: is making the decision about not just whether people face
Speaker 5: the death penalty, but also what punishments look like generally, right,
Speaker 5: the district attorney has a ton of power, and there's
Speaker 5: been a real movement in the last five to ten
Speaker 5: years to elect district attorneys that reflect the political diversity
Speaker 5: of this country a little more. They tended to be
Speaker 5: more conservative than their constituents, and that is less true
Speaker 5: today now there's more progressive district attorneys in progressive cities.
Speaker 5: And so my advice to people, basically, if you're interested
Speaker 5: in sort of thinking about what you can do vicity
Speaker 5: the death penalty or just punishment the criminal justice system,
Speaker 5: is to learn about the policies of your county district
Speaker 5: attorney and whether you agree with them or not. And
Speaker 5: if you don't, then you know, vote for someone else.
Speaker 2: That's great advice. Advice. Everybody should know who their district
Speaker 2: attorney is.
Speaker 5: Absolutely well, I'm at it, sheriff. Look up your sheriff. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's my other sort of hobby horse is look up
Speaker 5: who your sheriff is, because every town has a jail
Speaker 5: and there may be people dying in that jail or
Speaker 5: being neglected or whatever, and the sheriff is the one
Speaker 5: in charge generally, so it's worth paying attention to who
Speaker 5: that is.
Speaker 2: I got to ask you, you know, I love the
Speaker 2: title of your book, by the way, let the Lord
Speaker 2: sort them, especially that first opening, and that seems so
Speaker 2: apropos right to what is actually happening. I mean, do
Speaker 2: you think that as a society we will ever get
Speaker 2: rid of the death penalty? Because it's so split, it's
Speaker 2: so divided, and when you talk about all these different
Speaker 2: people in their stories, everybody has a different perspective, right.
Speaker 5: It is hard for me to imagine in America without
Speaker 5: any death penalty at all. What I've seen is that
Speaker 5: the numbers keep dropping, and even when news events would
Speaker 5: seem to stir back, got public support for the death penalty. So,
Speaker 5: for example, Donald Trump oversaw thirteen executions in his final months.
Speaker 5: A couple of years ago, Oklahoma said it was going
Speaker 5: to start executing one person every month. You don't see
Speaker 5: a kind of bloodlust among society where a bunch of
Speaker 5: people are like, yeah, that sounds great. I mean, there
Speaker 5: may be people out there, There may be people who
Speaker 5: are more likely to vote for their conservative Republican generally,
Speaker 5: you know attorney general, but do most people follow attorney
Speaker 5: general races? I don't know. So I think that it's
Speaker 5: it's lost a lot of relevance. There's a chance that
Speaker 5: could change. You know, Trump still talks about the death penalty.
Speaker 5: Ron de Santis, who may run against him in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, is very pro death penalty and trying to
Speaker 5: pass some bills in Florida to make it more of
Speaker 5: a thing. But it's hard for me to see it.
Speaker 5: But that said, I think there will still always be
Speaker 5: these particular, egregious murders that really shock people and create
Speaker 5: a kind of thirst for the death penalty. I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm not in the business of predicting the future, but
Speaker 5: it's easy to see the long, slow slide down of
Speaker 5: the death penalty slowly basically disappearing, and yet still a
Speaker 5: few kind of big symbolic cases hanging on. One other
Speaker 5: thing I'll say is that a lot of states, and
Speaker 5: I could see more of the country going in this direction,
Speaker 5: are like California or Pennsylvania, where they have the death
Speaker 5: penalty in name but not in reality.
Speaker 2: So they don't actually enact it.
Speaker 5: They don't enact it so somebody can be sentenced to death,
Speaker 5: they go to death row. I think death row in
Speaker 5: California has like five to seven hundred people, but they
Speaker 5: haven't executed anybody in years since and have no death
Speaker 5: chamber anymore, so we may hold onto the idea of
Speaker 5: the death penalty even as we kind of actually let
Speaker 5: it go in real life.
Speaker 3: I love everything that you're saying, and I know, I know,
Speaker 3: as a journalist, like you can't really not that you can't,
Speaker 3: but I mean, give your quote unquote opinion, but I
Speaker 3: would love to know, like, do you think, personally, or
Speaker 3: take off your journalist hat, as a podcaster or as
Speaker 3: a human being, as a Texan, do you believe that
Speaker 3: the death penalty is ever truly necessary or ethical? And
Speaker 3: I know that's a very, you know, big question, but
Speaker 3: I'm just curious how you feel.
