WEBVTT - Rodricus Crawford & Roderius Lott 0:00:03.920 --> 0:00:07.400 You're listening to Facing Evil, a production of iHeartRadio and 0:00:07.480 --> 0:00:11.160 Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast 0:00:11.320 --> 0:00:14.120 are solely those of the individuals participating in the show 0:00:14.400 --> 0:00:17.680 and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or Tenderfoot TV. 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.280 This podcast contained subject matter which may not be suitable 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:24.160 for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.000 Hi, everyone, welcome back to Facing Evil. 0:00:29.200 --> 0:00:33.960 I'm Evet Gentila and I'm Raschia Pecquerrero. This week we 0:00:34.000 --> 0:00:37.360 are talking about the unfortunate death of an infant named 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:41.040 Ruderius Lott, and then we're going to talk about the 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:46.080 trial of his father, Rodriguez Crawford, who was initially convicted 0:00:46.120 --> 0:00:48.919 of killing his own son in twenty thirteen. 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.880 That's right, Rasia. It was believed that Rodriguez had killed 0:00:52.920 --> 0:00:56.120 his one year old son, and he was given the 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:59.920 death penalty. However, there were a number of glaring ish 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:02.720 us in his trial, which you know, we'll get too later, 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:08.520 but luckily Rodriguez was exonerated. This case gets into another 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:12.600 angle on the issue of wrongful conviction, which is why 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:16.080 today we are talking with Maurice Shama, a staff writer 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:19.880 for The Marshall Project and author of a book about 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:20.840 the death penalty. 0:01:21.280 --> 0:01:24.480 Yes, and I am incredibly honored to be speaking with 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.280 Maurice here today in just a bit. But first our 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.520 producer Trevor is going to take us through today's case. 0:01:33.920 --> 0:01:37.399 He was arrested, tried, and convicted for killing his one 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.560 year old son. He was sentenced to Angla's death row. 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:43.480 After five years on death row, he is now a 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:44.200 free man. 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:47.480 If I were him, I wouldn't be able to sleep at. 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:50.960 Night having put an innocent man on death row, and 0:01:51.000 --> 0:01:53.160 he could have very well been executed for that. 0:01:53.600 --> 0:01:55.800 And you send in the sale and they time about 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:57.360 pen a need on you for some you didn't do, 0:01:57.680 --> 0:02:01.640 and then you lose your son, your child a sight. 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:07.000 Roderius Lot was a one year old from Shreveport, Louisiana, 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:11.960 who died mysteriously on the morning of February sixteenth, twenty twelve. 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:17.360 His parents were Lecendra Lot and Rodrikus Crawford. The night before, 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:20.160 Crawford had gone to sleep in the same bed as 0:02:20.240 --> 0:02:23.480 his infant son, but when Rodrikus woke up that morning, 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:28.799 he found Rodarius unresponsive. Rodrikus's uncle called nine one one, 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:32.760 and the operator instructed them to perform CPR and Rhodarius 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:35.960 while they waited for help to arrive, but when paramedics 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:40.560 finally got there, they determined that Rodarius had died. Police 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.079 officers on the scene sought out Rodrikus for questioning. They 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:47.000 discovered that he had an open warrant for marijuana possession. 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:49.840 In the past. He'd also been arrested for battery and 0:02:49.880 --> 0:02:53.000 for minor traffic infractions such as driving with his head 0:02:53.040 --> 0:02:56.360 lights off or not wearing a seatbelt. Officers began to 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:00.760 interrogate Rodrikus, asking him how Rodarius received ruses on his 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:04.480 head and lip. Rodriquez told them that his son had 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:07.120 slipped in the bathroom the day before, fell in between 0:03:07.160 --> 0:03:10.320 the tub and toilet, and hit his head. This account 0:03:10.440 --> 0:03:14.160 was corroborated by Lekendra, who also mentioned that Rhodarius was 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:17.400 showing signs of a cold that day. But that same morning, 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:22.120 an autopsy was performed by a police pathologist named James Traylor. 