DOVER, Del. (AP) - Delaware’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from a career criminal serving 75 years in prison on drug and weapons charges.
The court on Wednesday found no merit to Maurice Cooper’s claims that a trial judge erred in not suppressing evidence obtained through search warrants executed on his home, a Wilmington business address, and his Instagram account. Cooper, 39, also argued that his lengthy sentence amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
Cooper, whose previous felonies included murder and robbery, was convicted last year of heroin dealing, aggravated possession of heroin, and multiple counts of possession of a firearm during commission of a felony, possession of a firearm by a person prohibited and possession of ammunition by a person prohibited.
The investigation that led to Cooper’s 2018 arrest began four years earlier when police received information about a drug ring operating out of the Riverside Housing Projects.
Last month, a federal grand jury returned a new indictment against Cooper and four other men accused of a series of violent crimes including kidnapping and killing a Delaware woman and shooting a 6-year-old boy in the head.
Cooper is charged in that case with conspiracy, stalking, kidnapping and use of a firearm during a crime of violence.
Authorities have said the federal charges stem from a feud dating to at least 2014 between one of Cooper’s codefendants and Markevis Stanford. The feud escalated into violence and attempted shootings involving both men and their associates. It culminated in the kidnapping and killing of Stanford’s girlfriend, 28-year-old Keyonna Perkins, in June 2017 and the shooting of 6-year-old JaShown Banner that same day.
Prosecutors say a bullet struck the boy in the head while one of Cooper’s associates was shooting at Stanford. Banner was left paralyzed and brain damaged. Perkins was found shot to death in Elkton, Maryland, after being kidnapped and thrown into the trunk of a car in Delaware.
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