Author

Stephen Cooper

Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. He writes full-time and lives in Woodland Hills, California. Follow him on Twitter @SteveCooperEsq

The prospective gassing of human beings in Alabama is an abomination

When, in October 2016, I wrote “[d]eath row inmates in Alabama are human guinea pigs” because the state’s capital punishment regime — specifically its barbaric, often bungled lethal injection protocol — is already so dark, so depraved, so outrageously cloaked in lies and officious secrecy, I never could have predicted the situation could get worse. But it … Continued

Stephen Cooper

December 3, 2018

Opinion

British waffling on death penalty will have global repercussions

For over half a century, abolitionists have wielded the United Kingdom’s conscientious, consistent, civilized opposition to capital punishment – in all cases and all circumstances – as a powerful argument to end the ignominious practice in their own countries and states, too. This may be about to end. In a fiery column for The Independent with a blistering chyron-style … Continued

Stephen Cooper

July 26, 2018

Opinion

Ducking and dodging death penalty accountability in Alabama

Continuing its odious tradition of ducking and dodging transparency and accountability in how the state puts its prisoners to death – (purportedly) in the name of the people – the beleaguered Alabama Office of the Attorney General has asserted in a new convoluted, churlish, and utterly cockamamie federal court filing: “[W]hile this Court found that there … Continued

Stephen Cooper

June 8, 2018

Opinion

Vengeful Alabama to kill 83-year-old man

Barring intervention by courts or its governor, Alabama will kill an 83-year-old man on April 19; long-incarcerated for the 1989 mail-bomb killings of United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance and civil rights attorney Robert E. Robinson, Walter Moody, Jr.’s wizened, withered body, will, three decades after his crimes, be … Continued

Stephen Cooper

April 16, 2018

Opinion

Battling the death penalty with Baldwin

If you’re thirsting to understand our increasingly cold, jaundiced, at times carcinogenic society, James Baldwin’s singular insight about America and his dizzying, divine command of the English language are as refreshing as an icy elixir on the hottest day in hell. Moreover, for death penalty abolitionists, Baldwin’s writing is particularly poignant in the wake of: … Continued

Stephen Cooper

March 22, 2018

Opinion

Newsflash: Alabama has been torturing poor people for a long time

By Stephen Cooper Former D.C. Public Defender If you have a high-profile lawyer with powerful friends and you’re tortured while on death row in Alabama, everyone in the nation not only knows about it—overwhelmingly, especially in liberal, progressive, civilized circles of thought and news—they’re righteously appalled. But poor death row inmates in Alabama (which overwhelmingly … Continued

Stephen Cooper

March 6, 2018

Opinion

Call lethal injection the vile torture it is

By Stephen Cooper Contributed In a New Year’s Eve display of liberal newspaper death penalty abolition harmony – buoyed by the release of the Death Penalty Information Center’s (DPIC) annual report evidencing another year in the long-observable trend of capital punishment’s disuse and disfavor in America – both the Washington Post and New York Times’ … Continued

Stephen Cooper

January 9, 2018

Opinion

When politicians perpetuate the death penalty against the will of the people

By Stephen Cooper and Rory Fleming Progressive Alabamians faced an election night last year that was by turns terrifying and soul-crushing, but also, when it comes to criminal justice reform, vaguely hopeful. While many were unsurprised by Trump’s victory in the presidential contest, there were, nevertheless, several heartening changes in the selection of the state’s powerful … Continued

Stephen Cooper

December 6, 2017

Opinion

Alabama’s Last Execution Was An Atrocity

By Stephen Cooper Alabama Political Reporter The last time Alabama played God, executing death row inmate Christopher Brooks by lethal injection on January 21, 2016, The Montgomery Advertiser and al.com published a column of mine in which I wrote: “Initial reports out of Alabama are that the execution went as ‘smoothly’ as killing a reasonably … Continued

Stephen Cooper

October 28, 2016

Opinion

Alabama’s Holman Prison is Hell on Earth

By Stephen Cooper Since opening its doors on December 15, 1969, Alabama’s William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, has been a bastion of violence, fear, pain and baleful human suffering. Built on a shoestring budget of five million dollars during Governor Lurleen Wallace’s administration, it took just five years for Holman prison’s perpetually … Continued

Stephen Cooper

October 24, 2016