— A biased autopsy and a prosecutor’s racism and religious fervour corrupted the murder case against a black man freed from Louisiana’s death row, a federal lawsuit says. Rodricus Crawford, 29, sued the Caddo Parish coroner and district attorney’s offices last Thursday, one year after the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned his first-degree murder conviction in the death of his 1-year-old son. Caddo Parish has a “well-known history of racism and the arbitrary application of the death penalty,” the lawsuit says. The night before his son’s death, Crawford and the child were sleeping in a fold-out couch. Crawford was sentenced to death in November 2013 and remained on death row until the state Supreme Court reversed his conviction last year.

Source: National Post November 20, 2017 17:03 UTC