Louisiana’s Vengeful Justice System
The Caddo Parish D.A.
卡多教区地方检察官
recently told a reporter, “I think we need to kill more people.” Illustration by Oliver Munday A week after his son turned one, Rodricus Crawford woke up a few minutes before 7 A.M .
最近告诉记者，“我认为我们需要杀死更多的人。”插图由奥利弗·芒迪 (Oliver Munday) 绘制 儿子满一周岁后一周，罗德里克斯·克劳福德 (Rodricus Crawford) 在早上 7 点前几分钟醒来。
on the left side of his bed.
在他床的左边。
His son was sleeping on the right side, facing the door.
他的儿子睡在右侧，面向门。
Crawford, who was twenty-three, reached over to wake him up, but the baby didn’t move.
二十三岁的克劳福德伸手叫醒他，但婴儿一动不动。
He put his ear on his son’s stomach and then began yelling for his mother.
他把耳朵贴在儿子的肚子上，然后开始大喊他的母亲。
“Look at the baby!” he shouted.
“看看宝宝！”他喊道。
Crawford was lanky, with delicate features, high cheekbones, and a patchy goatee.
克劳福德身材瘦长，五官精致，颧骨高高，山羊胡子参差不齐。
He lived in a small three-bedroom house with his mother, grandmother, uncle, sister, and a younger brother in Mooretown, a neighborhood in Shreveport, Louisiana, bordered by a stretch of factories and next to the airport.
他与母亲、祖母、叔叔、妹妹和弟弟一起住在路易斯安那州什里夫波特摩尔镇的一栋三居室小房子里，摩尔镇毗邻一片工厂，毗邻机场。
His mother, Abbie, a housekeeper at the Quality Inn, rushed into the room and picked up the baby, who was named Roderius, after his father.
他的母亲艾比是品质酒店的一名管家，她冲进房间抱起婴儿，并以他父亲的名字给孩子取名罗德里斯。
He looked as if he were asleep, but his forehead felt cool.
他看起来像是睡着了，但额头却感觉凉凉的。
Crawford’s uncle called 911, and an operator instructed him to try CPR while they waited for an ambulance.
克劳福德的叔叔拨打了 911，接线员指示他在等待救护车时尝试心肺复苏。
Crawford’s mother and sister took turns pumping the baby’s chest.
克劳福德的母亲和姐姐轮流给婴儿胸部抽气。
“I’m doing it, Ma’am, but he ain’t doing nothing!” Abbie said, out of breath.
“我正在做，女士，但他什么也没做！”艾比气喘吁吁地说。
The ambulance seemed to be taking too long, so Crawford’s younger brother called 911 on another line.
救护车似乎花了太长时间，克劳福德的弟弟又拨打了911。
“The baby’s not talking, not breathing, not saying anything,” he said.
“婴儿没有说话，没有呼吸，什么也没说，”他说。
“Can you get an ambulance?”
“你能叫到救护车吗？”
They were used to waiting a long time for city services; the alarm could go off at their pastor’s church and ring all night, and the fire department would never come.
他们习惯于长时间等待城市服务；牧师教堂的警报可能会响彻整夜，而消防队永远不会来。
There was a saying in the neighborhood that the police were never there when you needed them, only when you didn’t.
附近有一种说法，当你需要警察的时候，警察从来不会出现，只有当你不需要的时候。
The community was populated almost entirely by black families, many of whom had grown up together.
该社区几乎全部由黑人家庭组成，其中许多人是一起长大的。
After a few more minutes, Crawford’s brother called 911 again.
又过了几分钟，克劳福德的哥哥再次拨打了 911。
“We need an ambulance, Ma’am,” he said.
“我们需要一辆救护车，女士，”他说。
“It’s been twenty minutes!”
“已经二十分钟了！”
Not long afterward, another 911 operator called a dispatcher and asked what was happening at the address.
不久之后，另一名 911 接线员给调度员打电话，询问该地址发生了什么事。
“They probably slept on the damn baby,” the dispatcher said.
“他们可能睡在那个该死的婴儿身上，”调度员说。
“There’s a hundred folks in that damn house.”
“那该死的房子里有一百个人。”
When the ambulance arrived, moments later, Crawford ran out of the house with the baby in his arms.
片刻之后，当救护车到达时，克劳福德抱着婴儿跑出家门。
The paramedics put a breathing mask over Roderius’s face, and Crawford thought he saw his son’s eyes open.
护理人员将呼吸面罩戴在罗德留斯的脸上，克劳福德认为他看到儿子的眼睛睁开了。
He tried to climb into the back of the ambulance, but the paramedics shut the doors and told him to stay outside.
他试图爬进救护车后部，但医护人员关上车门并告诉他留在外面。
They couldn’t find a pulse.
他们找不到脉搏。
Roderius’s jaw was stiff and his eyes were milky, a sign that he had been dead for more than an hour.
罗德里乌斯的下巴僵硬，眼睛里泛着乳白色，这表明他已经死了一个多小时了。
They decided to wait in the ambulance until the police arrived before telling the family.
他们决定在救护车上等到警察到来后再告诉家人。
Meanwhile, the baby’s mother, Lakendra Lott, and her family had arrived.
与此同时，婴儿的母亲拉肯德拉·洛特和她的家人也抵达了。
They lived on the same street, five houses away.
他们住在同一条街上，相距五栋房子。
Lott and Crawford had known each other since they were children and had been close since middle school.
洛特和克劳福德从小就认识，从中学起就很亲密。
He was hyper, affectionate, and fondly known as a clown.
他性格亢奋、深情，被人们亲切地称为小丑。
She was quiet and withdrawn; she had “been to the tenth floor,” a phrase used in the neighborhood to describe the psychiatric ward of the closest hospital.
她沉默寡言，性格孤僻。她“去过十楼”，这是邻居用来形容最近医院精神病房的一个短语。
There had been rumors that someone else might be Roderius’s father—Crawford and Lott both had daughters from other relationships—but when Crawford held Roderius at the hospital he was sure that the newborn was his.
有传言称罗德留斯的父亲可能是其他人——克劳福德和洛特都有其他关系的女儿——但当克劳福德在医院抱着罗德留斯时，他确信新生儿是他的。
The baby usually slept at Lott’s house, but Crawford visited him almost every day.
婴儿通常睡在洛特家里，但克劳福德几乎每天都去看他。
He was a gifted dancer—in high school he had been in the marching band and started a dance troupe called the Black Boys—and he liked to entertain the baby by setting his feet on the floor and making him dance like a marionette.
他是一位才华横溢的舞者——高中时他曾加入军乐队，并组建了一个名为“黑人男孩”的舞蹈团——他喜欢把脚放在地板上，让他像木偶一样跳舞来取悦孩子。
The families began knocking on the windows of the ambulance, asking the driver why he hadn’t left for the hospital.
家人开始敲救护车的车窗，询问司机为什么不去医院。
The paramedics reported to their dispatcher that they were surrounded by a mob; they worried that there was going to be some sort of riot.
护理人员向调度员报告说，他们被暴徒包围了；他们担心会发生某种骚乱。
“If the crowd gets bad, we don’t have anything—there’s no protection,” one paramedic said later.
“如果人群变得糟糕，我们就没有任何东西——没有保护，”一名护理人员后来说。
“We had to leave for our safety.” The ambulance drove away with its sirens and lights on, but switched them off as soon as it turned the corner.
“为了安全，我们不得不离开。”救护车开走了，警笛和灯都亮着，但一转过街角就关掉了。
The police arrived at the Crawfords’ house shortly after.
不久后，警察赶到了克劳福德夫妇的家。
Crawford was with his cousins, who lived across the street.
