Bradley Cooper, the former Johnson County prosecutor, has had his law license suspended for four years by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Cooper avoided jail time with a plea agreement in 2019 after brutally beating and confining his girlfriend. He also stole her cell phone and pretended to be her in messages, then conducted media interviews where he accused her of attacking him.
The attack happened in March 2019. He agreed to plea guilty the following month and was sentenced in June 2019.
We read the copy of the Supreme Courts decision to not permanently disbar Cooper from the practice of law. The decision reads like typical bullshit reasoning to avoid fully holding a former public official accountable for his actions. This part is particularly interesting as to why the court decided to show some undeserved leniency to Cooper:
“Respondent has taken meaningful and substantial steps to address his alcohol use disorder and anger management issues. Respondent also has accepted responsibility in both his criminal and disciplinary proceedings for his deplorable acts, he has been compliant with the terms of his criminal probation, and his testimony at the final hearing reflects a degree of insight and remorse that distinguishes him, however modestly, from some other similarly-situated respondents.”
“ While these after-the-fact measures do not mitigate the misconduct itself, which was reprehensible, they do point to Respondent’s potential for rehabilitation and narrowly persuade us that the door to Respondent’s legal career should not be permanently and irrevocably closed.”
Or in plain English the court is saying: “Yes Cooper is a scumbag, who we should throw the book at. But because he hasn’t beaten or confined anyone else forcibly in two years, and because he was a county prosecutor we will invent a totally bullshit reason to let him possibly practice law again. Seeing as how he is part of the good old boy network.”
As Gary Welsh used to say: “Sometimes justice works in mysterious ways.”
