Amanda Cope Case: Three Confessions, DNA, and Appeals

The Billy Wayne Cope case is a disputed South Carolina prosecution in which a father was convicted of raping and murdering his 12-year-old daughter Amanda in 2001 based on confessions he later recanted, even though DNA recovered from the girl’s body matched a convicted sex offender who had recently moved into the neighborhood. Prosecutors kept the charges against Cope after the DNA results came back and added a criminal conspiracy count, and both men were convicted at trial in 2004. Cope maintained his innocence until his death in prison in 2017.

What Happened to Amanda Cope

Amanda Cope, a seventh grader at Sullivan Middle School in Rock Hill, was found dead in her bedroom at the family’s home on Rich Street on the morning of November 30, 2001. A pathologist determined she had been strangled from the front with a right hand and sexually assaulted, and testimony at trial indicated she had been subjected to repeated sexual abuse before the night she was killed.¹

Police suspected her father almost immediately. There were no obvious signs of forced entry.² Billy Wayne Cope was arrested the day after Amanda’s body was found and charged with murder and criminal sexual conduct.³

The Three Confessions

Over four days of interrogation in late November and early December 2001, Cope gave three confessions, each different from the last. In the first, given after officers told him he had failed a polygraph, he said he had been masturbating in Amanda’s room, became enraged when she woke up, beat and strangled her, and sexually assaulted her with a broom handle. Two days later he offered a second version in which he had been asleep and attacked her while dreaming about an ex-girlfriend. In a third statement the same day, he described a pattern of sexual abuse stretching back weeks and gave specific details about the night of the killing, including cleaning up semen with a blue towel and staging the scene to look like an accident.⁴

None of the sessions leading up to the final videotaped reenactment were recorded.² An interrogation transcript showed Cope denied killing Amanda more than 650 times during a single four-hour session before eventually giving in. A psychological evaluation shortly after his arrest found he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder triggered by discovering his daughter’s body. Cope later said officers told him he would face the death penalty if he did not sign a confession, and his public defender, B.J. Barrowclough, said police prevented him from seeing Cope after the arrest, telling him Cope did not want a lawyer.⁵

The confessions also did not fit the forensic evidence. Cope said he assaulted Amanda with a broom handle, but no DNA was found on any broom or mop in the house. He said he choked her from behind with two hands; the pathologist concluded she had been strangled from the front with a right hand. None of the confessions mentioned James Sanders.⁵

The DNA Match to James Sanders

In September 2002, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division matched semen and saliva found on Amanda’s body to James Edward Sanders, a convicted felon who had moved into the neighborhood only weeks before the murder. Sanders had a documented history of break-ins involving sexual assaults. In January 2002, roughly six weeks after Amanda’s death, he was caught after forcing his way into a woman’s home on nearby White Street, attacking her, and stealing her purse.⁶

None of Cope’s DNA was found on his daughter’s body. His attorney Phil Baity said publicly that the DNA recovered from Amanda belonged exclusively to Sanders.³

The Conspiracy Theory

Rather than dropping the charges against Cope after the DNA came back, prosecutors added a criminal conspiracy charge, alleging Cope and Sanders had acted together in the assaults that led to Amanda’s death.² Sanders was charged in November 2003 with murder, two counts of criminal sexual conduct, and criminal conspiracy.³ No prior connection between the two men was publicly established.

Problems With the Investigation

Defense attorneys and later reporting identified a series of gaps in the police work. No fingerprints were collected anywhere in the Cope home. A purse found on Amanda’s bed was never tested for forensic evidence, despite Sanders’ known pattern of stealing from his victims. Defense attorneys argued the scene was not properly secured and had been contaminated by the time investigators realized the DNA did not match Cope.⁵

The premise that no one had broken in was also challenged. During a crime-scene reenactment, officers opened the home’s back door without a key. Police also reportedly wired Cope’s wife, Mary Sue, and sent her into the jail to try to obtain another confession, telling her that her children would be taken away and that she would face charges if she did not cooperate.⁵

Trial and Sentence

Both men were tried and convicted in 2004 in York County. Judge John Calvin Hayes III presided, and Solicitor Kevin S. Brackett led the prosecution.⁷ Cope was represented by James Morton and A. Philip Baity.⁸

Cope was convicted of murder, two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, criminal conspiracy, and unlawful conduct towards a child. He received life without parole for the murder, thirty years for each sexual conduct count to run consecutively, ten years for unlawful neglect, and five years for conspiracy to run concurrently.⁹ Sanders was convicted of murder, two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, and criminal conspiracy, and was sentenced to life plus thirty years.⁶

At trial, the defense called Dr. Saul Kassin, a psychologist specializing in false confessions, who testified that police had used false feedback about the polygraph, positive confrontation, refusal to accept denials, and minimization. Kassin explained that prolonged interrogation of a traumatized person can produce confessions that appear detailed and realistic but are fabricated.⁴ A central disputed ruling was Judge Hayes’ decision to exclude evidence of Sanders’ pattern of similar break-ins and sexual assaults, which the defense argued would have shown Sanders acted alone.

Appeals

The Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse at Washington and Lee University School of Law, led by Professor David Bruck, took on Cope’s appeal, joined by Northwestern University law professor Steven Drizin of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.⁸ The appeal focused on the argument that the confession was coerced and that the trial court erred by barring evidence of Sanders’ other crimes.

The South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed Cope’s convictions in 2009.⁹ The South Carolina Supreme Court granted certiorari and, in a 3-2 decision on August 28, 2013, upheld the conviction and affirmed the exclusion of evidence about Sanders’ other crimes.⁷

Bruck filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in January 2014, with amicus support from the National Innocence Network and from professors of evidence law. The Court denied the petition on October 20, 2014.¹⁰ Cope’s team said the denial was not “the end of the fight to free this innocent man” and cited “tunnel vision by police and prosecutors” as the underlying problem.¹¹

What Amanda’s Sisters Said

After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, Amanda’s two surviving sisters gave a written statement to The Herald. They confirmed the substance of their father’s final confession about molesting them and Amanda. “In Billy’s last confession, he stated that not only did he sexually molest Amanda, but us as well. This statement is true,” they wrote. They described their father as “selfish and controlling” and rejected the portrayal of him as wrongly convicted. “During the past 13 years, Billy has told a string of lies that has shaped him into the victim,” they wrote. “The world is forgetting that a 12-year-old child lost her life. She is the victim, not him.”¹

Cope’s Death in Prison

Billy Wayne Cope died in state custody on February 9, 2017, at age 53. Richland County Coroner Gary Watts said the death was “apparently of natural causes,” and an autopsy was ordered by law.¹²

His defense team, led by attorney Michael Smith, called his death “a sad end to a horrible miscarriage of justice” and said their inability to free him was “one of the deepest disappointments of our lives and careers,” maintaining that the state had obtained a false confession from a “grieving and psychologically vulnerable father.”¹³ Prosecutor Kevin Brackett expressed “sorrow for his two surviving children” but maintained Cope was guilty, calling him “a cruel and selfish individual.”¹²

Amanda Renee Cope is buried at Grandview Memorial Park in Rock Hill. Her burial and grave marker were paid for by community donations.¹

1
The Herald. After 13 Years, Who Killed Amanda Cope
2
False Confessions. Billy Wayne Cope
3
WIS-TV. 2nd Rock Hill Man Charged in 2001 Rape, Murder of 12-Year-Old Girl
4
SC Courts. State v. Cope, Court of Appeals Opinion
5
NBC News. