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When a source first told me about the Lloyd Gray case in late 2024, I wrote down these notes: two black ju umpires, Swastika and Gov. Jeff Landry. It was oversimplified of deep and troubling issues, but it also reached the heart of the story released this week by Propovica and Verite News, who have plagued Louisiana and continue to do so for a foreseeable future.
Gray was only 19 years old when he was tried in 1980 for aggravated rape charges in a New Orleans courtroom. After one day’s testimony, the ju umpire returned with a 10-2 split verdict. Ten white ju umpires were found guilty, and only two black ju umpires were not guilty. If you are a regular consumer of courtroom dramas, you might think that a split verdict would mean cheating, and today you will. However, in Louisiana at the time, non-meaning ju umpires were legal, resulting in a grey life sentence.
Covering Louisiana’s criminal justice system often means getting used to what people in other parts of the country might find shocking. For example, many may be surprised to learn that, for over 120 years, people like Gray have allowed people to be sent to prison for life, despite two ju umpire voted innocent here. The only other state that did the same thing was Oregon.
In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the practice was unconstitutional and based on inherently racist laws intended to preserve white hegemony, but this decision only applies in future cases. The court has long since stopped deciding on what to do with convicted people. Louisiana has refused to reconsider the convictions of more than 1,000 black men who were sentenced to long sentences in the split ju judge’s sentence.
Reports here can often be surreal experiences. Even when you think you’ve reached an uninfringed level of irony, there’s something new that will shock you to your system. For me, it was sw.
Gray’s former lawyer had explained to me the inside and outside of his case, and he said at one point that someone had painted a symbol of Nazi hatred on the cover of Gray’s case file. Certainly, when Gray’s lawyer sent me the cover page for his files, it was in the top right corner: a small doodle of sw.
It was difficult to contemplate that someone felt comfortable enough to portray such dishonest things in government documents, like in the 1980s. The District Attorney’s Office doesn’t dispute its existence or whether the staff may have portrayed it, but we don’t know who or when.
Swastika Doodles in the upper right corner of Gray’s File Credits Cover: Retrieved by Propublica and Verite News. Highlights added by Propublica.
The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections denied our request to interview Gray either by telephone or in person, so the only way to communicate with him for his story was through his lawyers. I provided them with questions and they relayed his answers.
I wanted to know what his life was like before the fateful night of 1980 in 1980 when he was accused of rape. He described his happy childhood, saying, “The beauty of it was loved by us. Me and my sister, my brother, we were loved.” However, he also recalled seeing his mother abuse at a gas station when he was younger. “It opened my eyes to the highest racism,” Gray said.
Gray’s lawyers argue with Swastika, along with two black ju judges who prove, among other issues, that his prosecution is contaminated by racial bias and should at least be sufficient to reconsider Gray’s sentence.
At one point, the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office agreed and apparently proposed a plea deal that would allow Gray to be released. In Oregon, after the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling, the state exempts all convicted by a meaningless ry appellant from sentences, and prosecutors then pleaded for a reduced sentence that allowed many to walk freely.
But again, this is Louisiana. Unlike Oregon, the state Supreme Court decided not to override the conviction of the old split-off judges and left it to Congress to address the issue. Secondly, lawmakers supported by Landry stopped all paths to freedom for people like Gray. They passed legislation that not only shot down legislation that would allow the old division ju judge to be reconsidered, but also hinder the ability of prosecutors to provide plea agreements. (The Laundry administration did not respond to requests for comment.)
The impact of the law occurred in the Criminal District Court in Orleans in late August. The District Attorney’s Office told Judge Robin Pittman that the new law prevented Grey from exempting the missed deadline, resulting in the failure to mediate the transaction. Pittman set up a new hearing on October 30th. There, he decides that Gray’s case has requested that he be reconsidered his sentence.
“When you’re sent to prison for life, they’ll send you here to die,” Gray told me through his lawyer. “45 years later, I’m not as close to my freedom as I went to this place.”
The unconstitutional “Jim Crow ju-de-elect” sent him to prison for the rest of his life. The new law aims to keep him there.
