Posted
By Thadeus Greenson@ThadeusGreenson
on Thu, Jul 8, 2021 at 2:44 PM
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Mark McKenna
Charmaine Lawson is hugged by supporters at a 2019 vigil for her son, David Josiah Lawson.
Charmaine Lawson still hasn’t cashed the $200,000 check that came as a part of her settlement agreement with the city of Arcata. She says it took her four days to even open the envelope it was mailed in and it has now sat for weeks atop her son’s urn.
Filed in November of 2018, the lawsuit alleged the city and its officials violated Charmaine Lawson’s equal protection rights by inadequately and incompetently investigating the April 15, 2017, stabbing death of her son, 19-year-old David Josiah Lawson, with racism and bias contributing to what the suit described as the city’s “deliberately indifferent” policies and practices related to the case. The settlement agreement — which in addition to the $200,000 payment includes the city making a $25,000 donation to the David Josiah Lawson Memorial Scholarship fund and agreeing to the painting of a memorial mural — was reached in April but announced by the city yesterday, about a week after a federal judge officially dismissed the case.