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.360 Trailer determined that the bruises on Rhodarius's lips were the 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:28.960 marks of smothering. He also noted that the baby had 0:03:29.000 --> 0:03:32.399 had pneumonia, but decided that the illness wasn't severe enough 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:36.440 to cause death, but based on Traylor's findings, District Attorney 0:03:36.520 --> 0:03:39.960 Dale Cox charged Rodriquez with homicide and said that he 0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:44.120 would seek the death penalty. Cox was a notoriously strong 0:03:44.160 --> 0:03:48.800 proponent of capital punishment and a highly controversial da known 0:03:48.840 --> 0:03:53.000 for violent, racist, and often dogmatic behaviour. According to The 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:57.880 New Yorker, in Caddo Parish, where Crawford was tried, more 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:01.080 people have been sentenced to death per capita, seventy seven 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:03.800 percent of them black, than in any other county in 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:08.520 America between twenty eleven and twenty fifteen. Cox was responsible 0:04:08.600 --> 0:04:11.600 for more than a third of the death sentences in Louisiana. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:15.400 Before the trial, Cox even went so far as to 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:19.839 eliminate multiple black citizens from participating in the jury. The 0:04:19.920 --> 0:04:23.400 prosecution built their case on the testimony of pathologist Trailer, 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:26.880 who claimed that the bruises found on Rhodarius were indicative 0:04:26.880 --> 0:04:30.719 of child abuse. They also used the fact that Rodrikus 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:34.840 was chronically unemployed and a habitual marijuana user in order 0:04:34.880 --> 0:04:38.560 to paint him as an irresponsible father. The defense, however, 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:43.000 argued that Trayler's report was fraught with mistakes. He mistated 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:47.000 medical science, telling the jury that Rhoderius's brain had swelled 0:04:47.040 --> 0:04:50.839 as a result of suffocation, which is technically impossible, though 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:54.320 the brain does well in cases of pneumonia. Despite strong 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:57.360 testimony from the defense, a jury that consisted of nine 0:04:57.400 --> 0:05:00.840 white people and only three black people found Rodricus guilty 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:04.320 of murdering Rhoderius. He was given the death penalty and 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:08.400 spent years on death row. But in twenty fourteen, Crawford's 0:05:08.440 --> 0:05:12.000 lawyers appealed the case to the Louisiana Supreme Court. They 0:05:12.040 --> 0:05:17.240 introduced new medical evidence, including affidavits from numerous scientists, all 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:20.840 of which said that Rodarius was the victim of bronco pneumonia. 0:05:21.680 --> 0:05:26.279 In twenty sixteen, the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned Crawford's conviction, 0:05:26.839 --> 0:05:31.000 and the following year, Crawford was formally exonerated on all charges. 0:05:31.880 --> 0:05:36.320 And so, why was Rodricus Crawford initially found guilty and 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:40.200 how does his conviction and eventual exoneration reveal a troubling 0:05:40.240 --> 0:05:42.599 eagerness to enact capital punishment. 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:49.320 Joining us to talk about this complicated and tragic case 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:53.160 is Maurice Schima. Maurice is a staff writer for The 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.760 Marshall Project and an award winning author of let The 0:05:56.800 --> 0:05:59.960 Lord Sort Them, The Rise and Fall of the Death Pennel. 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:05.360 He also co founded the Insider Prize contest, which is 0:06:05.440 --> 0:06:10.240 for incarcerated writers, which is sponsored by American Short Fiction 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.240 as well as he is the host of an upcoming 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:20.320 podcast called Just Say You're Sorry. Maurice, Welcome to Facing Evil. 0:06:20.400 --> 0:06:22.880 Thank you for being here, Thanks so much for having 0:06:22.920 --> 0:06:26.080 me so Maurice. You know, I always like to start 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:29.320 with how did you get to this journey? Like why 0:06:29.360 --> 0:06:33.719 are you so passionate and especially about the death penalty. 0:06:34.440 --> 0:06:38.720 So shortly after I graduated from college, I was an 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:42.839 intern at a small nonprofit in Austin, Texas that covered 0:06:42.880 --> 0:06:45.640 death penalty issues. But it wasn't journalism. It was an 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:50.800 oral history project, which meant that we were doing essentially two, three, four, 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.760 even five or six hour interviews with people who had 0:06:53.800 --> 0:06:57.400 some connection to the death penalty or the criminal justice system. 