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.

Alabama’s Plan to Execute Prisoners With Nitrogen Gas Is Immoral

Has the Texas Lawyer’s Creed Gone to Seed? An Exploration of Professional Ethics and the Death Penalty

Stopping Alabama’s Addiction to Torture

Animal Passion, Alabama Death Sentences, and HB 14

Biden’s Death Penalty Inaction Is Unacceptable

Tattoo in the Tenderloin: A San Francisco Sketch

Advancing Parole Board Reform in Alabama

Biden’s Betrayal of D.C.’s Black Youth

Malcolm X Would Call Biden a ‘Pretender Public Defender’

The Cow-Patty Stench of Texas’s Death Penalty

Open Letter to the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles on Chris Revis

Santa Davis and the “Stalag 17” Riddim

A Kingston Reasoning with Legendary Guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith (The Interview: Part 2)

America is Burning

U.S. Dishonors Navajo with Death Penalty  

A Kingston Reasoning with Legendary Guitarist Earl “Chinna” Smith

Covid-19 Exposes the Death Penalty’s Selfishness 

“The Soul Syndicate members dem, dem are all icons”: an Interview with Tony Chin

“Just Mercy” and Justice Don’t Exist in Alabama

Spreading Righteousness Across the World: an Interview With Julian Marley

A Historic Conversation with Legendary Drummer Santa Davis

Hey Los Angeles: More Public Restrooms, Please!

Another Death Penalty Horror: Stark Disparities in Media and Activist Attention

Sick and Shrouded in Secrecy: Alabama’s Contract to Gas Humans to Death

Talking with The Mighty Diamonds: “Harmony Can Never Go Out of Style”

Scientist vs. Cooper: The Interview, Round 3 

Tony Chin’s Tuff Gong Business

Hempress Sativa: “Rastafari Should be Protected”

Judge Marks and Mass Incarceration in the Middle District of Alabama

General Jah Mikey: “I Just Love That Microphone, Man”

Tony Chin’s Unstoppable, Historic Career in Music

Abolishing the Death Penalty Requires Morality

“Wheel! Of! Fortune!” (A Vegas Story)

The Fullness of Half Pint

Imbibe Culture and Consciousness with Cocoa Tea (The Interview)

Ska King Derrick Morgan Holds Court in L.A.

My Unforgettable College Stabbings

“How Do You Fight the Devil With a Lawyer?” an Interview with Reggae Legend Max Romeo:

Julius Jones’s Hail Mary to Avoid a 21st-Century-Style Lynching

“I’m a Nine-Star General Now”: an Interview with Black Uhuru’s Duckie Simpson

10 Minutes with Superstar Drummer Sly Dunbar

Why Twitter Brings Out My Worst Self (and perhaps yours)

Keith Tharpe and the Death Penalty’s Racist Roots  

Supreme Court Screw-Up Sullies U.S. Constitution 

Scientist vs. Cooper: The Interview, Round 2 

Alabama Executions: Strictly a Christian Affair

Scientist v. Cooper: the Interview (Round 1) 

When Will Journalism Grapple With the Ethics of Interviewing Mentally Ill Arrestees?

The Prospective Gassing of Human Beings in Alabama is an Abomination 

Raising Consciousness with Reggae and Rastafari: an Interview with Raging Fyah