Frederica Freyberg:

Governor Tony Evers says political risk or not, he believes in second chances through providing pardons. He has granted hundreds of them since taking office. Earlier this month, he signed an executive order that will speed up the process of getting a pardon in nonviolent cases. “Here & Now” special projects journalist Murv Seymour has this report on one man’s journey to receive a governor’s pardon and its profound impact on his life.

Anthony Cooper:

You have to do more than just say what you’re going to do. You have to actually do it.

Murv Seymour:

Anthony Cooper lives to help others. He coaches former prison inmates about the outside world through the Nehemiah Center Reentry Services program. He also runs an organization called Focused Interruption out of a tiny office on Madison’s south side next to the Neighborhood House Community Center.

Anthony Cooper:

We work on violent crimes throughout our community and where there’s shooting, stabbings.

Murv Seymour:

Focused Interruption looks to holistically reduce trauma from gun violence to the people, family and neighborhoods in Dane County impacted the most.

Anthony Cooper:

Go and work on providing intervention strategies, prevention strategies and also being able to provide support to families in the moment.

Murv Seymour:

In the community, Anthony is a leader. He’s the 2019 recipient of Dane County’s coveted Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award, given to those who serve their community in the spirit of Dr. King.

Anthony Cooper:

Growing up on the north side of Chicago, that was – I think where we lived we had a village. Madison is my village. Because of that, I know how to act as a village. I would never have thought I would be at where I’m at now.

Murv Seymour:

Where he is now comes as a surprise to a lot of people, especially when you consider where he’s been.

Anthony Cooper:

There’s an old saying if I knew what I know now back then, who would I be?

[sirens]

Murv Seymour:

Back then, in the late ’90s, Anthony Cooper was a different man.

Anthony Cooper:

When I think about how I navigated life, there was definitely some things that I wish I could have done different. I was a man-child. Even being a man and age, there were still childlike qualities I had as well. I was a high school dropout. I wasn’t able to provide the way I would have wanted, to provide for my kids. I didn’t see the light. I didn’t see that it was possible to be able to get a functioning job, to be able to have a functioning family. A lot of people don’t know this, but I thought about being a nurse, getting into IT.

[sirens]

I always wanted to be a fireman. That was my ideal job. I would have been the best warehouse worker. I would eventually have moved up to become a supervisor of some sort.

Murv Seymour:

With all of those and more as career options, eventually he took an unexpected route to quick cash.

Anthony Cooper:

How hard is it to get out there on a block and, you know, if you know the right people, to go and sell drugs?

Murv Seymour:

Anthony became a hustling drug dealer on the streets of Madison.

Anthony Cooper:

Those were some of my darkest days. I thought then in the thick of it, okay, I’m providing, I’m doing something, I’m trying to find a better job.

Murv Seymour:

According to police, in February of 1999, he sold heroin to a confidential informant in this parking lot outside an east side Madison restaurant and several other locations around town including a local park. Court records show days later he led police on a short car chase through downtown during rush hour before being arrested by Madison police officers.

Anthony Cooper:

My mother didn’t raise me to sell drugs. My mom gave us all she could.

Murv Seymour:

At the time he says he felt selling drugs was his only option to provide for his mother, son and his then pregnant girlfriend.

Anthony Cooper:

I could get a job, but if that job is still leaving me struggling, I know at the same time if my pager, phone or whatever, every time they call, it’s $20, $50 here, a $100 here. Eventually that grew. Then what happens. In 1999 when I was 22 years old, I was convicted of three felonies.

Murv Seymour:

Anthony reads his own written words about when his drug-selling days came to an end near this street corner.

Anthony Cooper:

The things I’m writing isn’t writing for you all, but for me. I’ll always have that memory. There’s always going to be in the core of my heart.

Murv Seymour:

He sometimes wonders if getting caught may have saved his life.

Anthony Cooper:

I could have got caught with more than what I had. I could have got killed. My son growing up without a father. My mom growing up without — you know, as she’s getting older, not having a son. My sister’s not having a brother.

Murv Seymour:

After pleading guilty, he did two years in state prison. Some of it in Portage, Black River Falls and the Challenge Incarceration Boot Camp in New Richmond.

Anthony Cooper:

Nothing about prison I liked. When someone is incarcerated, it doesn’t just affect you. It affects everyone that’s connected to you. When they called my name to be able to go to boot camp, that’s the hope for me to be able to go to boot camp and successfully complete it.

Murv Seymour:

Fresh out of prison, Anthony says he found himself fresh out of luck in finding a good-paying job. After being turned away from what he estimates hundreds of jobs weekly, he would settle for a gig making pizzas. Honorable work, but in his words, it didn’t pay enough to feed his family.

Anthony Cooper:

When I came home, I knew I wasn’t going to sell pizzas for the rest of my life. I knew I wanted more. I went through my own stinking thinking.

Murv Seymour:

He says he fought temptations

Anthony Cooper:

The thoughts are still there.

Murv Seymour:

to go back to the crooked lifestyle that landed him in prison.

Anthony Cooper:

The thought was still there. When I look back at my sons. I never wanted my sons to come back in prison, to prison to say — you know, to come and visit me there. If I allowed them to continue to see me go back and forth from prison, eventually that’s going to become normal for them and eventually they going to follow the same route.

Murv Seymour:

Anthony quickly learned his status as a felon cripples his opportunities to create a better life.