克劳福德和他住在街对面的表兄弟在一起。
When an officer asked for him, his mother admitted that he was afraid of the police, because “he’s got a little charge going on, and he’s worried about that.” He had an open warrant for marijuana possession.
当一名警官询问他时，他的母亲承认他害怕警察，因为“他受到了一些指控，他对此感到担心。”他持有持有大麻的公开搜查令。
In the past, he’d been arrested for battery, after fights with girlfriends, and for minor infractions, like driving with his headlights off and not wearing a seat belt.
过去，他曾因殴打、与女友打架后被捕，以及因一些轻微违规行为而被捕，例如开车时关闭车头灯和不系安全带。
Crawford came home a few seconds later and tried to hug his mother, who was standing at the foot of their driveway, but the officer told him to sit in the police car.
几秒钟后，克劳福德回到家，试图拥抱站在车道脚下的母亲，但警官让他坐在警车里。
He slid into the back seat, held his head in his hands, and began rocking back and forth and crying.
他滑进后座，双手抱头，开始前后摇晃并哭泣。
After a few minutes, he looked out the back window and saw Lott, who seemed disoriented.
几分钟后，他向后窗外望去，看到洛特，洛特似乎迷失了方向。
He motioned her over, and as soon as she opened the car door he wrapped his arms around her and buried his head in the back of her neck.
他示意她过去，她一打开车门，他就用双臂搂住她，把头埋在她的颈后。
When she told him that she knew the baby must have died, even though the cops wouldn’t answer the family’s questions, he pulled away.
当她告诉他她知道孩子一定已经死了时，尽管警察没有回答家人的问题，他还是离开了。
“What is wrong with you?” he said.
“你怎么了？”他说。
“Don’t do that to me.
“别这样对我。
He’s all right.”
他没事。”
The police wouldn’t let Lott or Crawford go to the hospital.
警察不让洛特或克劳福德去医院。
Instead, they drove them to the police station.
相反，他们开车将他们带到了警察局。
An officer asked Crawford why the baby had bruises on his head and his lip, and Crawford explained that the day before the baby had been standing on the bathroom floor when he slipped and fell between the toilet and the bathtub, hitting his head and cutting his lip.
一名警官询问克劳福德，为什么婴儿的头部和嘴唇上有瘀伤，克劳福德解释说，前一天，婴儿站在浴室地板上，滑倒在马桶和浴缸之间，撞到了头部，割伤了嘴唇。
“I gave him an ice cube and put it in his mouth and wiped the blood off his lip, and he was straight,” Crawford said.
“我给了他一块冰块，放在他嘴里，擦掉他嘴唇上的血迹，他就恢复正常了，”克劳福德说。
When detectives interviewed Lott, she was reticent and leaden.
当侦探们采访洛特时，她沉默寡言，情绪低落。
In emotional situations, she was known to retreat by staring at her phone.
在情绪激动的情况下，她会因为盯着手机而退缩。
“Have you ever seen him lose his cool?” they asked her, referring to Crawford.
“你见过他失去冷静的样子吗？”他们问她，指的是克劳福德。
She told the officers that Roderius “had a little cold,” so she’d stopped by Crawford’s house the day before to drop off a nasal aspirator.
她告诉警察罗德里乌斯“有点感冒”，所以前一天她去了克劳福德家，送了一个吸鼻器。
While she was there, Crawford had told her about the baby’s fall, and she’d looked at his injuries.
当她在那里时，克劳福德告诉她婴儿摔倒的事情，她检查了他的伤势。
“There was a bruise right there,” she said, pointing above her right eye.
“那里有一块瘀伤，”她指着右眼上方说道。
“And his mouth—he had bust his lip.
“还有他的嘴——他的嘴唇破裂了。
But he was still happy and everything.”
但他仍然很快乐，一切都很好。”
That morning, a forensic pathologist performed an autopsy and determined that the bruises on Roderius’s lips were the marks of smothering.
那天早上，法医病理学家进行了尸检，确定罗德里乌斯嘴唇上的瘀伤是窒息的痕迹。
Later, when he reviewed slides of Roderius’s lung tissue, he discovered that the baby also had pneumonia, but he decided that the illness was a coincidence.
后来，当他查看罗德里乌斯肺组织的幻灯片时，他发现婴儿也患有肺炎，但他认为这种疾病纯属巧合。
The detectives interviewed Crawford for the second time that day, and told him that the pathologist had found bruises on the baby’s bottom, indicating that he had suffered from “chronic child abuse.”
侦探们当天第二次采访克劳福德，并告诉他病理学家在婴儿的屁股上发现了瘀伤，表明他遭受了“慢性虐待儿童”。
“Chronic child abuse,” Crawford repeated, as if testing a new phrase.
“慢性虐待儿童，”克劳福德重复道，仿佛在测试一个新短语。
“I don’t know if he’s ever been beaten at his mom’s house, but at my house he’s never been beaten by me,” he said.
“我不知道他在他妈妈家是否被打过，但在我家他从来没有被我打过，”他说。
“He’s a baby.
“他是个婴儿。
He’s a one-year-old.
他一岁了。
What could he do to me to make me beat him?”
他到底能对我做什么，才能让我打败他？”
“We see it all the time,” the detective said.
“我们经常看到这种情况，”侦探说。
“We can’t answer that.”
“我们无法回答这个问题。”
“I told you—he fell.
“我告诉过你了——他摔倒了。
That’s the only thing that ever happened to him.
这是他身上唯一发生过的事情。
He fell in the bathroom.
他摔倒在浴室里。
But me beating him?
可我却打了他？
No!”
不！”
Then the detective said, “There are certain fluids in your one-year-old son’s lungs that tell us that he was suffocated before he died.”
然后侦探说：“你一岁儿子的肺部有某些液体，这告诉我们他死前是被窒息的。”
“He was suffocated?” Crawford said.
“他窒息了？”克劳福德说道。
“What do you mean by suffocated?
“你说的窒息是什么意思？
Like somebody held him down?”
就像有人压住了他一样？”
“The cause of death is asphyxiation with acute suffocation.”
“死因是急性窒息窒息。”
“No. When I woke up this morning—I’ll tell you again, sir—when I woke up this morning .
“不。当我今天早上醒来时——我再告诉你一次，先生——当我今天早上醒来时。”
.
。
.” His voice began wavering, and he trailed off.
”。他的声音开始颤抖，声音逐渐减弱。
“That’s too much,” he said.
“这太多了，”他说。
“If that’s what happened, that’s what you need to say.
“如果发生了这样的事情，那就是你需要说的。
It’s important.”
这很重要。”
“I know it’s important.
“我知道这很重要。
I’m telling you I didn’t wake up on my son.
我告诉你我没有在我儿子身上醒来。
I didn’t wake up suffocating him—nothing.
我醒来时并没有让他窒息——没什么。
That’s some real talk.”
这是一些真正的谈话。”
“I think I was only invited for one reason.” The autopsy report was sent to the office of Dale Cox, the first assistant district attorney of Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport.
“我认为我被邀请只是出于一个原因。”尸检报告已发送至包括什里夫波特在内的卡多教区第一助理地区检察官戴尔·考克斯的办公室。
After reading the police reports, he decided to seek the death penalty.
在阅读了警方的报告后，他决定寻求死刑。
Cox told me that in the past forty years he had never prosecuted a man between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six who grew up in a nuclear family.
考克斯告诉我，在过去的四十年里，他从未起诉过年龄在十七岁到二十六岁之间、在核心家庭中长大的男子。
“Not one,” he said.
