Merck Chief Executive Officer Kenneth C. Frazier (pic­tured) resigned from the president’s American Manufacturing Council on August 14, say­ing “[a]s CEO of Merck and as a mat­ter of per­son­al con­science, I feel a respon­si­bil­i­ty to take a stand against intol­er­ance and extrem­ism.” In a state­ment post­ed on Merck’s Twitter account, Frazier said: ​“Our coun­try’s strength stems from its diver­si­ty and the con­tri­bu­tions made by men and women of dif­fer­ent faiths, races, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tions and polit­i­cal beliefs. America’s lead­ers must hon­or our fun­da­men­tal val­ues by clear­ly reject­ing expres­sions of hatred, big­otry and group suprema­cy, which run counter to the American ide­al that all peo­ple are cre­at­ed equal.” It was not the first time that Frazier, the only African-American CEO of a major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny, has spo­ken out on mat­ters of social jus­tice. Following his suc­cess­ful pro bono rep­re­sen­ta­tion of James Willie ​“Bo” Cochran, a black, Alabama death-row pris­on­er wrong­ly con­vict­ed of the mur­der of a white gro­cery store man­ag­er, Frazier wrote that the case showed him that ​“there can be no fair and con­sis­tent appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty under the cur­rent sys­tem.” Frazier under­took Cochran’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion while a part­ner at the Philadelphia law firm, Drinker, Biddle & Reath, and remained on the case after join­ing Merck. Cochran won a new tri­al after Frazier and his team showed that, in two pri­or tri­als, the pros­e­cu­tor had sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly removed 31 of the 35 poten­tial black jurors because he believed they were less ​“reli­able” and more like­ly to acquit black defen­dants. Frazier ini­tial­ly doubt­ed Cochran’s procla­ma­tion of inno­cence: wit­ness­es inside the store described the sus­pect as a black man and, as police con­verged on the scene, heard a gun­shot com­ing from a near­by trail­er park, less than one mile from where Cochran was found with a gun and cash. But Frazier dis­cov­ered dur­ing the post-con­vic­tion pro­ceed­ings that there was no phys­i­cal evi­dence against his client, the only bul­let recov­ered near the scene did not match Cochran’s gun, and the fatal bul­let could not be test­ed because police had cut it out of the vic­tim’s body and removed it before deliv­er­ing the body to the med­ical exam­in­er. ​“He was con­vict­ed,” explains Frazier, ​“despite evi­dence sug­gest­ing an acci­den­tal police shoot­ing and cov­er-up.” Even though the state only had cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence against him, Cochran was tried three sep­a­rate times for the killing (the first time, there was a mis­tri­al, and the sec­ond time his con­vic­tion was reversed on appeal). ​“Although some main­tain the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is col­or-blind,” Frazier wrote, ​“the real­i­ty is that race plays a sub­stan­tial role in the judi­cial process.” In Cochran’s retri­al, a jury that Frazier says ​“was not select­ed pri­mar­i­ly on the basis of race” acquit­ted him in less than an hour. 

(M. Terrill, ​“Amid cor­po­rate career, Merck CEO exon­er­at­ed man on death row,” CNBC, Aug. 14, 2017; M. Harper, ​“What You Should Know About Ken Frazier, The CEO Who Just Quit A Trump Advisory Council,” Forbes, Aug. 14, 2017; K. Frazier, ​“Dying for Representation: Promoting Justice Through Pro Bono Participation,” Univ. of Toledo Law Rev., Spring 2004.) See New Voices, Innocence, and Race.

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