The Indiana Supreme Court decided Wednesday former Johnson County prosecutor Brad Cooper will not be allowed to practice law for at least another four years.
Cooper, whose law license has been suspended for nearly two years due to his multiple felony convictions, will remain suspended until at least Feb. 2, 2025, when he will have to petition the court to reinstate his law license, if he can prove his fitness to practice law again, according to the ruling filed Wednesday in the Indiana Supreme Court.
Proving that will be difficult given the severity of his misconduct, the ruling says.
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The disciplinary case stems from a March 2019 incident at Cooper’s Trafalgar home while he was county prosecutor. During the incident, he dragged his then-fiancee out of her car, battered and confined her, until she managed to escape and run to a neighbor’s house where 9-1-1 was called.
The state supreme court initially suspended Cooper’s license to practice law in Indiana two weeks after he was sentenced. He had pleaded guilty to felony charges of criminal confinement, identity deception and official misconduct, and a misdemeanor charge of domestic battery relating to the incident. He hasn’t practiced law since Aug. 2, 2019.
Following a July 2020 hearing, Jackson County Superior Court 1 Judge AmyMarie Travis, the appointed hearing officer in the disciplinary case against Cooper, recommended to the state supreme court Cooper be disbarred due to the fact that he is a repeat offender, and prior misconduct also involved dishonesty and a similar lack of control over his impulses and anger. Dishonest and felonious conduct committed by elected prosecutors in past cases resulted in disbarment or resignation, court documents said.
The court shared Travis’s concern that Cooper’s prior discipline did not prompt him to address his alcohol and anger problems, considering they predated his latest misconduct, according to court documents.
But, the court said, Cooper has “taken meaningful and substantial steps to address his alcohol use disorder and anger management issues.” He accepted responsibility for his actions, has been compliant with the terms of his probation and his testimony at a July hearing “reflects a degree of insight and remorse” that sets him apart from others who acted similarly, court documents said.
“While these after-the-fact measures do not mitigate the misconduct itself, which was reprehensible, they do point to (Cooper’s) potential for rehabilitation and narrowly persuade us that the door to (Cooper’s) legal career should not be permanently and irrevocably closed,” the ruling says.
Cooper had been a licensed attorney in Indiana since October 1993, and was Johnson County prosecutor for a decade, until he was removed from office as required by law due to the felony conviction.
The Indiana Rules of Court say that an attorney licensed in Indiana who is found guilty of a felony or misdemeanor must notify the disciplinary commission and the court can suspend the attorney while considering further disciplinary action. The disciplinary commission is an arm of the state supreme court that is responsible for investigating and prosecuting claims of misconduct against lawyers.
Cooper will remain a convicted felon until at least mid-July, 2023, when he can petition the court to have his felony convictions reduced to misdemeanors, according to court documents.
Travis said Cooper attempted to thwart the efforts of law enforcement officers who investigated the matter, and detailed the many times Cooper received special treatment in the case.
Although he pled guilty to three felonies and a misdemeanor, he immediately received an alternative misdemeanor sentencing for the official misconduct charge. He served no jail time. Rather, he received credit for one day in jail.
“(Cooper) never spent a day in jail for his crimes, notwithstanding the one day of credit time he may have received when he was ‘booked,’” Travis said in her report.
“The fact that (Cooper) has spent no time in jail for his crimes is ironic in light of (him) running an election ad saying that he was ‘proudly over-crowding our prisons’ … Had (Cooper) been an ‘average’ citizen, he would likely have been arrested for the crime … Likely because of his status as the elected prosecutor, he was not arrested. He was treated differently/better than average citizens, thus further eroding trust in the criminal justice system.”
She hoped her decision would reassure both the public and the Bar that the integrity of the profession is intact, court documents said.
At the July hearing, which included two hours of testimony, the defense walked the court through what led to Cooper’s alleged alcohol addiction, and eventually the March 2019 incident, referencing multiple traumatic events in a span of a few years, including the deaths of Cooper’s sister, mother, and chief administrative deputy, as well as his divorce.
The defense asked Cooper to walk the court through his development of an alcohol dependency, and to explain the treatment — both court-ordered and self-sought — after the domestic battery incident last March.
Cooper underwent a detox about 10 days after the incident with the help of his father, a retired neurosurgeon who also testified on his son’s behalf. He sought medical and psychiatric treatment, and was ordered to complete anger management and domestic battery classes, which he has completed most of, he said.
He is also in Alcoholics Anonymous, and had received his token for being one year sober, he said.
Cooper was asked to walk the court through what happened the night of the domestic battery incident.
“Call it what it was, I snapped … I didn’t want her to go,” Cooper said during the hearing. “I used my strength over her strength and forced her back into the house.”
Cooper says what happened that night was sparked by his alcoholism and emotional and physical fatigue.
Travis’s report included testimony from Cooper’s medical doctor, who confirmed a diagnosis of alcohol abuse disorder. Travis said although Cooper’s behavior is connected with alcohol abuse, it does not excuse it.
“Alcohol impairment did not render him incapable of sending texts whilst pretending to be (the victim), locking (the victim’s) cellular telephone to thwart a law enforcement investigation, and making statements to the media,” court documents said.
It wasn’t the first time a disciplinary complaint had been filed against Cooper, and previous misconduct was also detailed in Travis’s report.
Cooper was reported to the disciplinary commission at least twice, and publicly reprimanded once.
In 2017, he was reprimanded by the Indiana Supreme Court for making misleading and inflammatory comments about a judge. The public reprimand was a rare step for the court to take against a sitting prosecutor.
The justices found that he committed professional misconduct when, in 2014, he made comments to the media regarding a northern Indiana judge who decided that convicted murderer Michael Dean Overstreet was not competent to be executed for the death of Kelly Eckart. Under the state’s professional rules of conduct for attorneys, “a lawyer shall not make a statement that the lawyer knows to be false or with reckless disregard as to its truth or falsity concerning the qualifications or integrity of a judge.”
Cooper’s comment that drew the reprimand was made when the judge ruled that Overstreet would no longer face the death penalty. Cooper had said he was angry and suspicious when the case was sent to a distant judge who was not accountable to local residents, and that the idea that “this convicted murdering monster is too sick to be executed is nothing short of outrageous and is an injustice to the victim, her mother, the jury and the hundreds of people who worked to convict this animal.”
In 2011, he was the subject of a complaint and report sent to the Indiana Supreme Court Disciplinary Commission, although no action was taken against him. He had been found drinking in a vehicle being driven by a suspended Franklin police officer, and both men were outside the home of a sheriff’s deputy, looking for a woman that Cooper wanted a relationship with, according to a police report taken at the time.
