Louisiana Is Trying to Block Lloyd Gray From Seeking Freedom — ProPublica

When Lloyd Grey stood trial for rape in 1980, two jurors didn’t consider he was responsible and voted to acquit. At the moment, a split-jury verdict would imply a mistrial and probably Grey’s freedom. However again then, in Louisiana, it resulted in a life sentence for the 19-year-old from Tunica, a rural group nestled on the banks of the Mississippi River.

Grey, who has at all times maintained his innocence, spent the following 4 a long time within the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Throughout that point he misplaced every thing, he stated. From behind bars, he discovered that his mom, who for a time was a guard on the jail the place he was being held, had dementia and died in 2020. Jail officers refused to permit him to attend her funeral.

That very same yr the U.S. Supreme Courtroom dominated that nonunanimous jury verdicts, authorized in solely Louisiana and Oregon, had been unconstitutional and primarily based on an inherently racist regulation designed to uphold white supremacy.

Going ahead, there can be no extra Lloyd Grays.

However actually, there are greater than 1,000 individuals in Louisiana like Grey, convicted by cut up juries and nonetheless imprisoned, in response to the Promise of Justice Initiative, a New Orleans-based nonprofit targeted on legal justice reform. Though the Supreme Courtroom says instances like theirs are unconstitutional going ahead, it left the choice about what to do with these convicted way back to the states. And Louisiana alone says they need to keep behind bars.

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Courtroom resolution, the Louisiana State Supreme Court declined to grant new trials for these prisoners, acquiescing to native prosecutors who feared that retrying a whole lot of decades-old instances would tie up state courts. The conservative state Legislature, in the meantime, has repeatedly rejected payments that would have required a reexamination of their instances.

That left one very slender path for Grey and others like him, largely Black males, to have their instances revisited. If they might credibly argue that their convictions had been secured illegally — if there was race-based discrimination within the case, for instance — they might strike a plea cope with a prosecutor, securing their launch. However a brand new state regulation, handed final yr on the urging of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, restricted native prosecutors’ capacity to dealer such offers, chopping off the final remaining avenue of reduction for these imprisoned by nonunanimous juries.

The important thing downside, authorized specialists say, is that the Supreme Courtroom didn’t make its 2020 ruling retroactive because it did in Montgomery v. Louisiana, a 2016 case by which the justices discovered that life sentences with out parole for juveniles needs to be banned going forward in addition to for these already convicted.

What’s extra, in a separate decision in 2021, the court docket dominated that its 2020 opinion didn’t apply to older instances, like Grey’s, that had already gone by the common state appeals course of. Nevertheless, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court docket’s majority, Oregon and Louisiana had been nonetheless free to supply retroactive reduction on their very own.

In distinction to Louisiana, Oregon’s Supreme Courtroom vacated each split-jury conviction within the state, after which prosecutors provided plea offers with lowered sentences to the vast majority of these prisoners convicted by nonunanimous juries. Verite Information and ProPublica estimated about 760 prisoners had been convicted by nonunanimous juries primarily based on a 2018 listing supplied by the Oregon Division of Justice of people that had filed lawsuits claiming their convictions had been unconstitutional.

“There are a number of injustices in our authorized system we are able to’t repair. And but, right here is that this challenge that’s so clear and apparent that it’s on all of us to do the proper factor,” stated Aliza Kaplan, a professor at Lewis & Clark Regulation Faculty in Portland, Oregon, who fought for years to finish the state’s split-jury system.

“After I have a look at Louisiana, it’s actually heartbreaking.”

The Landry administration didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Zach Daniels, government director of the Louisiana District Attorneys Affiliation, stated the group, which backed Landry’s regulation, has tried to succeed in a compromise with legal justice reformers who need all previous split-jury verdicts overturned. This included an alternate that might give these convicted by nonunanimous juries the opportunity to apply for parole as a substitute of getting their instances both vacated or reexamined. However some lawmakers and legal justice reform advocates rejected that choice as a result of they didn’t view the chance to be heard by a particular parole committee appointed by Landry, because the plan referred to as for, a compromise for individuals imprisoned unconstitutionally.

Grey’s case for freedom is especially sturdy, his attorneys stated, as a result of there’s good proof that racial animus led to his conviction. They found final yr that the 2 jurors who had voted to acquit had been Black — a incontrovertible fact that doesn’t seem within the court docket data. And that somebody had drawn a swastika on the higher proper hand nook of the unique district legal professional’s case file.