“没有一个，”他说。
He believes that the “destruction of the nuclear family and a tremendously high illegitimate birth rate” have brought about an “epidemic of child-killings” in the parish.
他认为，“核心家庭的破坏和极高的非婚生率”导致了教区“杀戮儿童的流行”。
At the time that he learned of Crawford’s case, he was prosecuting another young black man accused of killing his infant.
当他得知克劳福德的案件时，他正在起诉另一名被指控杀害其婴儿的年轻黑人。
After the man was sentenced to life without parole, rather than death, Cox told a local TV station, “I take it as a failure that I was unable to convince the jury to kill him.”
在这名男子被判处终身监禁，不得假释，而不是死刑后，考克斯告诉当地一家电视台，“我无法说服陪审团杀死他，我认为这是一个失败。”
The only structure on the front lawn of the Caddo Parish courthouse, in downtown Shreveport, is a monument to the Confederacy, which includes the busts of four Confederate generals.
什里夫波特市中心卡多教区法院前草坪上唯一的建筑是南部邦联纪念碑，其中有四位南部邦联将军的半身像。
A large stone slab on the ground is inscribed with the Confederate flag and a tribute to the “deeds and valor of the men who so gallantly, nobly, and conscientiously defended the cause.”
地面上的一块大石板上刻有南方联盟旗帜，并向“那些如此英勇、高尚和认真捍卫这一事业的人们的事迹和勇气”致敬。
In the decades after the Civil War, Caddo Parish—home to the last capital of the Confederacy—had more lynchings than all but one county in the South.
内战后的几十年里，卡多教区——南部邦联最后一个首都的所在地——发生的私刑比南方所有县都多。
Several men were lynched in front of the courthouse.
几名男子在法院前被私刑处死。
In 1914, when some Louisiana newspapers called for the abolition of the death penalty, an editorial in the Shreveport Times warned that without capital punishment the number of lynchings would rise: black criminals wouldn’t be able to reach the jail before they were overwhelmed by the “vengeance of an outraged citizenship.”
1914年，当路易斯安那州的一些报纸呼吁废除死刑时，《什里夫波特时报》的一篇社论警告说，如果不判处死刑，私刑的数量将会上升：黑人罪犯在被“愤怒的公民的复仇”压垮之前将无法到达监狱。
Juries in Caddo Parish, which has a population of two hundred and fifty thousand, now sentence more people to death per capita than juries in any other county in America.
拥有二十五万人口的卡多教区的陪审团现在按人均判处死刑的人数比美国任何其他县的陪审团都多。
Seventy-seven per cent of those sentenced to death in the past forty years have been black, and nearly half were convicted of killing white victims.
过去四十年来，被判处死刑的人中有 77% 是黑人，近一半因杀害白人受害者而被定罪。
A white person has never been sentenced to death for killing a black person.
白人从未因杀害黑人而被判处死刑。
Since 2011, Dale Cox, a jowly sixty-seven-year-old man with thinning white hair, has been responsible for more than a third of the death sentences in Louisiana.
自 2011 年以来，路易斯安那州超过三分之一的死刑判决是由戴尔·考克斯（Dale Cox）负责的，这位 67 岁的下巴、头发稀疏的男子已经稀疏。
When I met him at his office, which overlooks the courthouse, I asked him if he worried about the possibility that the parish’s fraught racial history and its approach to capital punishment were related, but he said that he didn’t see the connection.
当我在他俯瞰法院的办公室见到他时，我问他是否担心该教区令人担忧的种族历史与其死刑方式之间存在关联，但他说他没有看到这种联系。
“People have played the race card in this country for so long, and at some point we really need to stop and say, ‘O.K., that was a long, long, long time ago.
“人们在这个国家打种族牌已经很久了，在某些时候我们真的需要停下来说，‘好吧，那是很久很久以前的事了。
It’s different now.’ ” He said, “Yeah, a lot of terrible things have happened in the world everywhere.
现在不同了。’”他说，“是的，世界各地都发生了很多可怕的事情。
And in some places it gets better, like here.
在某些地方，情况会变得更好，比如这里。
And in some places it doesn’t, like Africa or Kosovo.” He told me, “I don’t get this discrimination business, I really don’t.”
但在某些地方则不然，比如非洲或科索沃。”他告诉我，“我不明白这种歧视，我真的不明白。”
Cox, who is Catholic and went to a Jesuit school, was opposed to the death penalty at the start of his career, and in 1983, after working in the district attorney’s office for six years, he left, because he didn’t feel comfortable pursuing capital cases.
考克斯是一名天主教徒，就读于耶稣会学校，他在职业生涯之初就反对死刑，1983 年，在地方检察官办公室工作六年后，他离开了，因为他不愿意追究死刑案件。
He believed that it was God’s decision when to end someone’s life.
他相信何时结束某人的生命是上帝的决定。
He joined a civil firm while working part time as a special prosecutor.
他一边兼职特别检察官一边加入了一家民事公司。
By 2011, when he returned to the office full time, he said that his thinking had evolved.
2011年，当他全职回到办公室时，他说他的思维已经发生了变化。
After constant exposure to violence, he began to reinterpret the Bible.
在不断遭受暴力之后，他开始重新解释圣经。
He thought about passages in which Christ was judgmental and unforgiving—Christ’s belief that it would be better if Judas Iscariot had never been born, for instance—and saw Him as retaliatory in ways that he hadn’t appreciated before.
他想到了基督的审判和不宽恕的段落——例如，基督相信加略人犹大从未出生会更好——并认为他以他以前从未意识到的方式进行报复。
After the Church’s pedophilia scandals, Cox no longer felt obliged to follow its teachings precisely.
在教会发生恋童癖丑闻之后，考克斯不再觉得有义务严格遵守其教义。
He told me that “we just exclusively use the Old Testament over here,” and that he had ripped the New Testament out of all the Bibles.
他告诉我，“我们在这里只使用旧约”，并且他已经从所有圣经中撕掉了新约。
He quickly added, “That’s a joke!”
他连忙补充道：“这是个笑话！”
Last March, a former colleague of Cox’s published a letter in the Shreveport Times apologizing for causing an innocent black man to spend thirty years on death row.
去年三月，考克斯的一位前同事在《什里夫波特时报》上发表了一封信，为导致一名无辜黑人在死囚牢房里度过三十年而道歉。
“We are simply incapable of devising a system that can fairly and impartially impose a sentence of death,” he wrote.
“我们根本无法设计出一个能够公平公正地判处死刑的制度，”他写道。
When a journalist with the paper, Maya Lau, asked Cox for his response, he said that he thought courts should be imposing the death penalty more, not less.
当该报记者刘璎询问考克斯的回应时，他说他认为法院应该更多而不是更少判处死刑。
“I think we need to kill more people,” he told her.
“我认为我们需要杀死更多的人，”他告诉她。
“We’re not considered a society anymore—we’re a jungle.”
“我们不再被视为一个社会——我们是一片丛林。”
Cox does not believe that the death penalty works as a deterrent, but he says that it is justified as revenge.
考克斯不认为死刑具有威慑作用，但他表示，作为报复，死刑是正当的。
He told me that revenge was a revitalizing force that “brings to us a visceral satisfaction.” He felt that the public’s aversion to the notion had to do with the word itself.
他告诉我，复仇是一种振兴的力量，“给我们带来发自内心的满足”。他认为公众对这个概念的反感与这个词本身有关。
“It’s a hard word—it’s like the word ‘hate,’ the word ‘despot,’ the word ‘blood.’ ” He said, “Over time, I have come to the position that revenge is important for society as a whole.
“这是一个很难的词——就像‘仇恨’、‘专制’、‘血腥’这个词。”他说，“随着时间的推移，我逐渐认识到复仇对于整个社会来说很重要。
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.”
