Dateline and Experts Question Murder Conviction of Dad, Despite DNA Match with Ex-Con
Corrected: South Carolina prosecutor Kevin Brackett says he has no doubts about the murder convictions he obtained in 2004 against a South Carolina dad and a convicted ex-con.
Police initially charged the father, Billy Wayne Cope, with the murder of his 12-year-old daughter and didn’t drop charges when DNA pointed to a different suspect, McClatchy Newspapers reports. The DNA matched that of an ex-con, James Sanders, accused in four break-ins and assaults in Cope’s neighborhood.
Instead, police advanced a new theory: Cope let Sanders inside his garbage-strewn home and watched or helped Sanders rape and kill the girl. Brackett obtained convictions against both men, relying on Cope’s recanted confession that never mentioned Sanders or anyone else, the story says. Cope previously denied the murder hundreds of times, his lawyers say.
Brackett cites the confession in appellate briefs and says there was no sign of forced entry into Cope’s home, the story says. He also claims Sanders’ other assaults were different, since they involved older victims who weren’t murdered, and there was no need to introduce them into evidence. He supports his case on a website, billywaynecope.com, that includes the trial transcript and other supporting documents.
A Dateline show last year raised questions about the case. Two nationally known lawyers are representing Cope in an appeal that has been pending before the South Carolina Supreme Court for 20 months. They are law professors David Bruck of Washington and Lee University and Steven Drizin of Northwestern. “Red flags are everywhere in the Cope case,” Drizin tells McClatchy.
Story corrected at 1:15 p.m. to correctly state that two well-know lawyers are representing Cope in an appeal.
