From about 2004 through January 2013, Corvain Cooper took part in a drug conspiracy that trafficked marijuana from California to the Charlotte area.[1] He was charged with conspiracy to distribute and to possess with intent to distribute at least 1,000 kilograms of marijuana, plus money laundering conspiracy and structuring bank transactions to avoid IRS reporting rules.[1] On 18 October 2013 a jury convicted him on all charges after a three-day trial, alongside co-defendants Evelyn LaChapelle and Natalia Wade.[1]
Because of two prior California drug felonies, the federal three-strikes law left the judge no choice: on 18 June 2014 Cooper was sentenced in the Western District of North Carolina at Charlotte to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the non-violent marijuana crime.[1] The Fourth Circuit upheld the sentence in 2015 and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and later bids failed even after California’s Proposition 47 cut his priors to misdemeanours and Proposition 64 legalised adult-use cannabis.[1]
A life rebuilt, then taken
Cooper had been apprehended on 28 January 2013 on the strength of a former associate’s account of a 2009 venture, after he had left the trade, opened a clothing store and was raising two daughters.[2] His lawyer’s clemency petition gathered more than 150,000 signatures, a 2016 plea to President Obama was denied, and finally President Trump commuted the life sentence on 20 January 2021 after Cooper had served about eight years.[1][2]