0:06:57.520 --> 0:07:00.400 More broadly, this was family members of people who had 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:02.760 been murdered, but also family members of people who had 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:06.760 been executed. And it gave me this really deep and 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:09.760 rich sense that one of these cases, when you see 0:07:09.760 --> 0:07:11.880 them in the news, there's a lot of people involved, 0:07:11.920 --> 0:07:15.239 and all of those people have really complicated, interesting stories 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:20.000 and perspectives on what's happening. And then I realized through 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:22.160 that work that I was interested in journalism, that I 0:07:22.160 --> 0:07:24.040 didn't want to go be a lawyer or do some 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:25.880 of the other things that an interest in this topic 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:28.960 may lead you to. And I was interested in other 0:07:29.000 --> 0:07:32.000 things too, I was a musician. But that said, I 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:34.920 sort of as an intern at Publications and then as 0:07:34.920 --> 0:07:37.160 a staff writer with their Marshall project, really fell down 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:41.920 this rabbit hole of capital punishment because sort of the 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:45.120 extreme version of all of these other issues in the 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.760 criminal justice system. So I'm interested in all sorts of issues, 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:50.800 but often a death penalty case will be the sort 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.240 of most extreme story that helps you understand or explore 0:07:55.280 --> 0:08:00.640 those issues. So, for example, if someone is innocent and 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:02.800 convicted of a crime. There are many people who are 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.600 innocent and convicted of crimes, and the reasons for that 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.440 can be interesting to explore as a journalist, but a 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.200 death penalty case, an execution is typically going to be 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:14.320 the most dramatic version of the stakes of that problem. 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:17.520 So I think I continually returned to these cases because 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.000 it was like through the death penalty we can see 0:08:20.480 --> 0:08:24.040 a lot of other issues in a really complicated way. 0:08:24.280 --> 0:08:26.440 And so that is sort of what brought me into 0:08:26.440 --> 0:08:28.720 this topic, and it eventually led to the book about 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:31.679 the death penalty. And then I'm always looking for cases 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.679 to cover, and often not just the case itself, but 0:08:34.720 --> 0:08:36.959 for what it can tell us about the larger criminal 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:37.600 justice system. 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.040 I love that you walked into it, you know, with 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:44.000 one type of you know, hat on, so to speak, 0:08:44.200 --> 0:08:46.319 but then you have all these different hats that you 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:51.439 wear in telling the story, and it's all humanity, right. 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:52.400 Yeah. 0:08:52.440 --> 0:08:55.520 And I also think another piece of it is having 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:59.040 grown up in Texas, which was the epicenter of the 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:01.840 death penalty. I have memories from being a kid and 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:03.520 executions being in the news. 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:07.480 Maurice, can you walk us through, like what is the 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.240 history of the death penalty in this country? 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:12.440 Like why is Texas the epicenter of it? 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:15.760 Yeah, I'll give you the kind of like cliff note version, 0:09:15.840 --> 0:09:19.120 because this could be a god I mean, you know, 0:09:19.160 --> 0:09:21.000 you could go on and on. So the death penalty 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:22.760 has always existed in the United States. I think we 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:24.880 always think of it as this just feature of our 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:28.640 society and to some extent, but the history is actually 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:32.480 very messy and by messy, I mean at different times 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:34.880 and places people have been very supportive of the death 0:09:34.920 --> 0:09:38.160 penalty and very opposed to it, So that largely depends 0:09:38.160 --> 0:09:41.240 on where you live. Michigan, for example, where my in 0:09:41.320 --> 0:09:44.040 laws live, has not had the death penalty since the 0:09:44.080 --> 0:09:48.920 eighteen fifties, and there are many other states. Hawaii, I believe, 0:09:48.960 --> 0:09:51.120 has never had it since it's been a state. 0:09:51.480 --> 0:09:53.640 Yeah, I don't think we ever have. Yeah. 