As well as, the lone surviving member of the family of the sufferer informed the district legal professional’s workplace he’s “totally supportive” of Grey’s launch. He couldn’t be reached for remark.

The New Orleans District Legal professional’s Workplace had been in discussions with Grey’s authorized staff a few potential deal to safe his launch earlier than Landry’s 2023 election. However the governor’s new regulation constraining prosecutors from making such offers might be sure that Grey spends the rest of his days in Angola. His present case earlier than the court docket will subsequent be thought-about Tuesday at Orleans Parish Legal District Courtroom, the place a choose will determine whether or not Landry’s regulation applies in Grey’s case.

“Whenever you’re despatched to jail with a life sentence, they ship you right here to die,” stated Grey, now 65, by his legal professional as a result of the jail rejected requests from Verite Information and ProPublica to interview him instantly. “After 45 years, I’m no nearer to freedom than the day I walked into this place.”

“Jim Crow Juries”

Louisiana started permitting nonunanimous verdicts — or “Jim Crow juries,” as they’re generally referred to as right here — in response to the 14th Modification, which ensured that Black residents, together with previously enslaved individuals, had equal safety underneath the regulation. This included, amongst different issues, the proper to serve on juries. Till then, Louisiana had required a unanimous vote for legal convictions. However state lawmakers didn’t wish to give a single Black juror the facility to undermine the desire of 11 white individuals.

Throughout an 1898 constitutional conference, Louisiana’s elected officers lowered the brink for a legal conviction from 12 votes to 9 (and elevated it to 10 in 1973). One committee chairman was cited within the Supreme Courtroom ruling towards the apply saying that the availability was meant to “set up the supremacy of the white race.”

In 1934, Oregon adopted go well with, changing into the one different state to ever approve using split-jury verdicts. (Oregon handed its regulation following public outrage {that a} Jewish man was discovered responsible of manslaughter reasonably than homicide within the high-profile dying of a Protestant man.)

The jury’s resolution at Grey’s trial in December 1980 unfolded as Louisiana legislators had envisioned practically a century in the past.

After initially charging Grey with aggravated rape, prosecutors provided him a deal, in response to Grey and his attorneys. If he pleaded responsible to a lesser offense, he would obtain a 10-year sentence. However Grey rejected the provide, by no means wavering in his claims of innocence. The district legal professional’s workplace stated there isn’t a report of a proposed plea deal.

Grey and Dianna Knockum, the lady who accused him of rape, every testified on a single day, offering wildly divergent variations of what occurred on a Wednesday evening six months earlier. Grey, 19 on the time, and Knockum, 33, knew one another from frequenting a bar referred to as Membership Hollywood within the Hoffman Triangle neighborhood of New Orleans. Grey claimed they received right into a struggle exterior the bar over $15 Knockum owed him. When she refused to pay, Grey stated he hit her twice within the face, at which level a mutual good friend separated them and introduced him again into the membership.

Knockum claimed Grey was indignant after she rejected his advances. She stated he adopted her as she left the bar then hit her with a tough object on the again of the top. Knockum stated she regained consciousness in an deserted constructing the place Grey raped her.

At trial, prosecutors famous that Knockum recognized Grey as her attacker, and that medical doctors discovered bruises on her head. Grey’s protection staff targeted on the shortage of bodily proof or witnesses tying him to the crime, and that Knockum’s accidents didn’t point out she was raped. DNA testing didn’t exist on the time, and the proof was not saved for later examination.

After 54 minutes of deliberations, the jury returned with its verdict: The ten white jurors voted responsible, and the 2 black jurors, Elizabeth Sensley and Audrey Kaywood, not responsible. Grey was sentenced to life with out parole.

Knockum died greater than 20 years in the past, in response to a 2024 court docket submitting by New Orleans prosecutors.

Sensley and Kaywood supplied statements to Grey’s attorneys final yr by which they stated the racial make-up of the jury possible contributed to his conviction. Sensley stated there have been loads of Black individuals within the jury pool, but solely two had been chosen. The prosecution used its solely jury choice strike to forestall a 3rd Black individual from serving. On the time, Black individuals made up 67% of town’s inhabitants.

