Rodricus Crawford; Louisiana; Part 23; (Appeal); The Advocate's John Simerman's comprehensive story on the yesterday's appeal: "Justice Jeannette Theriot Knoll cast perhaps the most doubt from the bench as she questioned Caddo Parish Assistant District Attorney Tommy Johnson over the office's decision to seek death for Crawford. "Is there any evidence he occasionally abused the child or was rough with the child?" Knoll asked. "No, your honor," Johnson responded. "Then how did the state come about (to the position) that this was a first-degree murder case, on circumstantial evidence, with a child that an autopsy had discovered had sepsis, and ask that this man be put to death on weak circumstances? You don't even have a motive," Knoll said."

STORY: "Louisiana Supreme Court hears case to overturn death verdict in Caddo Parish baby's death," by reporter John Simerman, published by The Advocate, on September 7, 2016.  (John Simerman reports on the courts and Louisiana's criminal justice system for the Advocate, Louisiana's largest daily newspaper).

GIST: "A Caddo Parish jury convicted Rodricus Crawford of first-degree murder in 2013 with scant evidence of a motive, relying largely on the testimony of a forensic pathologist who called it "more likely than not" that Crawford smothered his 1-year-old son. That same jury sentenced Crawford to death after prosecutor Dale Cox argued that it's what Jesus would do. On Wednesday, the Louisiana Supreme Court heard oral arguments over Crawford's bid for a new trial, with several justices engaging in an unusually detailed review of medical evidence in the case. The case marked the latest challenge to a death sentence out of Caddo Parish, the state's leader in sending people to death row. According to a report last month from the Fair Punishment Project, Caddo Parish juries have sentenced five people to death since 2010, accounting for 38 percent of the state's total death sentences in that time. That record is due largely to Cox, a vocal advocate for the death penalty who resigned as acting district attorney at the end of last year in the face of national criticism. Cecelia Kappel, an attorney with the Capital Appeals Project, argued that the jury in Crawford's case relied on bad forensic science that skipped over strong evidence little Roderius Lott died of sepsis, rather than at his father's hands. She said Cox's appeal to Scripture in arguing for death crossed the constitutional line. As several clergy members and 11 of Crawford's relatives sat in a packed gallery, the seven justices explored the makings of the toddler's death on Feb. 16, 2012, nine days past his first birthday.
The night before, the boy went to sleep with his father on a foldout couch at the Shreveport home where Crawford lived with his mother and other relatives. In the morning, Crawford, now 27, shouted frantically, "Look at the baby, look at the baby, what's wrong with Bobo, something is wrong with Bobo" while relatives called 911. Authorities found bruises on the baby's buttocks and a broken lip. Crawford told police the child had fallen in the bathroom and insisted he never harmed him. Dr. Todd Thoma, the Caddo Parish coroner, deemed it a homicide, and Dr. James Traylor followed with an autopsy. Traylor found that the injuries to the baby's mouth, his teeth having pushed through his inner lips, were proof of "compressive force." He diagnosed the cause of death as smothering, making that determination before test results came back showing that the boy had pneumonia and that his blood was positive for streptococcus bacteria. Still, Traylor testified at Crawford's trial that the baby would have appeared sickly before his death if he had died from sepsis, a life-threatening infection. Several experts have since argued that Traylor's testimony was biased, that the evidence points to sepsis as the cause of the boy's death and that the pathologist's findings had no basis in science. Crawford's attorneys, in an automatic appeal of the death sentence, are asking the court to take the unusual step of undoing a jury's verdict and death sentence based on insufficient evidence. The evidence, they argue, points instead to his innocence. Justice Jeannette Theriot Knoll cast perhaps the most doubt from the bench as she questioned Caddo Parish Assistant District Attorney Tommy Johnson over the office's decision to seek death for Crawford. "Is there any evidence he occasionally abused the child or was rough with the child?" Knoll asked. "No, your honor," Johnson responded. "Then how did the state come about (to the position) that this was a first-degree murder case, on circumstantial evidence, with a child that an autopsy had discovered had sepsis, and ask that this man be put to death on weak circumstances? You don't even have a motive," Knoll said.  Johnson responded that there was no proof the boy had sepsis at the trial. He acknowledged that prosecutors suggested a motive -- a rift with the mother of Crawford's older child -- but never backed it up with evidence. He also pointed to the bruising on the boy, suggesting what he called "the abuse factor." The boy's mother lived up the street but Crawford had been with the boy for the three days prior to his death. Crawford was indicted two months after the death on a first-degree murder count, with cruelty to a juvenile as an aggravating factor. "All the evidence leading up to the night before his death was (that) family members saw no bruising on this baby, no evidence of trauma," Johnson argued. "He was healthy. He was not coughing. He was running around playing, happy, and the next morning, roughly seven to eight hours later, he was dead." Kappel dismissed the claim that any of the evidence pointed to Crawford abusing the baby, saying the pathologist told the jury, falsely, that there was no way of telling specifically when the lip injury occurred.  And the boy was far from healthy, she told the court, evidenced by the test results after his death as well as by two earlier trips to the hospital with respiratory troubles, including a bout of bronchitis five months before his death. "Nine experts in this case have disagreed with Dr. Traylor's opinions. It's hard to believe the state can have any confidence the evidence in this case could support a verdict of negligent homicide, much less (first-degree murder)," Kappel argued. "It is the state's burden not to show that the defendant is probably guilty but to establish guilt to a moral certainty." Kappel seemed to make little headway with the justices regarding the penalty phase of Crawford's trial, when Cox, the prosecutor, invoked Christ in pressing the jury to condemn Crawford. "He said, to the adult, who would harm one of these -- 'one of these' referring to small children -- woe be unto you, who would harm one of these. Now, this is Jesus Christ of the New Testament: 'It would be better as though you were never born. You shall have a millstone cast around your neck and you will be thrown into the sea,' " Cox told the jury. "He (Jesus) reached a just verdict, which is what the law asks you to reach in this case: a just verdict. ... And that's why I think that we should not lightly disregard his words when he talks about what he would do to someone who hurt one of these." This week, 111 clergy members, nuns and ministers attached their names to a "friend of the court" brief that criticized Cox, saying that he "wrongfully used or misused the Bible and his own opinions to advocate for the execution of Mr. Crawford." Kappel said she couldn't think of "any other area more prejudicial than for a prosecutor to say to a jury, 'I believe that Jesus Christ's verdict in this case would be death.' " Cox first raised the biblical passage while cross-examining a pastor who had testified on Crawford's behalf. Justice Scott Crichton noted that the rules for cross-examination are broad, and the rest of the court didn't dwell on the issue. But several of the justices questioned whether the judge in the case properly vetted the state's removal of several black jurors before the trial. According to Kappel, five of the seven potential jurors stricken by prosecutors were black. Justice Greg Guidry, in particular, seemed persuaded that the trial judge short-circuited the constitutional process for determining whether the reasons for their removal were race-neutral........
Kappel said she was "pleasantly surprised by the way this case was received" by the justices. "I think they have some serious concerns about whether this verdict is reliable.""

The entire story can be found at:

http://www.theadvocate.com/new_orleans/news/courts/article_3b1f176c-7551-11e6-9eac-7fc842342844.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmithInformation on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:  http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html  Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  

Harold Levy. Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.