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.719 We talk about it as an American phenomenon, but it's 0:09:56.760 --> 0:10:00.559 actually just within America a very sort of complicated maps. 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:05.439 So like in the seventeen hundreds eighteen hundreds, you start 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.000 to have a death penalty that grows out of the 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:12.760 history of lynchings, so you have illegal mobs of people 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:18.319 who are killing largely black and Latino Americans, although not exclusively, 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:23.880 and over time this kind of starts to merge with 0:10:23.920 --> 0:10:26.080 the more legal version of the death penalty, the version 0:10:26.120 --> 0:10:28.679 where people are actually tried in courtrooms. When I was 0:10:28.720 --> 0:10:32.120 looking into the history, I found all of these really 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:36.120 terrifying and awful cases from one hundred years ago that 0:10:36.280 --> 0:10:39.600 show how the version in the courtroom and the version 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:42.960 of the mob in the courthouse square aren't so far apart. So, 0:10:43.080 --> 0:10:46.439 for example, there was a man in Texas who faced 0:10:46.440 --> 0:10:48.920 the death penalty and his trial was something like four 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.480 hours long, and while he was in the courtroom, he 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:55.120 could hear them constructing the scaffold to hang him outside 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.280 the courtroom. Oh my goodness. So that shows you that 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:02.320 the death penalty has always had this relationship to kind 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:06.120 of mob justice, right, but over time it's gotten more 0:11:06.160 --> 0:11:09.920 and more folded into law. So by that I mean 0:11:10.480 --> 0:11:12.880 legislatures getting involved in saying we're going to write the 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.400 rules around who can get the death penalty and who can't. 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.360 And this all eventually leads to a point in the 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:22.320 early nineteen seventies that's really kind of key for understanding 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:24.920 the death penalty that we have today. The Supreme Court 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.960 rules in nineteen seventy two that all death penalty laws 0:11:27.960 --> 0:11:31.280 across America violate the Constitution and basically throws out the 0:11:31.280 --> 0:11:35.560 death penalty entirely. It disappears from the map. And then 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:39.360 the Supreme Court says, it's it's the way that it's 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:41.440 being given out. It's not the death penalty itself. So 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.840 if you can rewrite your laws, you know, state legislatures, 0:11:44.920 --> 0:11:49.680 congress to make it kosher go for it, and the states, 0:11:50.280 --> 0:11:52.240 and a lot of states go and write these new 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:55.320 laws that make the death penalty sort of follow what 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:59.640 the Supreme Court wants. And that's really led by the South, 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:04.240 you know Texas where I'm from, Florida, you know, South Carolina, 0:12:04.280 --> 0:12:07.600 also some northern states. Ohio brings it back, but across 0:12:07.640 --> 0:12:10.559 the country the death penalty kind of returns with a force. 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.560 There's almost this like backlash where people are like, how 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:15.880 dare the Supreme Court stop us from having the death penalty? 0:12:16.000 --> 0:12:16.880 We want it more. 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:20.200 Now the pendulum swings, right, It's very much. 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:24.160 A pendulum swing. So then, really the history that I've 0:12:24.280 --> 0:12:27.160 spent a lot of my research trying to understand is 0:12:27.920 --> 0:12:30.800 starting in the seventies. After that moment, you see this 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.080 climb where death sentences, people sentenced to death, the size 0:12:34.080 --> 0:12:37.040 of death row executions, all of that rises and rises 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:39.560 throughout the eighties and nineties. It hits sort of a 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:41.840 peak around the year two thousand and then it's been 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.360 a long slow slide downward ever since. 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:09.840 Okay, so let's go back to Rodriguez Crawford, who was 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.360 you know, put on death row for killing his son. 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:16.880 Can you tell us your initial thoughts about this particular case. 