Speaker 5: So I've spent you know, now, I guess about ten
Speaker 5: years more than ten years learning about this, and what
Speaker 5: I've realized is how, in some ways I feel like
Speaker 5: I was naive to ever think of it as a
Speaker 5: moral question. And when I say that, what I mean
Speaker 5: is not, of course, it's a moral question of whether
Speaker 5: somebody should face the death penalty. But I remember when
Speaker 5: I was a kid and we would say, you know,
Speaker 5: do you support the death penalty or not? And that
Speaker 5: was sort of the big question. In the last ten
Speaker 5: years or so, I've come to realize that the question
Speaker 5: isn't really does someone deserve the death penalty? It's could
Speaker 5: we ever as society create a system that we all
Speaker 5: could agree enacts the death penalty in a clear and
Speaker 5: moral and just way. So, for example, could we ever
Speaker 5: actually create a system as human beings that make sure
Speaker 5: that only guilty people get the death pilty or only
Speaker 5: the most deserving? And what is even me to be
Speaker 5: the most deserving? And so it's in some ways it's
Speaker 5: a question about us and whether we I know, Brian Stevenson,
Speaker 5: the lawyer, has said, you know, it's not about do
Speaker 5: they deserve desire? It's do we deserve to kill? And
Speaker 5: that has really stuck with me as I've done this
Speaker 5: reporting to say that it's a human system with human beings,
Speaker 5: and I have yet to see evidence that we as
Speaker 5: a society can pull off a death penalty system that
Speaker 5: meets really anybody's definition of justice, much less my own,
Speaker 5: Because even people who support the death penalty tend to
Speaker 5: take a step back when you show them really clear
Speaker 5: evidence of an innocent person who's been executed or almost executed,
Speaker 5: or a case like Rodriguez Crawford where there's just so
Speaker 5: much ambiguity that it's hard to feel good about that outcome,
Speaker 5: even if even if you support the death penalty in theory.
Speaker 2: That's an incredible answer, Maury. Yeah, on facing evil Russia
Speaker 2: and I were always searching for the light in the darkness.
Speaker 2: So I'm going to present this question to you. You know,
Speaker 2: in the Rodriguez Crawford case and the Rodarius lot case,
Speaker 2: where do you see the light?
Speaker 5: So I mean, to me, the light is that Rodriguez
Speaker 5: Crawford walked out of prison. He's a freeman and he
Speaker 5: can rebuild his life. And he spent years in prison
Speaker 5: that he will never get back, years under the sentence
Speaker 5: of death, that he will never get back. But I
Speaker 5: have often found that people who have been through that
Speaker 5: have a lot of wisdom to share as a result
Speaker 5: of it. And it's of course up to him whether
Speaker 5: he wants to share it. But the men that I
Speaker 5: have met on Death Row, both innocent and guilty, and
Speaker 5: I've met a lot of them, to a man, have
Speaker 5: had something to teach me about the sort of essence
Speaker 5: of human nature. And even if those lessons are really dark,
Speaker 5: you know, even if they did something horrific and they
Speaker 5: regret it, even if they're lying to me, and I
Speaker 5: feel like they're lying to me. We're learning from these
Speaker 5: people sort of about human psychology in a way that
Speaker 5: will in theory help us work as a society towards
Speaker 5: less violence, less pains, less crime. So I think Rodriguez Crawford,
Speaker 5: if he wants to, could become one of these advocates
Speaker 5: who says, you know, I've been to prison, I know
Speaker 5: what the guys in prison are going through, and help
Speaker 5: sort of humanize both his own circumstances and the circumstances
Speaker 5: of others.
Speaker 3: I love that, Maurice. We cannot thank you enough for
Speaker 3: being here on Jason Evil and we can't wait to
Speaker 3: follow you and listen to your new podcast and all
Speaker 3: the things.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Maurice, appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Today we would like to dedicate our emul our message
Speaker 3: of hope and healing to the family of rodri Ugus
Speaker 3: Crawford and to the family of Lecendra Lot. They both
Speaker 3: lost a beautiful child, young Roderius, way too soon. We
Speaker 3: will never be able to comprehend what they went through.
Speaker 3: And despite that heartbreak, Rodriguez persevered against all odds to
Speaker 3: prove his innocence and was able to get himself off
Speaker 3: of death row with the help of so many others.
Speaker 3: And to all of the helpers out there who continue
Speaker 3: to fight for the wrongfully convicted, we see you and
Speaker 3: we thank you. Onward and upward, Emua emua.
Speaker 2: Well, that's our show for today.
Speaker 3: We'd love to hear what you thought about today's discussion
Speaker 3: and if there's a case you'd like for us to.
Speaker 2: Cover, find us on social media or email us at
Speaker 2: facingebl pod at tenderfoot dot tv.
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Speaker 2: Until next time, Aloha.
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