我们有一些你应该遵守的规则，如果你不遵守这些规则，你就丧失了在我们中间生活的权利。”
Mooretown, the neighborhood where Crawford’s family lives, was developed early in the twentieth century by Giles Moore, a black schoolteacher who intended to create a “colored town.” He owned a farm west of Shreveport that he divided into plots and sold to black people.
克劳福德一家居住的摩尔敦社区是由黑人教师贾尔斯·摩尔 (Giles Moore) 在二十世纪初开发的，他的目的是创建一个“有色人种小镇”。他在什里夫波特以西拥有一个农场，他将其分成几块土地并出售给黑人。
A follower of the black-unification leader Marcus Garvey, he wanted people to own their own property and be free of discrimination by white people.
作为黑人统一领袖马库斯·加维的追随者，他希望人们拥有自己的财产并免受白人的歧视。
The social experiment thrived for a few decades, but the town, which didn’t have its own utility infrastructure, was never self-sufficient.
这项社会实验蓬勃发展了几十年，但该镇没有自己的公用事业基础设施，从未自给自足。
In 1958, it was annexed to Shreveport.
1958年并入什里夫波特。
In the next three decades, many people with aspirations moved away, leaving vacant lots and discarded cars, which led to problems with stray dogs, rats, and snakes.
在接下来的三十年里，许多有志之士搬走了，留下了空地和废弃的汽车，导致了流浪狗、老鼠和蛇的问题。
Community leaders led campaigns to clean up the neighborhood, but its schools floundered; like nearly forty per cent of his classmates, Crawford didn’t finish high school.
社区领袖发起了清理社区的活动，但学校却陷入困境；和他近百分之四十的同学一样，克劳福德没有完成高中学业。
He could find only sporadic jobs, installing air-conditioners and mowing lawns.
他只能找到零星的工作，安装空调和修剪草坪。
Shortly before Roderius died, he had arranged to work at his church as a spiritual mime, using dance and gestures to share the Gospel.
罗德里乌斯去世前不久，他安排在教堂担任精神默剧演员，用舞蹈和手势来分享福音。
His pastor, John Dent, described him as “a vibrant kid who loved cracking jokes—that was his thing.” The first time that Dent saw Crawford pushing a stroller, he told him, “No way.
他的牧师约翰·登特 (John Dent) 形容他是“一个充满活力的孩子，喜欢开玩笑——这就是他的专长。”丹特第一次看到克劳福德推着婴儿车时，他告诉他：“不可能。
No way that you already have a kid.” He said that Crawford responded, proudly, “No, man, this is my boy.
不可能吧，你已经有孩子了。”他说克劳福德自豪地回答说：“不，伙计，这是我的孩子。
This is my little one.”
这是我的小宝贝。”
At a preliminary hearing a month after Roderius’s death, Lott told the judge that she had never seen Crawford mistreat their son.
在罗德里乌斯死后一个月的初步听证会上，洛特告诉法官，她从未见过克劳福德虐待他们的儿子。
“Why would he kill his baby, as bad as he wanted a little boy?” she said.
“他为什么要杀死自己的孩子，尽管他非常想要一个小男孩？”她说。
On her Twitter feed that fall, she posted a picture of Crawford and wrote, “Free my hot boi,” with four hearts and a smiley face with hearts in its eyes.
那年秋天，她在推特上发布了一张克劳福德的照片，并写道：“释放我的辣妹”，上面有四颗心，还有一张眼睛里长着心的笑脸。
She visited him in jail every few weeks, usually catching a ride with Crawford’s family.
她每隔几周就会去监狱探望他，通常是和克劳福德的家人一起搭车。
“She was the type who would call our house every day, no matter who Rodricus was going with,” Crawford’s mother, Abbie, said.
“她是那种每天都会给我们家打电话的人，无论罗德里克斯和谁一起去，”克劳福德的母亲艾比说。
“She just wouldn’t let Rodricus go.”
“她就是不肯让罗德里克斯走。”
Lott was the only one in her family who testified that Crawford was innocent.
洛特是她家里唯一证明克劳福德无罪的人。
After an initial period of confusion, her family had accepted Cox’s version of events.
经过最初一段时间的困惑后，她的家人接受了考克斯对事件的说法。
Investigators from the D.A.’s office told them that the medical evidence proved that the baby had been killed.
地方检察官办公室的调查人员告诉他们，医学证据证明婴儿已被杀害。
“They know what happened because the autopsy came back,” a family member told me.
“他们知道发生了什么，因为尸检回来了，”一位家庭成员告诉我。
Abbie Crawford seemed as distressed by the Lotts’ position as she was by the charges against her son.
艾比·克劳福德似乎对洛特夫妇的处境感到痛苦，就像她对儿子受到的指控一样。
“We went through all our lives together,” she told me.
“我们一起度过了一生，”她告诉我。
“We ate together, raised our children together.
“我们一起吃饭，一起抚养孩子。
We had get-togethers for Mother’s Day.
我们在母亲节聚会。
We were family.”
我们是一家人。”
Dent, who had presided over Roderius’s wake, tried to get the families to reconcile, but the Lotts stopped answering their door when he knocked.
主持罗德里乌斯守灵活动的登特试图让家人和解，但当他敲门时，洛特一家不再应门。
“That they could go from embracing one another at the funeral and praying for each other to not even speaking was crushing,” he said.
“他们从在葬礼上互相拥抱、互相祈祷，到甚至不说话，这真是令人心碎，”他说。
“I believe the prosecution forced ideas into their heads.”
“我相信检方将想法强行灌输给他们。”
From jail, Crawford urged his family to talk to Lott’s mother, Sharon.
出狱后，克劳福德敦促家人与洛特的母亲莎伦交谈。
One day, his aunt Latosha, who owned a hair salon and assumed the role of family matriarch, saw Sharon sitting alone at the courthouse.
有一天，他的姨妈拉托莎（Latosha）拥有一家美发沙龙，并担任家庭女家长，她看到沙龙独自坐在法院。
She sat beside her and said, “You know good and well that Rodricus would never hurt his baby.” She said that Sharon responded, “Well, what do you think happened?
她坐在她旁边说道：“你很清楚，罗德里克斯永远不会伤害他的孩子。”她说莎伦回答说：“好吧，你认为发生了什么？
That my daughter did something to the baby?” The Crawfords wondered if the Lotts felt that someone would inevitably be prosecuted: if it wasn’t the Crawfords’ child, perhaps it would be theirs.
我女儿对孩子做了什么？”克劳福德夫妇想知道洛特夫妇是否认为有人将不可避免地受到起诉：即使这不是克劳福德夫妇的孩子，也许也会是他们的。
Latosha said, “I think the prosecutor had the mind-set that ‘I don’t have to kill the village, because I’ll just turn the villagers against each other and they’ll kill themselves.’ ”
拉托沙说：“我认为检察官的心态是‘我不必杀死整个村庄，因为我只会让村民互相对抗，他们就会自杀。’”
“Kryptonite isn’t my only problem, O.K.?” Crawford was represented by a Shreveport attorney named Daryl Gold, who had argued in court against Cox in the late seventies and remembered him as “one of the nicest people I had ever known.” By the time Crawford was tried, Gold wondered if Cox had “a brain tumor or something.” Other Shreveport lawyers were similarly confused.
