Citing a back­lash from his con­tro­ver­sial state­ments about the death penal­ty, Dale Cox (pic­tured), the Interim District Attorney of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, announced on July 14 that he will not run for District Attorney this fall. 

Nearly half of the death sen­tences imposed in Louisiana in the last five years have come from Caddo Parish. Cox him­self has pros­e­cut­ed one third of the Louisiana cas­es that have result­ed in death sen­tences since 2010. 

In March 2015, Cox told The Shreveport Times that he believed the state needs to ​“kill more peo­ple.” In 2014, he wrote a memo regard­ing the case of Rodricus Crawford, say­ing that Crawford ​“deserves as much phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing as it is human­ly pos­si­ble to endure before he dies.” Crawford was sen­tenced to death for alleged­ly killing his infant son, in spite of foren­sic evi­dence of sep­sis in the boy’s blood that sug­gest­ed he had died from pneumonia. 

Cox told the New Yorker that he does­n’t believe that the death penal­ty has a deter­rent effect, but believes it is jus­ti­fied as a form of soci­etal revenge: ​“Over time, I have come to the posi­tion that revenge is impor­tant for soci­ety as a whole. We have cer­tain rules that you are expect­ed to abide by, and when you don’t abide by them you have for­feit­ed your right to live among us.” 

In the wake of the nation­al atten­tion to Cox’s com­ments, he announced that he would not seek elec­tion to the posi­tion of District Attorney. ​“I have come to believe that my posi­tion on the death penal­ty is a minor­i­ty posi­tion among the mem­bers of this com­mu­ni­ty and would con­tin­ue to be a source of con­tro­ver­sy,” he said. ​“Our com­mu­ni­ty needs heal­ing and not more controversy.” 

Historically, Caddo Parish had more lynch­ings than all but one oth­er coun­ty in the South in the decades after the Civil War. From 2010 to 2014, it sen­tenced more peo­ple to death per capi­ta than any oth­er coun­ty in the United States.

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Sources

R. Aviv, Revenge Killing, The New Yorker, July 6, 2015; C. Robertson, The Prosecutor Who Says Louisiana Should ​‘Kill More People’, The New York Times, July 7, 2015; G. Hines, Acting Caddo DA Dale Cox will not run in fall elec­tion, KTBS, July 14, 2015.