Cooper v. State

Given the evidence of the defendant's malice, the defendant could not show harm from his counsel's failure to investigate and present evidence of the victim's past criminal history.

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Shermont Monte Cooper appeals his conviction for the malice murder of Kenneth Ellis.1 For the reasons that follow, we affirm. Construed to support the verdict, the evidence showed that Cooper’s mother and Ellis had a romantic, but tumultuous, relationship. The day of the shooting, Cooper’s mother paged him several times; he called her back three or four times and she asked for his help to remove her from Ellis’s home.2 While Cooper was at the home of Catrice Watkins, Cooper’s mother asked Watkins over the telephone to give Cooper a pistol so that he could help her leave Ellis’s house as Ellis had beaten her. Cooper overcame Watkins’s reluctance to do so by saying that he would not use the weapon. Watkins did not give it to Cooper, but to his friend Caver3 ; the pistol was not loaded at that time. Cooper, Caver, and Watkins went to Ellis’s house in a car driven by another friend, King. When they arrived, Cooper had the now-loaded pistol in his pocket, and walked into the house, followed by Caver and Watkins; King remained in the car. Ellis said something derogatory about Watkins, and Caver and Ellis had a brief struggle; Ellis was pushed to a seating position on the sofa and stated: “I’m going to get you.”4 Cooper shot Ellis in the torso from a distance of approximately five feet, then shot him again in the torso. After a short delay, having approached to within arm’s length of Ellis, Cooper shot him a third time, in the mouth, with the pistol’s muzzle an inch or two away.

Cooper and his mother left Ellis’s home and joined Watkins and Caver outside; they had left before the third shot. The five drove away and stopped for some cigarettes; Cooper returned the pistol to Watkins. Cooper’s mother laughed as though the occurrence was “a big joke” and said: “You shot him, Shermont.” Cooper told a police investigator that Ellis “got in my face so I just shot him.”

Cooper v. State

Given the evidence of the defendant's malice, the defendant could not show harm from his counsel's failure to investigate and present evidence of the victim's past criminal history.

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