Was NFL Star Lawrence Phillips A Victim Of A Racist Murder In Jail?

Former NFL running back Lawrence Phillips was found unconscious and unresponsive in his cell at Kern Valley State Prison on January 13. Phillips was rushed to hospital from the prison but was pronounced dead on arrival. Phillips death was initially regarded as suicide but it seems that doubt is now being cast on that claim. Lawyers for Phillips’ estate are calling for an investigation after claims were made that Phillips suicide note was not in his handwriting.

Phillips played in the National Football League for the St. Louis Rams, Miami Dolphins, and San Francisco 49ers from 1996 through 1999. Phillips football career was overshadowed by his inability to stay out of trouble off the field. Phillips had been arrested on charges of assault and domestic violence in the past and had been serving a seven-year term for felony assault with a deadly weapon. Phillips was set to serve an additional 25 years once that sentence elapsed for domestic assault on his girlfriend.

According to ESPN, Phillips was due to stand trial for the murder of Damion Soward. Soward was Phillips cellmate and he was found unresponsive in their shared cell last April. Soward had been strangled to death and Phillips was charged with his murder last September.

At the time of his death, Phillips was in segregation and may have faced the death penalty as a result of his violent history. Prisoners in solitary confinement are checked by prison staff every 30 minutes.

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— DoughBoiTheOne (@doeboi529) January 22, 2016

According to TMZ Sport Phillips’ family and his attorney believe that the suicide note found on Phillips body was not in his handwriting. The Phillips family have never accepted that Phillips took his own life and the content of the suicide note cast further doubt on the apparent suicide.

Apparently the note was found hidden in Phillips sock when the former NFL player was examined by the coroner.

According to USA Today, Phillips’ mother and two attorneys, Jesse Whitten and Clayton Campbell, are among those who have examined the note and found it suspicious. All say that the handwriting on the note did not match the handwriting in letters they received from Phillips in connection with his murder charge.

Whitten and Campbell said the apparent suicide note had writing on both sides of the paper. Campbell said that one side of Phillips note appeared to be a suicide note whilst Whitten said the other contained a racist comment.

One side “said, ‘Did you hear the one about the football player who hung himself from the TV mount in his cell?’ and where it said football player, it looked like somebody after the fact put the letter ‘X’ before ‘football,’ so it said ‘X-football player.'”

Whitten described the other side as containing a quote or racist joke.

“It was something like, ‘What’s the black person do?’ And it ended with like, ‘They should just die.’ “It was kind of dark, but it could have pertained to the attitude of how he was being treated in prison.”

NBC Sports reports that lawyers and the Phillips family are now seeking an independent investigation into Lawrence Phillips’ death.

Lawrence Phillips' brain to be donated to CTE research https://t.co/wVLDhrUwpn pic.twitter.com/fzGUdETNOt

— B/R Gridiron (@brgridiron) January 16, 2016

Dana Simas, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said that Phillips was being held in single-cell, segregated housing. She said the inmates in segregated housing are checked every 30 minutes, only corrections officers have access to the cells and “to open a cell would come from control tower in the housing unit.”

Phillips lawyers have said that they believe Lawrence had been targeted by Crips gang members inside the prison in the months before his death. If Phillips was murdered in his segregation cell that only corrections officers have access to, then that would imply that corrections officers were at least complicit in Lawrence’s murder, something that would once again throw a negative light on race relations within the U.S. criminal justice system.

[Photo by Staci McKee/AP]