“氪石不是我唯一的问题，好吗？”克劳福德的代理律师是什里夫波特的达里尔·戈尔德（Daryl Gold），他曾在七十年代末在法庭上与考克斯辩论，并记得他是“我所认识的最好的人之一”。当克劳福德受审时，戈尔德怀疑考克斯是否患有“脑瘤或其他疾病”。什里夫波特的其他律师也同样感到困惑。
When Henry Walker, the former president of the state’s criminal-defense bar, heard that Cox had screamed “God damn it!” in court, he e-mailed the bar’s Listserv to express concern that Cox had “developed a state of mental imbalance and may need help very badly.” He wrote, “I remember a very different Dale Cox, a person of unquestioned integrity, whose demeanor was always very professional and courteous,” adding, “Of course, he may have, by always masking his true volatility, become over time so tightly wound that an explosion was inevitable.” A few lawyers guessed that Cox’s divorce and a personal bankruptcy, in 2005, had made him bitter.
当该州刑事辩护律师协会前主席亨利·沃克（Henry Walker）听到考克斯尖叫道“该死的！”时。在法庭上，他给酒吧的 Listserv 发送了电子邮件，表达了对考克斯“出现精神失衡状态，可能非常需要帮助”的担忧。他写道，“我记得一个非常不同的戴尔·考克斯，一个毫无疑问正直的人，他的举止总是非常专业和有礼貌，”他补充道，“当然，他可能总是掩盖自己真正的波动性，随着时间的推移，他可能会变得如此紧密，以至于爆炸是不可避免的。”一些律师猜测考克斯 2005 年的离婚和个人破产让他感到痛苦。
(Cox dismissed the idea.) Others thought that he had become too immersed in the culture of the D.A.’s office; it was the sort of institution where a longtime assistant district attorney felt comfortable hanging a large portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, on the wall.
（考克斯驳回了这个想法。）其他人认为他太沉迷于地方检察官办公室的文化；在这种机构里，一位长期担任地方检察官助理的人很乐意在墙上挂上一幅内森·贝德福德·福雷斯特（Nathan Bedford Forrest）的大幅肖像，他是一名南部邦联将军，也是三K党的早期领导人。
“Nobody there is that far from turning into a savage,” Walker told me.
“那里没有人离变成野蛮人还有那么远，”沃克告诉我。
“If somebody releases the chain, they’ll be off and running.”
“如果有人松开链条，他们就会逃跑。”
The week before Crawford’s trial, in November, 2013, Gold asked Cox to dismiss the case.
2013 年 11 月，克劳福德受审前一周，戈尔德要求考克斯驳回此案。
He had just received a report from his medical expert, Daniel Spitz, a forensic pathologist from Michigan, who co-authored a pathology textbook that is widely used in medical schools.
他刚刚收到了他的医学专家丹尼尔·斯皮茨（Daniel Spitz）的报告，丹尼尔·斯皮茨是一位来自密歇根州的法医病理学家，他与人合着了一本在医学院广泛使用的病理学教科书。
Spitz found that Roderius’s blood had tested positive for sepsis, and he concluded that he had died of pneumonia.
斯皮茨发现罗德留斯的血液检测呈败血症阳性，他得出结论，他死于肺炎。
Spitz told me that after reviewing the case he thought that there “wasn’t enough evidence to even put this before a jury.
斯皮茨告诉我，在审查此案后，他认为“甚至没有足够的证据将其提交给陪审团。
You didn’t have anybody who thought this guy committed murder except for one pathologist who decided that it was homicide on what seemed like a whim.”
没有人认为这个人犯了谋杀罪，除了一位病理学家，他认为这是一次看似心血来潮的凶杀案。”
Cox told me that the new medical report “gave me pause.” But after meeting again with the first pathologist, James Traylor, he felt confident about the theory of smothering.
考克斯告诉我，新的医疗报告“让我犹豫了”。但在与第一位病理学家詹姆斯·特雷勒再次会面后，他对窒息理论充满了信心。
In court, Traylor testified as cross-sections of the baby’s bruised bottom were displayed for the jury.
在法庭上，特雷勒作证，并向陪审团展示了婴儿受伤臀部的横截面。
Traylor said that the baby’s pneumonia couldn’t have been severe, because family members hadn’t reported a fever or rapid heartbeat.
特雷勒说，婴儿的肺炎不可能很严重，因为家人没有报告发烧或心跳加快。
“I’m the guy that did the autopsy,” Traylor told the jury.
“我是进行尸检的人，”特雷勒告诉陪审团。
“There is no one else that can speak for the victim other than myself.”
“除了我自己，没有人可以为受害者说话。”
Traylor said that his finding of suffocation was based entirely on the bruises on Roderius’s lips, but he never sampled the tissue to date the injury, a basic test that would have revealed whether the bruises came from the earlier fall in the bathroom, an explanation that he ignored.
特雷勒说，他对窒息的判断完全是基于罗德里乌斯嘴唇上的瘀伤，但他从未对组织进行取样来确定受伤日期，这是一项基本测试，可以揭示瘀伤是否来自早些时候在浴室摔倒造成的，但他忽略了这一解释。
He misstated medical science, telling the jury that Roderius’s brain had swelled as a result of suffocation.
他错误地陈述了医学科学，告诉陪审团罗德留斯的大脑因窒息而肿胀。
Swelling does not occur in cases of smothering, because the person dies rapidly, and the brain can’t swell if blood has stopped circulating.
窒息的情况下不会发生肿胀，因为人会很快死亡，而且如果血液停止循环，大脑就不会肿胀。
The brain can swell, though, in cases of pneumonia with sepsis.
然而，在肺炎合并败血症的情况下，大脑可能会肿胀。
When Spitz testified, he explained that sepsis in young children can be fatal within a few hours, with early symptoms passing unnoticed.
斯皮茨作证时解释说，幼儿的败血症可能会在几个小时内致命，而早期症状会被忽视。
But his testimony was eclipsed by a cross-examination that lasted twice as long as the direct testimony.
但他的证词因持续时间是直接证词两倍的盘问而黯然失色。
Cox interrogated him about a mistake he’d made in an autopsy in Michigan, where he had overlooked a bullet wound in a decomposed body.
考克斯审问他在密歇根州进行尸检时犯下的一个错误，当时他忽视了腐烂尸体上的枪伤。
“You are overextended,” Cox told him.
“你太过分了，”考克斯告诉他。
“You are overworked.” The judge later wrote of Spitz that “any veracity that he had was destroyed.”
“你劳累过度了。”法官后来在谈到斯皮茨时写道，“他所拥有的一切诚实都被摧毁了。”
Crawford’s mother, Abbie, felt uneasy as soon as the jury, composed of nine white people and three black ones, returned to the courtroom.
由九名白人和三名黑人组成的陪审团一回到法庭，克劳福德的母亲艾比就感到不安。
“All I remember hearing is ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty,’ ” she told me.
“我记得听到的都是‘有罪，有罪，有罪’，”她告诉我。
“Rodricus looked at me, and I looked at him, and I just tried to hold it all in.”
“罗德里克斯看着我，我也看着他，我只是试图忍住这一切。”
The defense team hadn’t prepared for the penalty phase of the trial, which began the next morning.
辩护团队还没有为第二天早上开始的审判的处罚阶段做好准备。
“We were too attached to ‘not guilty,’ ” J.
“我们太执着于‘无罪’，”J.
Antonio Florence, a lawyer who worked on the case, told me.
负责此案的律师安东尼奥·弗洛伦斯告诉我。
He described Cox as “probably the greatest trial lawyer I’ve gone up against,” adding that by “great” he meant that “he is very effective, like Darth Vader.”
他形容考克斯“可能是我遇到过的最伟大的审判律师”，并补充说，“伟大”是指“他非常有效，就像达斯·维德一样。”
Florence, who is black, said that he fantasizes about all the defense lawyers in the country banding together and refusing to work on capital cases, so that no trials can proceed.