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:21.800 Sure, so, just to give the quick summary, Rodriguez Crawford 0:13:22.280 --> 0:13:25.040 was arrested for the murder of his son, who was 0:13:25.080 --> 0:13:28.640 one years old. They were my understanding is together in 0:13:28.720 --> 0:13:32.000 the same bed, not with the son's mother. They were 0:13:32.440 --> 0:13:35.959 living separately and sharing, you know, custody of this kid, 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:39.920 and his uncle called nine one one after the child 0:13:40.000 --> 0:13:43.400 was not breathing, and the police come in and pretty 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:48.360 quickly a pathologist medical examiner rules the cause of death 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:52.040 to be homicide, whereas Rodriguez Crawford's claim is I woke 0:13:52.120 --> 0:13:57.240 up and my son wasn't breathing, And the police and 0:13:57.400 --> 0:14:02.679 the District Attorney's office in Caddo Parish, Louisiana decide that 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:06.240 this was a murder, and they pursue the death penalty 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.400 against Crawford, and then he is sent to death row, 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:14.480 and on appeal, you know, his lawyers start to look 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:17.480 under the hood of what happened and find that well, 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:20.480 actually it was not a cut and dry murder like that. 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:26.160 The scientific evidence that you see in this medical examiner 0:14:26.200 --> 0:14:28.320 report is as much an art as it is a science, 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:33.600 and there are actually studies that show that medical examiners 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:37.320 are sometimes more likely to rule it a murder if 0:14:37.400 --> 0:14:39.440 the parent is black as opposed to if they're white. 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:44.360 So there's this subjective subjectivity that racial bias enters into. 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.160 And then sort of luckily for Crawford he had good 0:14:48.240 --> 0:14:50.440 lawyers on appeal, it appears that he had a pretty 0:14:50.640 --> 0:14:53.600 shoddy lawyer at the trial who didn't push back on 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:56.680 the state hard enough. The state also, Shreveport, Louisiana, where 0:14:56.720 --> 0:14:59.680 this was happening, is more than half black, but the 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:03.200 I think, only had three black jurors. 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:04.600 Three out of twelve, Yeah, exactly, and. 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:08.400 That was largely because the prosecutors cut every potential black 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:10.560 jur from the pool, so it wasn't really a jury 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:13.520 of his peers. And so in a lot of ways, 0:15:13.640 --> 0:15:16.480 the racial dynamics of this kind of mirror the larger 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:20.440 death penalty. It also feels like no accident that this 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:22.800 was happening in a part of Louisiana that was known 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:26.480 for lynchings historically, that had a severe amount of kind 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:30.920 of racial animosity. And I recall that first learning about 0:15:30.960 --> 0:15:33.240 this case from a New Yorker article by Rachel Leviv 0:15:33.400 --> 0:15:36.239 maybe six seven years ago. She's one of my favorite journalists. 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:38.800 So I sort of was reading everything that she wrote 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.080 at the time, and I thought she did a really 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:44.600 good job of situating this case in the history and saying, 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.920 you know, yeah, it's no accident that Cato Parish, Shreveport, 0:15:47.960 --> 0:15:50.160 Louisiana is this epicenter of the death penalty when you 0:15:50.200 --> 0:15:54.560 look at the history of lynchings, and often the cities 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.800 and counties that are producing a lot of death sentences 0:15:57.840 --> 0:15:58.920 have this kind of history. 0:15:59.440 --> 0:16:02.080 Wow, that was going to be my next question, which 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:03.920 you pretty much just answered it, because I was going 0:16:04.000 --> 0:16:06.160 to be like, well, how common is it for, you know, 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:09.040 prosecutors to weave this narrative of guilt. 0:16:09.360 --> 0:16:11.360 So there are the cases where somebody is definitely guilty 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:13.160 and you can have a debate about whether they deserve 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.640 the death penalty based on you know, what we call 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:19.800 in the legal framework mitigating factors like their childhood or 0:16:20.280 --> 0:16:23.040 their remorse or whatever. Then you have the cases where 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:26.560 somebody is definitely innocent, was a thousand miles away when 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:29.600 this crime was committed, or the science suggests that there 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:31.360 wasn't a crime at all. But a lot of times 0:16:31.400 --> 0:16:35.760 you have this ambiguous situation where you know, Rodriguez Crawford 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:37.160 was in his early twenties. 