Death Penalty
Ex-Con Clerk for Stephen Bright Pleads Guilty to Stealing His Boss’s Identity
Posted Sep 5, 2008, 08:00 am CDT
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Lawyer Stephen Bright, president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, had told officials he wanted to help an ex-con get his life on track when he hired Shareef Cousin as a law clerk. But Cousin, a former death-row inmate, didn’t return the favor.
Atlanta prosecutors say Cousin obtained credit cards using Bright’s identity and ran up $42,000 in charges. Cousin pleaded guilty yesterday to charges of identity and credit card fraud and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, report the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Prosecutors expect he will only have to serve three years of the sentence with good behavior.
Cousin was only 16 when he was convicted of the 1995 murder of a man outside a New Orleans restaurant. His conviction was overturned because prosecutors had used hearsay evidence in closing arguments. A prosecutor in the case was later suspended for withholding exculpatory evidence in the case.
Prosecutors decided not to retry Cousin because he was already serving a 20-year prison term for armed robbery.
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