“I knew that my voice wouldn’t matter,” Sensley informed an investigator with Grey’s authorized staff, recounting how she felt about being Black on the practically all-white jury. “I can’t consider that Lloyd Grey remains to be in jail.”

Kaywood informed the investigator she had a “sturdy feeling” Grey may be harmless. “I puzzled aloud to my husband, what if he didn’t do it. The case impacted me deeply,” she stated. “I by no means wished to serve on a jury once more.”

Neither girl might be reached for remark.

Protecting Black individuals off juries was very important to prosecutors, as they had been seen to be extra “skeptical of the state,” in response to a 2018 investigation by The New Orleans Advocate. In convictions with split-jury verdicts, Black jurors had been 2.5 occasions extra prone to dissent in contrast with white jurors, the report discovered. That’s why prosecutors used their strikes to take away potential Black jurors at greater than twice the speed as they did white jurors.

Grey’s authorized staff has famous that his conviction occurred at a time of intense racial strife in New Orleans. Only a few years earlier, the Ku Klux Klan, led by David Duke, marched through the French Quarter to protest town’s first Black mayor. The district legal professional’s workplace was headed by Harry Connick Sr., whose 30-year tenure was stained by accusations of racial bias. Throughout Connick’s time as district legal professional, there have been 32 instances of wrongful convictions, 27 of which concerned prosecutorial misconduct, in response to the Nationwide Registry of Exonerations. Of these wrongfully convicted, 97% had been Black.

And but Connick refused to crack down on his employees, drawing the ire of former U.S. Supreme Courtroom Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. As a part of a wrongful-conviction case by which prosecutors hid blood proof, Ginsburg stated in a 2011 dissent that Connick had created a “tinderbox in Orleans Parish” the place it was anticipated that prosecutors disguise proof from the protection. And when these violations occurred, she wrote, “Connick insisted there was no want to alter something, and opposed efforts to carry prosecutors accountable on the bottom that doing so would make his job tougher.” 5 of the opposite eight justices disagreed together with her.

After his conviction, Grey was despatched to Angola, some of the violent penitentiaries within the nation on the time. The 19-year-old was frightened, however he wasn’t alone. A couple of years previous to his incarceration, his mom, Ora Grey, had taken a job as a guard at Angola. She labored the evening shift in a watchtower that neglected the identical cell block that might briefly home her son.

Grey stated he would get up early each morning, sit by a window and lookup into his mom’s tower, about 40 yards away. And each morning she would look down at him.

“I used to be sitting there to let her know that I used to be secure,” Grey stated.

After about six weeks, Grey stated he was transferred to a different a part of the jail. Grey assumed jail officers wished to separate them, afraid his mom would hesitate to shoot if he tried to flee.

Ora Grey labored at Angola for greater than three a long time till she retired in 2012. She died eight years later. Lloyd Grey, wracked by guilt, stated he ought to have cared for her in her ultimate years and held her hand as she slipped away. As a substitute, he couldn’t even attend her funeral.

The system “was designed to place individuals of shade within the state of affairs I’m in,” he stated.

A Deal Retracted

After practically 4 a long time in Angola, Grey had settled in as greatest he might. He held a combination of jobs — tutor, workplace clerk, area hand, kitchen orderly — and tried to remain secure and out of hassle. However he informed his legal professionals he struggled to come back to phrases with the place life had taken him.

Grey’s sister despatched him a household image, and he didn’t know who half the individuals had been, particularly the youthful kids. That was the toughest half, he stated, considering every thing that had been taken from him.

Grey’s prospects started to enhance, nonetheless, in tandem with a rising sentiment that the legal justice methods throughout the nation had been closely weighted towards poor and minority communities and wanted to be reformed. A collection of victories for this motion, on each the state and nationwide ranges, gave Grey hope, beginning in 2018. That’s when 64% of Louisiana voters authorized a constitutional modification outlawing nonunanimous juries for any crime dedicated after Jan. 1, 2019.

Those that fought for the modification targeted their marketing campaign on the injury such juries had performed to the state’s minority communities: Black individuals make up 67% of the jail inhabitants however 80% of these convicted by cut up juries, in response to a report from the Promise of Justice Initiative.

