Friends, I want to address some of the questions you have had since the pardon and suggest a few ideas for activism if you are interested. THE EXONERATION PROJECT Keith Cooper has been represented since 2008 by Elliot Slosar and the Exoneration Project, a free, non-profit legal clinic sponsored by the University of Chicago Law School. They have a “take action” page of things you can do to assist exonerees. And if you were to scroll down to the bottom of this page, you would find a mailing address where you could send a generous check: https://www.exonerationproject.org/take-action/. THE BATTERY CONVICTION Most of you have noticed that Keith’s pardon has been a little short of a full pardon. Governor Holcomb pardoned Keith for the robbery conviction, but not his battery conviction. When the Exoneration Project sought the support of the Indiana Parole Board for a pardon, they initially appealed only on the basis of Keith’s actual innocence of the robbery charge. The parole board itself suggested the inclusion of the battery charge in the pardon petition, so persuaded were they that Keith should be fully pardoned of all charges. While Keith was in Elkhart County jail, another inmate made a sexual advance on him, and Keith punched him in the face, leaving him with a broken jaw. Keith admits to hitting the other inmate. His conviction for this battery has been reported in the press; I first heard about it from a December 2015 Indianapolis Star report. I have linked that story more than once in the past six months, but I have never discussed the battery conviction because, frankly, I did not want to give the trolls opposed to the pardon something that they could do their own work to find. On the street, preventing a sexual assault on oneself could be an adequate defense against a battery charge for punching another guy in the face. Within incarceration, there is rarely to never a self-defense defense for any act of violence. While I would agree with those who would say that this battery wouldn’t have happened if Keith hadn’t been wrongly incarcerated, one may imagine other circumstances when this argument wouldn’t apply. Keith’s and his lawyer Elliot’s gratitude to Governor Holcomb has not been dimmed on the pardon they got. They are in a good position to petition the Elkhart County court to address the battery conviction, and we are not now being asked to advocate further for a pardon on the battery as the remaining litigation takes its course. INDIANA HOUSE BILL 1473 I have mentioned Indiana House Bill 1473 before, a special bill proposed by state representative Greg Porter of Indianapolis to have the state compensate Keith $350,000 for his wrongful incarceration. The initial response here has been that the amount is inadequate for the years Keith spent in prison. But this compensation would not prevent Keith’s lawyer from pursuing other avenues for additional compensation. If you want to take an additional step to assist Keith, as recommended by his attorney, please consider writing a state legislator in support of House Bill 1473. Indiana has 100 state representatives, and it would be too much for me to give a link to each one’s email. Furthermore, using the links may prevent non-Indiana residents from joining this effort. Instead, anyone may reach any representative through your own email account. Look up the Indiana state representatives you want to contact from this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_House_of_Representatives. Each representative’s address is H+her or his district number@iga.in.gov. Thus, Linda Lawson’s email address is H1@iga.in.gov. Earl Harris’s address is H2@iga.in.gov. As I live in Huntington, Indiana, Dan Leonard’s email address is H50@iga.in.gov. Both Greg Porter and David Ober have advocated for Keith’s pardon; if you’d like to send them a thank-you note, they are at H96@iga.in.gov and H82@iga.in.gov. I think you can see now how this works. If House Bill 1473 were to pass the state house and senate, I think Governor Holcomb would sign the bill. So please consider supporting this first step for Keith’s compensation. VICKI BECKER Indiana’s new Attorney General Curtis Hill has had the good sense to keep his comments to a minimum, and true to form, Mike Pence himself has had nothing to say about Keith’s pardon. Hill’s successor in the Elkhart County Prosecutor’s Office, Vicki Becker, just could not contain her displeasure. As reported in the Elkhart Truth (http://www.elkharttruth.com/hometown/elkhart/keith-cooper-receives-pardon-years-after-elkhart-armed-robbery-conviction/article_146d1560-6fe1-550c-9dbd-6009e3b8ce64.html): "Current Elkhart County Prosecutor Vicki Becker said later Thursday that she disagreed with the governor's decision based on her knowledge of the case against Cooper, and that she hopes Holcomb reviewed all the evidence before making his decision rather than relying on the opinion of others. ‘My review of the evidence does not support the opinion that he should be pardoned,’ she said. ‘So far, Cooper has kept us from seeing the rest of the story. We never got the chance to hash out all the evidence in an adversarial setting, and it's a problem that a lot of people seem to think they know the rest of the story when it's clear that they do not.’" I am not sure how a person can say simultaneously that Keith has kept her from seeing the rest of the story and that she knows a “rest of the story” that we don’t know. If you want to let her know that you don’t think this makes any sense, here’s her email link (though with Hill’s picture still on the page): http://www.elkhartcountyprosecutor.com/contact-us/submit-commenttip. The next update will likely be links to the best coverage since Thursday. The last update will be concluding comments from Keith’s lawyer, from Caleb Walden, who ran the Pardon Keith Cooper Facebook page, and from me. And we added four new signatures to the petition today. Cheers, Jack Heller