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:39.160 I think because a baby himself. 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:42.000 I remember one lawyer telling me about this case and saying, 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.240 you know, maybe he's guilty of bad parenting, maybe he 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:46.760 wasn't the best parent, But should you get the death 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:49.200 penalty for that? You know, no, right, Like who among 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:52.160 us has not made mistakes as a parent. Apparently the 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:54.840 child had some bruises that was from falling in the 0:16:54.840 --> 0:16:58.480 bath room the day before. You're often as you're looking 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:00.600 at these cases, you're sort of assessing, well, there may 0:17:00.640 --> 0:17:03.400 be kind of scientific reasons why they're just actually innocent 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:06.399 of the crime, or there may be some guilts but 0:17:06.560 --> 0:17:10.439 not evil intent in the way that the prosecutors are traying. 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.399 And often there's kind of a whole spectrum sort of 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:16.200 in between. And it really gives you a kind of 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:18.560 humility about the death penalty because I think we have 0:17:18.640 --> 0:17:22.520 this idea. Certainly, I remember culturally, you know, from movies 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:25.239 and TV, getting this idea that the people who are 0:17:25.240 --> 0:17:27.760 sentenced to death are Hannibal elector right. It's the sort 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:29.480 of idea we have that it's a bunch of Ted 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:34.040 Bundye psychopath types. And the reality is that many many, 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:36.159 many of them, even when they're guilty of the crime, 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.359 which Ridriguez Crawford appears not to be. Even when they 0:17:39.400 --> 0:17:44.480 are guilty, it's probably a more ambiguous, trauma filled, very 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:49.720 very tragic situation. It's not somebody who you know, wakes 0:17:49.800 --> 0:17:52.479 up one day decides they like killing people and then 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:54.040 like has a glass of red wine at the end 0:17:54.040 --> 0:17:55.119 of it, like Hannibal elector. 0:17:55.160 --> 0:17:55.359 You know. 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:57.800 It's that that is just so far from real life. 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:00.920 Got I know, I just think about you know, Rodriguez, 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:04.439 and it's like, I remember the prosecutors were like, well, 0:18:04.600 --> 0:18:07.240 you know, he's living at home with his mom, he 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.919 doesn't have a job, and you know, he has some 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:14.240 type of thing with marijuana, you know, on his record. 0:18:14.240 --> 0:18:16.960 And I'm like, oh, so that's why you're gonna put 0:18:17.040 --> 0:18:18.560 this young kid on death row. 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:21.200 And it's easier to sell that story when you've staffed 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:21.760 the jury. 0:18:21.840 --> 0:18:24.600 Right, let's talk about that, so we can talk about 0:18:24.640 --> 0:18:31.040 the prosecutor, Rightdale Cox, who is beyond shady, and he 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:35.080 was the one right who had the nine white jurors 0:18:35.119 --> 0:18:38.119 and the three the three black jers. But like, how 0:18:38.200 --> 0:18:41.199 do they do that? And is that legal? It just 0:18:41.200 --> 0:18:43.480 seems like that is above the law to me. 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:45.960 So when a jury is selected, you know, you go 0:18:46.040 --> 0:18:49.320 into the jury room, there's maybe fifty sixty seventy people, 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:51.919 and each of them answer questions that the prosecutor and 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:56.400 the defense asks them. And one thing that I think 0:18:56.480 --> 0:19:00.560 is increasingly the focus of people who who look into 0:19:00.600 --> 0:19:04.280 this is that there's a Supreme Court case that says, basically, 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:07.080 it's okay to cut people from the jury if they 0:19:07.080 --> 0:19:10.600 say they could never give the death penalty. So in theory, 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:13.600 this sounds right, because you know, you want a jury 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:17.120 of people who can who say they could give both 0:19:17.119 --> 0:19:18.880 of the punishments that are on the table, the death 0:19:18.920 --> 0:19:22.240 penalty or life in prison. But practically what that means 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.320 is that everybody who is opposed to the death penalty 0:19:24.359 --> 0:19:26.320 gets cut, and so all the people that are left 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.800 are for the death penalty, and studies have shown that 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.000 those people are more likely to find someone guilty and convict. 