Break up-jury verdicts additionally resulted in lengthier sentences. In Louisiana, 62% of all prisoners convicted by cut up juries are serving life sentences, like Grey, whereas solely about 16% of the general jail inhabitants is doing so, the report stated.

That’s as a result of the split-jury regulation created an incentive for prosecutors at hand down probably the most severe expenses they might. Lesser crimes that carried shorter sentences had been tried earlier than a six-person jury that needed to rule unanimously. Former prosecutor and state Sen. Dan Claitor stated throughout a 2018 legislative hearing on nonunanimous juries that the numbers continuously led him to “up-charge” defendants “as a result of it was simpler for me to convict them with 10 out of 12 than it’s six out of six.”

Louisiana’s voter referendum prohibiting nonunanimous juries was a big victory, nevertheless it did little to deal with the plight of individuals like Grey who had already been convicted. After which, two years later, in Ramos v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Courtroom ruled in a 6-3 vote that split-jury verdicts violated the Sixth Modification’s assure of a good trial.

In his majority opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch, appointed to the court docket by President Donald Trump, wrote that the origin of split-jury verdicts might be “traced to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and efforts to dilute the affect of racial and ethnic and spiritual minorities.” In Louisiana, he wrote, the purpose was “to make sure that African-American juror service can be meaningless.”

Within the months that adopted, the Promise of Justice Initiative filed appeals for 1,049 Louisiana prisoners convicted by cut up juries. A whole lot of these, together with Grey’s, had been filed in New Orleans, the place a brand new district legal professional, Jason Williams, had simply been elected.

Williams took workplace in January 2021, considered one of a wave of progressive prosecutors throughout the nation. He pledged to root out and rethink probably problematic instances involving wrongful convictions, extreme sentences or racial bias. He additionally took on split-jury verdicts.

Inside days of being sworn in, Williams had established a civil rights division and employed Emily Maw, the previous head of the Innocence Undertaking New Orleans, to guide it. As of July 2024, the division had vacated or lowered the sentences of greater than 350 women and men, 150 of whom had been convicted by nonunanimous juries, in response to the district legal professional’s workplace.

In 2022, prosecutors with the unit proposed a possible deal to Grey’s attorneys: If he pleaded responsible to forcible rape, he would stroll, in response to Grey and his attorneys. The lesser cost carried a most sentence of 40 years; Grey had already served 41.

Such plea offers would quickly show to be the one shot individuals like Grey had at freedom. The identical yr Grey was provided a plea deal, the state’s highest court docket dominated in a 5-2 vote that the federal ban on nonunanimous juries was not retroactive, stopping greater than 1,000 individuals convicted by cut up juries from having their day in court docket, in response to estimates by the Promise of Justice Initiative.

The one Black member of the Louisiana Supreme Courtroom, Justice Piper Griffin dissented, writing: “Such convictions had been racially discriminatory in 1898. They had been racially discriminatory in 1975. They continue to be racially discriminatory at the moment.”

Whereas he agreed with the bulk that the state shouldn’t overturn all previous split-jury verdicts, Justice James Genovese wrote in a partial dissent that prisoners who might display that their verdicts had been “tainted by racial animus” needs to be “entitled to reduction, whatever the date of their conviction.” Specifically, he stated, new trials needs to be granted when it may be confirmed {that a} Black juror had voted to acquit the accused.

Louisiana’s rejection of retroactivity put a premium on the kind of offers provided to Grey. However earlier than his might be finalized and authorized by the courts, it was upended in November 2023 by a large political shift in Louisiana as Landry was elected governor.

Campaigning on a tough-on-crime platform, the previous police officer and state legal professional common vowed to accelerate executions, impose stiffer sentences and finish the reign of “woke district attorneys” whom he accused of “taking part in a harmful recreation of catch and launch” with criminals.

Inside his first few months in workplace, in March 2024, Landry signed Act 10, which prohibits district attorneys from waiving the two-year deadline for prisoners to problem their convictions by post-conviction reduction. Such a waiver is often wanted to revive decades-old instances like Grey’s.

It was set to enter impact Aug. 1, 2024.

Swastika on the Case File

The clock was now ticking for Grey and his attorneys. Given the drastic change within the political local weather, they believed they wanted to uncover further proof that Grey’s prosecution was unjust to extend his probabilities of being launched. They usually wanted to take action earlier than Williams misplaced the power to have missed deadlines waived.

