James Willie ​“Bo” Cochran, who spent 19 years on Alabama​’s death row for a killing he did not com­mit, has died at age 73. His lawyer, Richard Jaffe, said that Mr. Cochran and his case ​“are rea­sons why the death penal­ty does not work. He did not kill any­one, was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and found inno­cent because he had lawyers that took up his cause.” Mr. Cochran, who is black, was found guilty and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of a white gro­cery store clerk. His jury, which was com­posed of 11 white and one black jurors, had been told that the vic­tim had fol­lowed Cochran out of the store after a rob­bery and that, after police had arrived on the scene, Cochran shot the clerk, leav­ing his body under a trail­er in a near­by mobile home. There were no eye­wit­ness­es to the actu­al mur­der. Cochran was arrest­ed near­by with a gun that had not been fired. Cochran won a new tri­al after prov­ing that pros­e­cu­tors uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly removed black jurors from his case on the basis of race. He pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny from for­mer pros­e­cu­tors that the DA’s office had a pat­tern of strik­ing black jurors, had a phi­los­o­phy that prospec­tive black jurors ​“were anti-police, anti-estab­lish­ment and should not be left on juries, if at all pos­si­ble,” and that race was a fac­tor in these strikes, ​“par­tic­u­lar­ly where you had a white vic­tim and a black defen­dant․” On retri­al, Cochran was acquit­ted after pre­sent­ing evi­dence that the vic­tim had been acci­den­tal­ly shot by two offi­cers respond­ing to the rob­bery, who then pan­icked and moved the body under the trail­er, where it was dis­cov­ered by oth­er offi­cers. After Cochran’s acquit­tal, he and Jaffe made fre­quent appear­ances to talk about the case. Jaffe described Cochran as ​“nev­er bit­ter, always grate­ful.” He called Cochran’s life ​“a sto­ry of redemp­tion and for­give­ness,” exem­pli­fy­ing the les­son that ​“We can be for­giv­ing, no mat­ter what hap­pens to us. He tru­ly touched a lot of lives. We loved Bo. He’ll be missed.” 

Cochran does not appear on DPIC’s exon­er­a­tion list, even though he was inno­cent of the mur­der, because of his admit­ted involve­ment in the rob­bery. Inclusion on the DPIC list requires exon­er­a­tion of all charges.

(G. Garrison, ​“Man freed from Death Row dies; taught les­son of for­give­ness, lawyer says,” AL​.com (The Birmingham News), July 15, 2016.) Read the deci­sion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, Cochran v. Herring, grant­i­ng Mr. Cochran a new tri­al here. See Partial Innocence.

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