Indiana's New Governor Pardoned A Wrongfully Convicted Man After Mike Pence Delayed It For Years

The Indiana parole board unanimously recommended that then-Gov. Mike Pence pardon Keith Cooper, but he failed to act. Now, the new Indiana governor has made Cooper the first man in the state’s history to be pardoned based on a claim of innocence.

posted on Feb. 9, 2017, at 11:58 a.m.

Mike Hayes
BuzzFeed News Reporter

The newly-elected Governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb has pardoned a wrongfully convicted man whose petition for exoneration was delayed for more than two years by his predecessor, Vice President Mike Pence.

After serving 10 years of a 40-year prison sentence for armed robbery and attempted murder, Keith Cooper was freed when eyewitnesses recanted their testimony against him, new DNA evidence showed he wasn’t at the scene of the crime, and a jailhouse informant admitted that he lied to investigators.

Five years later, Cooper’s pardon petition was presented to the state parole board, who found unanimously that he should be pardoned and have the two serious felony charges wiped from his record.

But after the parole board delivered its recommendation on Cooper to the governor’s office, Pence sat on the pardon for more than two years — claiming that Cooper had not exhausted all other judicial remedies with the courts.

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