Friends, This petition began on August 1, and it has been a learning experience for me. Perhaps the most naïve thought I had then was that we would have the pardon by now. I had thought that the injustice would be so obvious and the solution so easy that all we would need would be one big public outcry and Mike Pence would do something that could truly be done in less than a minute. Some of the early reporting on Keith Cooper’s case indicated that the pardon was “still under consideration.” It’s clear now that that has never been true, but if it were, it would take no one more than ten minutes to figure out the basic evidence in support of Cooper’s pardon—the DNA, the recanted victim testimony, the letter from the original prosecutor calling for the pardon. The fact is, Mike Pence isn’t pardoning Keith Cooper because he doesn’t want to, and there is no legal obligation for him to do so. Pence’s obligation is purely moral, but his moral sensibility is seriously warped: He “pardons” Donald Trump for his obscenity, dishonesty, past housing discrimination, not paying his contractors, and Trump University, but he does not pardon an innocent man. Governor Pence, what really would Jesus do? He may never have to answer that question. He may never be directly asked it. I have noticed something recently: Mike Pence has never said one public word about Keith Cooper. EVERY communication we have had about Keith Cooper has come through surrogates—spokespersons, the operators of his phone bank, and his legal counsel in the public September 20th letter. Some of that has been unpleasant. Look below at the top comment to this petition, from Nicole Slayden. She is Keith Cooper’s wife, and Pence’s representative told her that because Cooper is out of prison, they should just go on with life. Then there is Pence’s spokesman Matt Lloyd, who recently got into a Twitter battle defending Pence’s refusal to pardon Cooper. No governor has a more supercilious spokesman. If you want to have some light fun today, tweet some articles about Keith Cooper’s case to @MatthewLloyd. He deserves them. Except for his surrogates, Pence has had no public defenders of note for his refusal to pardon Keith Cooper. No editorials, no talk radio hosts, no Republican candidates have defended Pence for refusing to pardon Cooper. (To date, not even Curtis Hill has defended Pence’s refusal to pardon Cooper. Nor has Pence’s choice to be Indiana’s next governor, Eric Holcomb.) “Keith Cooper” has so far trended twice on Facebook with tens of thousands of postings. The NowThis video on Keith Cooper’s pardon has been viewed 3.6 million times. The case has been covered by every major newspaper in Indiana and Chicago, and it has had national coverage from BuzzFeed, the Atlanta Black Star, the Columbus Dispatch, Raw Story, and the Washington Post. Roland Martin had a ten minute segment on his television show, and there have been several local Indiana stations reporting on the story. And this petition has just short of 111,000 signatures. So millions of people have had some awareness and interest in Keith Cooper, and yet no one has directly, one-on-one, called Mike Pence to account for refusing to pardon him. Why is that? How has this story failed to become part of the national discussion? If it were to do so, I think the story would so hound Pence that he would have to reconsider his inaction. It should also so hound Eric Holcomb that he would pledge to pardon Keith Cooper if he is elected. We are three months away from the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the injustices done to Keith Cooper, which all began with his arrest in January 1997. Every single day that Governor Pence refuses to pardon Keith Cooper is another additional day of the injustice of his being identified as a convicted felon. Governor Pence did not start this injustice, but he personally continues it, and he personally should be called out for it. One of our earliest strategies had been trying to get press attention to Keith Cooper’s case. It was on the day that the Indianapolis Star reported that we would be targeting Curtis Hill that Pence’s legal counsel released his letter. It requires Cooper’s lawyer to jump through the additional and unnecessary (for a pardon) hoop of seeking a retrial. This prolongs the injustice and is not the result we wanted, but as Matthew Lloyd tweeted on October 10, the letter was “to communicate with concerned public.” To the degree that we have gotten any response at all, this was some progress, but Pence has still never said a word about Keith Cooper’s case. One may wonder if he know Cooper’s name. (https://twitter.com/MatthewLloyd/status/785600330218242048) We have always needed for this effort to become truly nationalized, to the point where Pence cannot evade the questions. Without that degree of awareness, Pence is not being held accountable for his refusal to pardon Keith Cooper. We have tried to get that awareness. On August 18, we made a collective attempt to get the New York Daily News reporter and Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King on board with our effort, and the result was that we crashed his email account. Since then, I have tried several times to get some reporting from him, but without success. What I do not get is why this story doesn’t get to the level of attention that it would cause Pence unavoidable attention. He is directly, personally, involved in an injustice affecting an African American man. He is running to be the vice president of the United States. He has stated his disbelief in the systemic racism affecting the American criminal justice system. With reference to his Christian beliefs, he has forgiven Donald Trump’s shortcomings while refusing to pardon Cooper. How is all of this not causing outrage at the level of national editorial boards and confrontational questioning at Pence’s public and television appearances?!? My purpose here is not to call out Shaun King particularly. We have reached out to Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton, the Congressional Black Caucus, debate moderator Elaine Quijano, Charles Blow of the New York Times, Gene Demby and Code Switch at NPR, Sojourners, Rachel Maddow, Color of Change, MoveOn.org, Huffington Post . . . shall I go on with a complete list? So far, we have had only silence from all of them, so at least we know that we have reached Shaun King. What must we do to get to the level of attention for a national awareness of Pence’s injustice? I am grateful to the reporters and editorial writers who have come along with us so far, but we are not where we need to be yet. And I don’t know how to get there. It’s a random choice, but I am going to ask everyone who reads this update to do one thing (besides harassing Matt Lloyd on twitter): Email the New York Times newsroom at news-tips@nytimes.com Include a link to this update and/or the petition and ask them in your own words to please cover this story. You may contact anyone else you want, but please, in particular, concentrate today on the New York Times. I am fairly confident we won’t crash their email system, and if several hundred or thousands of us contact the Times, we, maybe, will get a response. At least, I hope so. Thank you for signing this petition and for your help in this effort. Jack Heller