黑人弗洛伦斯表示，他幻想全国所有辩护律师联合起来，拒绝处理死刑案件，从而导致审判无法进行。
After the Supreme Court effectively suspended the death penalty in 1972, arguing that the punishment was unconstitutional in part because it was disproportionately imposed on “minorities whose numbers are few, who are outcasts of society, and who are unpopular,” Louisiana, like thirty-four other states, rewrote its statute.
1972年，最高法院认为死刑违宪，部分原因是死刑不成比例地施加于“人数很少、被社会排斥、不受欢迎的少数群体”，因此有效地暂停了死刑。路易斯安那州和其他 34 个州一样，重写了其法规。
As Florence saw it, little had changed.
在弗洛伦斯看来，情况几乎没有改变。
Proof of the penalty’s arbitrariness, he said, was the fact that “you have people like Dale Cox making the decisions about who should face death.”
他说，这一处罚的任意性的证据是“让像戴尔·考克斯这样的人来决定谁应该面临死刑”。
The next morning, Jessica Williams, the mother of Crawford’s first child, Khasiah, who was six years old, told the jury that if he was executed it would “kill” her daughter, too.
第二天早上，克劳福德六岁的第一个孩子卡西亚的母亲杰西卡·威廉姆斯告诉陪审团，如果克劳福德被处决，她的女儿也将“死亡”。
“She talks about him, asks about him, cries about him, dreams about him, everything,” she said.
“她谈论他，询问他，为他哭泣，梦见他，一切，”她说。
“She asks when her daddy is coming home.
“她问她爸爸什么时候回家。
‘Mama, where’s my daddy at?’ ‘Call my daddy.’ ‘Can you call him?’ ”
‘妈妈，我爸爸在哪儿？’‘给我爸爸打电话。’‘你可以给他打电话吗？’”
When Jessica told a story about shopping for diapers with Crawford, Cox asked her where he got the money.
当杰西卡讲述与克劳福德一起购买尿布的故事时，考克斯问她钱从哪里来。
“During the one year of Roderius’s life, did Rodricus Crawford ever work?”
“在罗德里乌斯一生的一年里，罗德里克斯·克劳福德工作过吗？”
Cox continued, “Did you know that he was a habitual user of marijuana?”
考克斯继续说道：“你知道他经常吸食大麻吗？”
“Did it bother you that Khasiah would be around someone who used marijuana all the time?”
“卡西亚身边总是吸食大麻，这让你感到困扰吗？”
“No, because even with him being a habitual user, it didn’t take upon his character and how he would be around his child,” she said.
“不，因为即使他是习惯性使用者，它也不会影响他的性格以及他在孩子身边的方式，”她说。
When Ramone, one of Crawford’s younger brothers, took the witness stand, Cox asked if he thought that smoking marijuana was wrong.
当克劳福德的弟弟之一雷蒙出庭作证时，考克斯问他是否认为吸食大麻是错误的。
“Did they tell in your classes at school that you could go to jail for using marijuana?”
“学校的课堂上他们有没有告诉你，你可能会因为吸食大麻而入狱？”
“But even though you knew it was a crime, you didn’t think it was wrong for your brother to do it?”
“可是你明知道这是犯罪，你也不觉得你哥哥这么做有错吗？”
“And why didn’t you think it was wrong for your brother to do it even though you knew it to be a crime?”
“为什么你不认为你哥哥这样做是错误的，尽管你知道这是犯罪？”
He asked Ramone to estimate how many weeks of the year Crawford worked.
他让雷蒙估算一下克劳福德一年工作了多少周。
After determining that there was “no real pattern to how often he worked,” Cox asked if Crawford had a physical disability.
在确定“他的工作频率没有真正的模式”后，考克斯询问克劳福德是否有身体残疾。
“Or a mental disability, something wrong with his mind?”
“还是精神有障碍，脑子有问题？”
“What would he do all day?” he asked.
“他一整天都会做什么？”他问道。
“On the days that he didn’t work.”
“在他不工作的日子里。”
When Abbie Crawford took the witness stand, Cox asked again if Crawford was disabled.
当艾比·克劳福德出庭作证时，考克斯再次询问克劳福德是否患有残疾。
“Why didn’t he work?” he pressed.
“他为什么不工作？”他追问。
Later, Cox returned to the subject: “But he never worked on a regular basis.”
后来，考克斯回到了这个话题：“但他从来没有定期工作。”
Cox turned again to Crawford’s marijuana use, asking her how much Rodricus smoked each day.
考克斯再次转向克劳福德吸食大麻的情况，问她罗德里克斯每天吸多少烟。
When she said she didn’t know, he asked, “Have you ever smelled marijuana before?”
当她说她不知道时，他问道：“你以前闻过大麻的味道吗？”
When the cross-examination was over, Florence approached the witness stand and said, “Ms. Abbie, was this just another black boy, worth nothing, at your house?”
盘问结束后，弗洛伦斯走到证人席前说道：“艾比女士，这只是你家里另一个一文不值的黑人男孩吗？”
Cox objected, and the judge accused Florence of inserting race into the proceedings.
考克斯表示反对，法官指责弗洛伦斯将种族问题纳入诉讼程序。
“It was something that welled up in me,” Florence told me later.
“这是我内心涌动的东西，”弗洛伦斯后来告诉我。
“If we’re going to talk about it, let’s talk about it, because that’s what you’re doing.
“如果我们要谈论它，那就谈论它吧，因为这就是你正在做的事情。
You’re just leaving out the word ‘nigger.’ But the jury can see past the code.”
你只是漏掉了‘黑鬼’这个词。但陪审团可以看穿代码。”
In Cox’s closing statements, he said that Jesus Christ commanded the death penalty for those who killed a child, a point he had made the month before, in a trial where he won a death verdict against another young black man.
考克斯在结案陈词中表示，耶稣基督下令对杀害儿童的人判处死刑，他在一个月前的一次审判中曾说过这一点，当时他赢得了另一名年轻黑人的死刑判决。
“Now, this is Jesus Christ of the New Testament,” he said: “ ‘It would be better if you were never born.
“现在，这就是新约中的耶稣基督，”他说：“‘如果你从未出生，那就更好了。
You shall have a millstone cast around your neck, and you will be thrown into the sea.’ ” Crawford was sentenced to death that evening.
你的脖子上将被套上磨石，然后被扔进海里。”克劳福德当晚被判处死刑。
A month after Crawford was formally sentenced, Dale Cox wrote a memo to the state’s probation department, which compiles reports on defendants sentenced to death.
克劳福德被正式判刑一个月后，戴尔·考克斯向该州缓刑部门写了一份备忘录，该部门负责汇编被判处死刑的被告的报告。
“I am sorry that Louisiana has adopted lethal injection as the form of implementing the death penalty,” he wrote.
他写道：“我对路易斯安那州采用注射死刑作为执行死刑的方式感到遗憾。”
“Mr. Crawford deserves as much physical suffering as it is humanly possible to endure before he dies.”
“克劳福德先生在死前应该承受人类所能承受的尽可能多的身体痛苦。”
The Lott family refused to speak with the probation officers who came to their house for a victim statement.
洛特一家拒绝与来他们家索取受害者陈述的缓刑官员交谈。
A year later, when I knocked on their door, Lakendra’s mother, Sharon, spoke to me from behind the screen door; the interior of the house was so dark that I couldn’t see her.
一年后，当我敲响他们的门时，拉肯德拉的母亲莎伦在纱门后面对我说话。屋子里很黑，我看不到她。
When I explained that I had talked with many people and wanted to include her voice, she told me, “I don’t have a voice.
