A Florida Judge Finds a New Job: Defending an Inmate
The New York Times, January 28, 2023: A Florida Judge Finds a New Job: Defending an Inmate
“At first, Judge Scott Cupp was a resolute, hard-core, you-gotta-be-joking skeptic. During his years as a defense lawyer, he had heard from dozens of inmates who swore they had been wrongly convicted, and he never believed a single one. So in 2002, when he learned about a guy named Leo Schofield, who by then had already served 13 years of a life sentence for murdering his wife, he didn’t need to hear the details.
“‘I thought if this guy’s innocent, I’m the Queen of Sheba,’ he said in a recent interview.
“For the record, Judge Cupp looks nothing like any depictions of the Queen of Sheba. At 66, he has gray hair and a fluffy gray beard that gives him the appearance of a trimmed-down Santa Claus, and when agitated he lets fly curse words not found in the Bible. (‘I can get a little saucy, so you can edit some of this, right?’)
“But today it is not enough to say Judge Cupp merely believes Leo Schofield is innocent; he considers Mr. Schofield’s imprisonment a grotesque mistake. Anyone wondering how Judge Cupp made the journey from total doubter to ardent crusader should seek out “Bone Valley,” a nine-part podcast released last year, which recounts Mr. Schofield’s story in harrowing, infuriating detail. The show is part of the true-crime podcast bonanza, fueled by the very human urge for stories in which sanity and justice ultimately prevail.”
Additional reading:
