BAY MINETTE – A Bay Minette woman convicted of murdering her husband in what the prosecutor called “an execution,” in 1994 will continue serving a life sentence in prison after being denied parole Tuesday.
Sheila Moorer Cooper was denied parole, according to a statement by from the Alabama Bureau of Pardons and Paroles.
She was convicted of murder in Baldwin County Circuit Court in February 1994 in connectin with the death of her husband, John Lewis Cooper, 32.
David Whetstone, Baldwin County district attorney from 1984 to 2006, prosecuted the case against Sheila Cooper. On Wednesday, he referred to the shooting as “an execution-style murder.”
“She not only shot him four times in the chest, when he fell down, she shot him execution style in the back of the head,” Whetstone said Wednesday. “It was a particularly vicious murder. It wasn't a heat of passion, one shot, I'm sorry. It's ‘I'm going to make sure you're dead, dead, dead’”.
Whetstone said Cooper plotted the murder. “She had tried to get some of her friends to help kill him and, of course, they didn't want any part of it,” he said. “If this matter had been in a situation where I could have changed capital, I would have charged capital, but I don't think the elements were sufficient to charge the death penalty under our law. There have to be other aggravating circumstances.”
A sheriff’s deputy testified he found the body in Cooper’s back yard, covered by a tent cloth with a garbage bag wrapped around the head.
Cooper was arrested in a restaurant parking lot after the shooting.
She is currently being held in the Birmingham Community Work Center, according to Alabama Department of Corrections reports.