当我解释说我已经和很多人谈过并希望包括她的声音时，她告诉我，“我没有声音。
You can say whatever you feel.
你可以说任何你的感受。
I don’t have a voice.”
我没有发言权。”
I asked if she was satisfied with the way that the trial unfolded.
我问她对审判的进展是否满意。
“No,” she said.
“不，”她说。
“I don’t know what happened.” She said that she knew that Crawford’s lawyer had told him not to testify, but she still felt it was wrong not to defend himself.
“我不知道发生了什么事。”她说，她知道克劳福德的律师告诉他不要作证，但她仍然觉得不为自己辩护是错误的。
“Just say something ,” she said.
“说点什么吧，”她说。
“No A.C., but who needs it when you’ve got this kind of cross-ventilation?” Lott had moved out of her mother’s house and now lived a little more than a mile away, in a government-subsidized housing complex.
“没有空调，但是当你有这种交叉通风时谁还需要它呢？”洛特已经搬出了她母亲的房子，现在住在一英里多一点的地方，住在政府补贴的住宅区里。
The first time I knocked on her door, at noon, she said that she was still sleeping.
我第一次敲她的门是在中午，她说她还在睡觉。
The next three times, a relative answered the door and said that she couldn’t talk.
接下来的三次，都是亲戚来开门，说她不能说话。
Sharon told me that my visit had upset Lakendra, and she urged me to walk down the street and speak with the Crawfords instead.
莎伦告诉我，我的来访让拉肯德拉感到不安，她敦促我到街上去和克劳福德一家谈谈。
“I’m not saying nothing bad about Rodricus,” she said.
“我并不是说罗德里克斯的坏话，”她说。
“If he didn’t do it and he gets out, that’s fine.” She pointed to the Crawfords’ house and said, “They shouldn’t be mad at us.
“如果他没有这么做并且离开了，那也没关系。”她指着克劳福德一家说：“他们不应该生我们的气。
The jury did it, not us.”
是陪审团干的，不是我们干的。”
Crawford is the second-youngest man on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola.
克劳福德是安哥拉路易斯安那州监狱中第二年轻的死囚。
He said that half of the people on his tier are from Caddo Parish; he has started calling two of them his “uncles.” When he first arrived, he would sleep all day, but they convinced him that sleeping wouldn’t make life any better.
他说，他这个阶层的人有一半来自卡多教区；他开始称其中两个为“叔叔”。当他刚来的时候，他会睡一整天，但他们让他相信，睡觉并不会让生活变得更好。
Prisoners on death row are not allowed to speak with anyone who isn’t family, unless they are days away from execution.
死囚牢房中的囚犯不得与家人以外的任何人交谈，除非距离处决还有几天。
When the prison’s warden, Burl Cain, told me that the policy was made “out of respect to the victims’ family,” I said that the victim’s next-of-kin, Lott, had testified to Crawford’s innocence.
当监狱长伯尔·凯恩 (Burl Cain) 告诉我这项政策是“出于对受害者家属的尊重”而制定时，我说受害者的近亲洛特 (Lott) 已经证明了克劳福德的清白。
“We trust the Louisiana Criminal Justice System,” he wrote in an e-mail.
“我们信任路易斯安那州的刑事司法系统，”他在一封电子邮件中写道。
“Rodricus Crawford has been found guilty.”
“罗德里克斯·克劳福德被判有罪。”
Crawford filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that the medical testimony presented at his trial had been insufficient and misleading, but in March his request was denied, without explanation.
克劳福德提出重新审判的动议，认为审判中提供的医学证词不充分且具有误导性，但他的请求在三月份被拒绝，且没有任何解释。
The brief filed by his lawyers included the opinions of three doctors who had concluded independently that the original autopsy was deeply flawed.
他的律师提交的简报包括三名医生的意见，他们独立得出结论，认为最初的尸检存在严重缺陷。
Robert Bux, the coroner of El Paso County, in Colorado, told me that “there was no scientific evidence to support the diagnosis.
科罗拉多州埃尔帕索县验尸官罗伯特·布克斯告诉我，“没有科学证据支持这一诊断。
They called it a homicide before they knew what was going on.
在他们知道发生了什么事之前，他们称这是一起凶杀案。
I was amazed—amazed in the sense that I was horrified.” Janice Ophoven, a pediatric forensic pathologist from Minnesota, told me, “To be really honest, the pathologist did not seem willing to consider the actual facts of this case.”
我很惊讶——惊讶是因为我感到害怕。”来自明尼苏达州的儿科法医病理学家 Janice Ophoven 告诉我，“说实话，病理学家似乎不愿意考虑这个案件的实际情况。”
A month after the court’s denial, the district attorney of Caddo Parish died suddenly, and Cox filled the vacancy.
法院否认后一个月，卡多教区地区检察官突然去世，考克斯填补了空缺。
In October, he will ask voters to elect him as district attorney.
十月份，他将要求选民选举他为地区检察官。
When I met with him to talk about Crawford’s case, he seemed to struggle to remember the details.
当我与他见面谈论克劳福德的案子时，他似乎很难记住细节。
He said that Lott was “yukking it up with Samuel Jordan,” a defendant in a different case.
他说洛特正在“与另一起案件的被告塞缪尔乔丹大吵大闹”。
When I asked if it troubled him that there was no motive, he responded, “In baby-killing cases, almost always the defense is that the baby was crying and it got on my nerves.
当我问他是否因为没有动机而感到困扰时，他回答说：“在杀害婴儿的案件中，几乎总是以婴儿在哭泣为借口，这让我很紧张。
So I started to hit him, and I kept hitting him, and he kept screaming.
于是我开始打他，我一直打他，他一直尖叫。
So I hit him harder.
于是我对他打得更狠了。
And then I decided to bash his head against the wall, and then he wasn’t screaming anymore, so I could sleep again.”
然后我决定把他的头撞到墙上，然后他就不再尖叫了，这样我就可以再次入睡了。”
I mentioned that Roderius had slept through the night without crying.
我提到罗德留斯整晚都睡着了，没有哭。
“Am I confusing that with another one?” he said.
“我是不是把它和另一个混淆了？”他说。
“Well, no, the lack of motive didn’t bother me.
“嗯，不，缺乏动机并没有困扰我。
It was more of a reason to seek the death penalty than it was not.”
这更多的是寻求死刑的理由，而不是不死刑。”
Like all inmates on Louisiana’s death row, Crawford is confined to his cell twenty-three hours a day.
和路易斯安那州死囚区的所有囚犯一样，克劳福德每天二十三小时都被关在牢房里。
He spends most of his free hour waiting in line for the phone.
他大部分空闲时间都花在排队等候电话上。
Earlier this month, I went to his house and waited for his daily phone call to his family, expected at about 10 P.
这个月初，我去了他家，等待他每天给家人打电话，预计晚上 10 点左右。
M.
M。
It never came.
它从未到来。
Crawford wasn’t released from his cell that day.
克劳福德那天没有被释放出牢房。
When he asked his classification officer what had happened, she smiled and said, “You know what’s going on.” Crawford interpreted it as an effort to prevent him from speaking with me.
当他问他的分类官员发生了什么事时，她微笑着说：“你知道发生了什么事。”克劳福德将其解释为阻止他与我交谈的努力。
(His calls are monitored, and his mother had arranged the call in advance.)
（他的电话被监听，而且是他母亲提前安排的。）
Abbie Crawford and I waited for her phone to ring while sitting at a card table in her driveway.
艾比·克劳福德和我坐在自家车道上的牌桌旁等待她的电话响起。
Rodricus’s uncle barbecued, and his twenty-one-year-old brother, Fostravz, ate a bowl of Trix.
