OUTLIER COUNTIES: Legacy of Racism Persists in Caddo Parish, Which Had Nation’s Second-Highest Number of Lynchings

The death-sen­tenc­ing rate per homi­cide in Caddo Parish, Louisiana was near­ly 8 times greater between 2006 and 2015 than the rest of the state, mak­ing a parish with only 5% of Louisiana’s pop­u­la­tion respon­si­ble for 38% of the death sen­tences imposed statewide. Caddo cur­rent­ly has more peo­ple on death row than any oth­er parish in the state. 

Known as ​“Bloody Caddo,” the parish had the sec­ond high­est num­ber of lynch­ings of any coun­ty in the nation. The Confederate flag flew in front of the steps to the cour­t­house until 2011 (pic­tured), where a mon­u­ment to the Confederacy still stands. Inside that cour­t­house, 80% of defen­dants sen­tenced to death between 2010 and 2015 were Black, and no White per­son has ever been exe­cut­ed for killing a Black per­son in Caddo Parish. 

Caddo received nation­al atten­tion in 2015 when Acting District Attorney Dale Cox said he believed the state need­ed to ​“kill more peo­ple.” Cox was per­son­al­ly respon­si­ble for one-third of the death sen­tences in Louisiana from 2010 to 2015. His con­tro­ver­sial state­ments were in response to ques­tions about the exon­er­a­tion of Glenn Ford, a Black man con­vict­ed by an all-White jury, who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he did not com­mit. Ford’s case illus­trat­ed many of the fac­tors that have con­tributed to the over­pro­duc­tion of death sen­tences in Caddo Parish: racial bias in jury selec­tion and the appli­ca­tion of death sen­tences, inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and official misconduct. 

A 2015 study by Reprieve Australia found that pros­e­cu­tors used peremp­to­ry strikes against 46% of Black jurors, but only 15% of oth­er jurors. One Black prospec­tive juror was removed from a jury pool in 2009 for object­ing to the pres­ence of the Confederate flag in front of the cour­t­house. Like Ford, who was rep­re­sent­ed by two appoint­ed attor­neys who had nev­er rep­re­sent­ed a crim­i­nal defen­dant at tri­al, most Caddo Parish defen­dants have not received ade­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In the last decade, 75% of peo­ple sen­tenced to death in Caddo Parish were rep­re­sent­ed by at least one lawyer who does not meet recent­ly-imposed stan­dards for cap­i­tal attor­neys. Official mis­con­duct, like the false police tes­ti­mo­ny in Ford’s tri­al, has also con­tributed to the high num­ber of death sen­tences in Caddo. 

In 2014, Dale Cox wrote a memo regard­ing the cap­i­tal tri­al of Rodricus Crawford in which he stat­ed that Crawford, ​“deserves as much phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing as it is human­ly pos­si­ble to endure before he dies.” Crawford was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for alleged­ly killing his infant son, despite med­ical evi­dence that the child actu­al­ly died of pneumonia. 

Caddo pros­e­cu­tors have a his­to­ry of seek­ing death against the most vul­ner­a­ble Black defen­dants: Lamondre Tucker and Laderrick Campbell were 18 years old at the time of their offens­es and both had IQs in the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled range; Corey Williams, who was 16 and removed from death row after being found to be intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, is still serv­ing a life sen­tence despite pow­er­ful evi­dence that his con­fes­sion was coerced and that oth­ers com­mit­ted the offense for which he was condemned. 

In November 2015, Caddo Parish elect­ed its first Black District Attorney, James E. Stewart, Sr., who pledged, ​“to bring pro­fes­sion­al­ism and ethics back to the dis­trict attorney’s office.”