page_title: Roy Cooper
section_title: Tenure
hierarchical_section_title: Roy Cooper / North Carolina Attorney General / Tenure
caption_attribution_description: English: http://www.pope.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123137797 Caption: "North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper prepares to speak to Pope Airmen to kickoff Military Saves Week here Feb. 23. (U.S. Air Force Photo by Airman 1st Class Mindy Bloem)"
context_page_description: Roy Asberry Cooper III is an American politician and attorney who has served as the 75th Governor of North Carolina since January 1, 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Cooper had previously served as the elected Attorney General of North Carolina since 2001. Prior to that, he served in the General Assembly in both the North Carolina House of Representatives and the North Carolina Senate.
  He defeated Republican incumbent Pat McCrory for the governorship in a close race in the 2016 election. On December 5, McCrory conceded the election, making Cooper the first challenger since 1850 to defeat a sitting North Carolina Governor. Cooper took office on January 1, 2017. The Republican-dominated legislature passed bills in a special session before he took office to reduce the power of the governor's office. The legislature has overridden several of his vetoes of legislation.
context_section_description: In January 2007, when Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong asked to be recused from dealing with the Duke lacrosse case, Attorney General Cooper's office assumed responsibility for the case. On April 11, 2007, Cooper dismissed the case against the Duke lacrosse team players, declaring them "innocent" and victims of a "tragic rush to accuse". The decision won him bipartisan praise. Two days after the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, he created the Campus Safety Task Force to analyze school shootings and make policy recommendations to help the government prevent and respond to them. The committee delivered its report to him in January 2008. Following the release of the task force's findings, Cooper assisted members of the North Carolina General Assembly in passing a law which required court clerks to record involuntary commitments in a national gun permit database.
  Following a decision in 2010 by a three-judge panel to exonerate Gregory Taylor, who had served nearly seventeen years for the first-degree murder of Jaquetta Thomas, Cooper ordered an audit after it was learned that officials at the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation forensic lab had withheld information. This suppression of evidence had contributed to Taylor's conviction for murder. The audit was released in 2010; it found that it had been common practice for two decades for a select group of agents within the State Bureau of Investigation to withhold information. In addition, they did not keep up with scientific standards and the latest tests. The two investigators, Chris Swecker and Micheal Fox, cited almost 230 cases that were tainted by these actions. Three persons convicted in such cases had been executed; 80 defendants convicted were still serving time in prison. A massive state effort was undertaken to follow up on their cases.
  Cooper argued his first case before the United States Supreme Court, J. D. B. v. North Carolina, in 2011, a case related to Miranda rights in juvenile cases. The Court ruled 5–4 against North Carolina.
caption: Attorney General Roy Cooper in 2009
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