罗德里克斯的叔叔烧烤，他二十一岁的弟弟福斯特拉夫兹吃了一碗特里克斯。
Abbie seemed to get comfort from analyzing the case—it made her feel as if she were actively doing something for her son—and she asked Fostravz to recount the last night of the baby’s life.
艾比似乎从分析这个案例中得到了安慰——这让她觉得自己正在积极地为她的儿子做一些事情——她让福斯特拉夫兹讲述婴儿生命的最后一晚。
“This ain’t no play,” Fostravz told her.
“这不是闹着玩的，”福斯特拉夫兹告诉她。
“I’m not going to keep practicing this over and over.”
“我不会一遍又一遍地练习这个。”
He and his family had recently posted flyers around Shreveport with a picture of Crawford and a note that said, “There is an injustice taking place in a city near you right now.
他和他的家人最近在什里夫波特周围张贴了传单，上面有克劳福德的照片和一张纸条，上面写着：“现在你附近的一个城市正在发生不公正的事情。
It may seem unreal but believe it is all so real.
这可能看起来不真实，但相信这一切都是如此真实。
.
。
.
。
.
。
Rodricus C.
罗德里克斯 C.
Crawford could be YOU !” They hoped to get some media attention—the Shreveport papers had written only a few brief summaries of the trial—but no one responded.
克劳福德可能就是你！”他们希望引起一些媒体的关注——什里夫波特的报纸只写了审判的一些简短摘要——但没有人回应。
Fostravz had his own theory of why his brother was in prison.
对于他哥哥入狱的原因，福斯特拉夫兹有自己的一套理论。
A few months before the baby’s death, the police had arrested Crawford for marijuana possession and then released him on the condition that he inform on people who lived five blocks away.
婴儿死亡前几个月，警方因持有大麻而逮捕了克劳福德，然后释放了他，条件是他必须举报住在五个街区外的人。
After they let him go, he refused to follow through.
他们放他走后，他拒绝继续。
“I knew they were going to do something to get Rodricus in jail, because he wasn’t snitching like they told him to,” Fostravz said.
“我知道他们会采取一些措施将罗德里克斯送进监狱，因为他没有像他们告诉他的那样告密，”福斯特拉夫兹说。
“It was revenge,” his uncle, who had served time for drugs, said.
“这是报复，”因吸毒入狱的叔叔说。
“He didn’t do what they said, so they charged him with the other thing.”
“他没有按照他们所说的去做，所以他们指控他犯了另一件事。”
“And that’s why they kept saying, ‘You don’t do anything but smoke marijuana all day,’ ” Abbie said, though she didn’t seem entirely convinced by the theory.
“这就是为什么他们一直说，‘你整天除了吸大麻什么都不做，’”艾比说，尽管她似乎并不完全相信这个理论。
She appeared to have internalized Cox’s criticisms of her son; she now talked about his unemployment as if it were the actual crime.
她似乎已经将考克斯对她儿子的批评内化了。她现在谈论他的失业，就好像这是真正的犯罪一样。
She was eighteen and single when she first became a mother, and now she felt that she hadn’t been strategic enough in raising her children, three boys and two girls.
当她第一次成为母亲时，她十八岁，单身，现在她觉得自己在抚养孩子（三个男孩和两个女孩）方面没有足够的策略。
“I figured I could raise the boys just like the girls, but I’m not a man—maybe he needed a man,” she said.
“我想我可以像抚养女孩一样抚养男孩，但我不是男人——也许他需要一个男人，”她说。
“Now I know that you have to have your child get into something positive in the daytime.
“现在我知道你必须让你的孩子在白天接触一些积极的事情。
You’ve got to work and get a paycheck and go to church every Sunday, or every other Sunday.
你必须工作，领取薪水，每个周日或每隔一个周日去教堂。
On Saturdays, you can socialize or whatever, but that’s all.”
周六，你可以社交什么的，但仅此而已。”
Cox’s judgments had become so central to her thinking that she worried about the D.A.’s age and his health and the fact that he could die before her son’s innocence was proved.
考克斯的判断已经成为她思想的核心，以至于她担心地方检察官的年龄和健康状况，以及他可能在她儿子的清白被证明之前去世的事实。
“Since the day that Cox sentenced my child, I’ve been praying.
“自从考克斯对我的孩子判刑那天起，我就一直在祈祷。
‘Father, please don’t let Mr. Cox die until he knows that Rodricus is going to be all right,’ ” she said.
“父亲，请不要让考克斯先生死去，直到他知道罗德里克斯会没事，”她说。
In April, Crawford’s lawyers filed their first appeal with the Louisiana Supreme Court, which almost never overturns a verdict in capital cases.
今年四月，克劳福德的律师向路易斯安那州最高法院提出了第一次上诉，该法院几乎从未推翻过死刑案件的判决。
The brief described the “racial and geographic arbitrariness of the death penalty in Louisiana—confined predominantly to African-American men prosecuted in Caddo Parish”—and said that “Crawford’s fate depended far more on where he was prosecuted than his ultimate moral culpability.”
简报描述了“路易斯安那州死刑的种族和地域任意性——主要限于在卡多教区被起诉的非裔美国人”——并表示“克劳福德的命运更多地取决于他被起诉的地点，而不是他最终的道德罪责。”
The Crawfords are so upbeat about each brief submitted to the court that their lawyers have to discourage them from unrealistic expectations.
克劳福德夫妇对提交给法庭的每一份陈述都非常乐观，以至于他们的律师不得不劝阻他们不要抱有不切实际的期望。
Crawford says that when he is free he intends to get married and to move away from Mooretown.
克劳福德说，当他有空时，他打算结婚并搬离摩尔敦。
“Rodricus doesn’t want to be part of the same old world that he was in,” Abbie Crawford said.
“罗德里克斯不想成为他所处的旧世界的一部分，”艾比·克劳福德说。
“He tells me, ‘Keep praying, Mama, because the Father is dealing with us.
“他告诉我，‘妈妈，继续祈祷，因为天父正在与我们打交道。
The Father is getting us ready.
天父正在为我们做好准备。
I know he’s getting me ready to be a young man.’ ” ♦
我知道他正在让我做好成为年轻人的准备。’” ♦
Rachel Aviv is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
雷切尔·阿维夫 (Rachel Aviv) 是《纽约客》的特约撰稿人。
She is the author of “ Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us ,” which will be published in September.
她是《我们自己的陌生人：不安的心灵和塑造我们的故事》一书的作者，该书将于九月出版。
More: African-Americans Ambulances Babies Confederacy Death Louisiana Pneumonia Racism This Week’s Issue Never miss a big New Yorker story again.
更多内容：非裔美国人救护车婴儿联邦死亡路易斯安那肺炎种族主义本周一号不再错过《纽约客》的重大报道。
Sign up for This Week’s Issue and get an e-mail every week with the stories you have to read.
订阅本周的期刊，每周都会收到一封电子邮件，其中包含您必须阅读的故事。
Letter from Albuquerque Your Son Is Deceased The city has one of the highest rates in the country of fatal shootings by police, but no officer has been indicted.
来自阿尔伯克基的信 你的儿子已死亡 该市是全国警察枪击致死率最高的城市之一，但尚未有警官被起诉。
By Rachel Aviv
雷切尔·阿维夫
A Reporter at Large Taken Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes.
在民事没收中，未受到不当行为指控的美国人可能会被没收现金、汽车，甚至房屋。
Is that all we’re losing?
这就是我们失去的一切吗？
By Sarah Stillman
莎拉·斯蒂尔曼