They caught their first break the identical month Landry signed Act 10 into regulation. That’s once they requested and obtained Grey’s unique 1980 case file from the district legal professional’s workplace, one thing that they had by no means seen earlier than.

Colin Reingold, Grey’s legal professional from 2021 to 2024, stated he skimmed the file, blowing previous the quilt web page, in search of any info that would assist safe Grey’s launch. He then recalled receiving a Slack message from an investigator on his staff who was additionally scouring by the brand new paperwork: Wow, this swastika on the entrance cowl is bound loopy, isn’t it?

“I used to be like, ‘What are you speaking about?’ I didn’t see it in any respect,” Reingold stated. “After which I instantly went to the DA file and pulled it up. And, I imply, it’s unmistakable.”

That somebody with the district legal professional’s workplace would doodle the Nazi image on the case file of a Black man accused of rape within the early Eighties raises vital considerations concerning the motivations of the prosecution, Reingold stated.

“You at all times suspect that there are, in some instances, unhealthy actors with beliefs that would taint the entire course of,” Reingold stated. “However you by no means suppose that you just’re going to search out it in black and white like that.”

The district legal professional’s workplace doesn’t dispute the swastika’s existence or {that a} employees member may need drawn it greater than 40 years in the past, in response to a September submitting by prosecutors. Assistant District Attorneys Jim Letten and William O’Hara prosecuted Grey’s case. O’Hara died in 2007. Letten, who would later function U.S. legal professional for the Japanese District of Louisiana, didn’t reply to requests for remark.

“Our workplace acknowledges {that a} derogatory image seems on a microfilmed copy of Mr. Grey’s case file,” Keith D. Lampkin, a spokesperson for the district legal professional’s workplace, informed Verite Information and ProPublica. “There isn’t a report indicating who drew the image or when it was drawn.”

The swastika was essential to Grey’s claims of racial bias, however much more very important was the invention two months later, in June 2024, that the 2 individuals who voted to acquit Grey had been Black.

Erica Navalance, an legal professional with the Promise of Justice Initiative who presently represents Grey, stated these new items of proof spoke on to the 2 elements Genovese stated in his partial dissent ought to set off a brand new trial: racial bias and proof {that a} Black juror voted to acquit.

Armed with this info, Grey’s attorneys filed a new appeal the day before Act 10 went into impact. They knew that Williams was underneath growing stress from Landry to desert his efforts to reinvestigate previous instances however hoped this new proof would persuade his workplace to maintain their phrase and free Grey.

Publicly, Williams refused to again down, telling his conservative opponents throughout a legislative listening to final September that he couldn’t ignore town’s lengthy historical past of wrongfully convicting Black individuals.

“Within the metropolis of New Orleans, we’ve been so good at mass-producing faulty convictions that I feel it’s incumbent that we make it possible for we let these instances be heard,” Williams stated.

Eleven days later, Williams’ workplace took an sudden place in its response to Gray’s appeal. Its palms had been tied by Act 10, it stated, and it might not waive missed deadlines. In consequence, Grey must serve out the rest of his life sentence, prosecutors claimed.

The district legal professional’s workplace has maintained this place regardless of Orleans Parish Legal District Courtroom Choose Robin Pittman stating in November as a part of Grey’s case that its interpretation of Act 10 was fallacious. So long as the attraction was filed earlier than Aug. 1, Pittman stated, it retained the power to waive deadlines. 4 months later, the state Supreme Courtroom in Louisiana v. Taylor got here to the identical conclusion.

Navalance stated she’d by no means earlier than witnessed the state district legal professional’s affiliation rallying behind a regulation that might strip them of their very own energy.

“​​I assumed our aim was to see justice performed,” Navalance stated. “I assumed all of us agreed that meant Lloyd Grey ought to come residence 45 years after being convicted of a criminal offense he didn’t commit.”

The district legal professional’s workplace informed Verite Information and ProPublica that its response to Grey’s case merely displays statutory modifications. “It’s now for the court docket to find out whether or not Mr. Grey’s software overcomes these procedural necessities,” Lampkin stated.

Grey stated the whiplash of occasions over the previous a number of years — from believing he as soon as had a shot at freedom to fearing the door may be completely closed — have felt like a “mirage.”

“You see it,” he stated, “however whenever you attain for it, it’s not likely there.”