0:19:33.400 --> 0:19:36.840 And so often you see black potential jurors cut from 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.399 the pool and they don't get onto the jury because 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:42.280 they say they couldn't give the death penalty. And it's 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.280 a cycle where maybe they don't support the death penalty 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:48.679 because they've heard stories like Rodriguez Crawford's right, or their 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.320 loved ones have been hassled by the police, or you know, 0:19:51.600 --> 0:19:53.719 it's all kinds of reasons they wouldn't support the death penalty. 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:55.560 That make a lot of sense when you think about 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.159 black Americans today, but that ends up biasing the juries. 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.720 That's like round one, round two. Is that each side. 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:06.479 And this is not true of every state, but it's 0:20:06.520 --> 0:20:09.679 true most of the country gets a certain number of 0:20:09.720 --> 0:20:14.280 what are called strikes peremptory strikes peremptory just being a 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:17.080 fancy word for you don't have to explain it. And 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:20.879 for years and years and years across the country, prosecutors 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:25.560 were striking black jurors. And I found in my research 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:31.560 this astonishing basically memo guide to prosecutors out of Dallas 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:36.080 from the nineteen sixties, where the prosecutor is basically giving 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:38.720 his peers advice on who to cut from the jury. 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:45.040 And it's not just black citizens, it's also women's And 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:47.760 then there's all these like very like gross claims, like 0:20:48.040 --> 0:20:49.920 people who are overweight, you should kick them off the 0:20:50.000 --> 0:20:52.520 jury because they're more likely to be sympathetic, or there's 0:20:52.560 --> 0:20:57.080 just all of these weird ideas about people. So eventually 0:20:57.640 --> 0:21:01.240 the Supreme Court does step in and says you can't 0:21:01.520 --> 0:21:04.320 kick people off of a jury just because they're black. 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:07.840 There were some really big scandals related to this, and 0:21:08.160 --> 0:21:11.120 the Supreme Court steps in. So then what prosecutors start 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:15.320 doing is saying, well, I'm kicking this person off the jury. 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:18.159 They are black, but I'm kicking them off because X 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:22.800 and this other new reason can feel a little flimsy. 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:25.639 I actually found another prosecutor guide from the early two 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:27.280 thousands that was just like a list of all the 0:21:27.280 --> 0:21:30.280 things you can basically say. And one that also sticks 0:21:30.280 --> 0:21:34.160 with me is things that are they're not the race 0:21:34.200 --> 0:21:37.320 of the person, but they imply the race of the person. So, 0:21:37.400 --> 0:21:41.600 for example, did the juror agree with the OJ Simpson verdict? 0:21:42.800 --> 0:21:45.440 So both sides ask, remember the O. J. Simpson case? 0:21:45.440 --> 0:21:47.879 What did you think of that case? And the person 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:49.960 can say I thought he was guilter, I thought it 0:21:50.000 --> 0:21:52.159 was innocent, and we all kind. 0:21:51.920 --> 0:21:53.760 Of know that which way they lean. 0:21:54.200 --> 0:21:57.800 There was a tendency among black Americans. It was at 0:21:57.880 --> 0:22:01.320 least a stereotype that black Americans thought he was railroaded 0:22:01.320 --> 0:22:04.440 and white Americans thought he was guilty, and that can 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:06.879 become a kind of proxy for race, so that the 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:09.879 prosecutors don't have to say they're kicking someone off because 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:12.879 of their race. And so now we're in this situation 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:17.040 where someone like this prosecutor Deale Cox can do this 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:20.520 and often get away with it, and occasionally, when it's 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:25.240 really egregious, the Supreme Court will step in and say, Nope, 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.080 this is too far. But there's no real logic to 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:29.040 which cases they pick. 0:22:29.280 --> 0:22:31.919 So with everything that you just shared with us, I 0:22:31.960 --> 0:22:37.200 would love to know, like, how does one actually overturn 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:41.720 a death penalty conviction with all of the as our 0:22:41.880 --> 0:22:44.840