Anthony Cooper:

From housing, from loans, government subsidies to government grants. You’re still looked at as less than. Can you explain this to me about my background even though it’s so many years? It’s almost a restart on life, a restart of me trying to explain and trying to convince people that, hey, that’s — who I was at 19, 20, 21, 22 is not the same person who I am today.

Murv Seymour:

Now, almost 20 years out of prison

Anthony Cooper:

None of us knew anyone that ever had a pardon.

Murv Seymour:

Anthony went all the way to the governor’s office seeking forgiveness and a pardon from the governor and his eight-person pardon advisory board.

Anthony Cooper:

We all knew what change looked like and they all knew the change that was within me. When I was arrested, that was in 1999.

Murv Seymour:

He wrote the words he read earlier in 2019 as part of his application to the board.

Anthony Cooper:

Even people I knew from the streets say the same thing. We’re just proud of you, who you’ve become.

Noble Wray:

We do our due diligence to make sure that we reach out to the victims.

Murv Seymour:

Former Madison Police Chief Noble Wray is a member of the Pardon Advisory Board which typically meets in the Finance Committee room on the fourth floor of the State Capitol.

Noble Wray:

We’ve had a number of people during COVID that have presented some very compelling cases.

TV announcer:

You’re watching Wisconsin Eye.

Anthony Cooper:

Because of COVID, we had to do it virtual. But now it’s about what have you done to change your life around? Who are you now that you were not 20 years ago, 15 years ago, seven years ago?

Murv Seymour:

Anthony Cooper’s case was one of many brought before the board.

Noble Wray:

They are impacted by their employment. A lot of times they’re impacted by where they can live and cannot live. There are limitations placed upon you if you have a felony to be able to travel outside of the country. Can you open a child care center? Can you care for people? You can take an 18-year-old in northern Wisconsin that decided to drive through a cornfield. Based upon the amount of damage that they create, that was a felony. But they’re 18 and 19 years old. And they walk into a pardon board and they’re 55 or 56 and they look you in the eye and say, “Hey look, all I want to do is to be able to tell people around me that I’m not a felon.”

Murv Seymour:

To be eligible for a governor’s pardon, you have to be a convicted felon who’s completed all of your sentences at least five years ago and you cannot have any pending criminal charges or cases. Registered sex offenders are not eligible for a pardon. While the board makes the recommendations…

Tony Evers:

All that is about corrections isn’t about punishment.

Murv Seymour:

.Governor Tony Evers has the final say.

Tony Evers:

It’s about getting people ready to reenter life outside of corrections. I’m one of those people that believe in redemption. Both my parents were in the medical field, and they spent their lives trying to give people second chances physically. This is one around giving people second chances spiritually. We have too many people in our prison right now, and whatever I can do to help those that have exited the system and are doing well in their lives, recognizing that.

Murv Seymour:

So far in just over two years in office, most recent numbers show Governor Evers is granting more pardons each year. 262 out of over 1300 applicants and counting through August, only denying the board’s recommendation 1% of the time. If reelected, he says he will continue approving pardons. His predecessor, Scott Walker, didn’t deliver a single one in his eight years as governor.

Tony Evers:

That’s a lot of people that didn’t get that chance for many, many years. I review every single one that’s recommended to me. It is one of the most heartwarming exercises I go through as governor. Many of them frankly are people that these crimes were committed 20, 30, 40 years ago and they’ve been clean for 20, 30, 40 years. We can’t afford to throw anybody away. I have no doubt at some point in time somebody will goof up. There are people every day in this state, in this nation that make mistakes that may end up being a criminal offense. But at the end of the day I feel confident that 99% and 49/100ths percent are the right decisions.

Murv Seymour:

More than two years after submitting his application for a governor’s pardon…

Anthony Cooper:

Whether or not if you’re going to get it.

Murv Seymour:

on February 3rd, 2021 Anthony Cooper gets news he’s anxiously been waiting on.

Anthony Cooper:

That was the scary part for me.

Murv Seymour:

He receives his pardon and…

Anthony Cooper:

It happened on the day of my son’s birth. I was a ball of emotions. The fact that the governor again is saying, hey, you know what, let’s give this person a new start in life, right? That’s — that’s huge.

Noble Wray:

If you can think of yourself as someone right now that committed a felony and you’re asking yourself will I ever be able to connect back with society and feel like a full citizen, a Wisconsinite in the state of Wisconsin, when you see someone like Anthony Cooper, he provides that North Star.

Tony Evers:

He is hardly the only one. Think about that. Somebody that was just, you know, in such a bad place that they ended up being incarcerated because of years of and buying and selling. And now they’re one of the leaders in their communities. People are applying for this because they feel, A) they deserve it. B) They think that they can be role models in their community. And, C) they feel that it can heal wounds in their family.

Anthony Cooper:

My kids are my angels, hands down. There’s no if, and, buts about that. My kids are what made me change. I had to be able to say when I look back I can tell my sons I love something more than I love myself.

Noble Wray:

We need more Anthony Coopers. People know him. They see him. And they’ll look at him and say if Anthony can do it, I can do it.

Murv Seymour:

Reporting for “Here & Now,” I’m Murv Seymour.

Frederica Freyberg:

The governor’s office says no pardon recipient has re-offended in the three years since Governor Evers began granting those pardons. This reporting is part of a PBS Wisconsin-WPR-WisContext collaboration utilizing reporting, research and community-based expertise to provide information and insight about issues that affect Wisconsin.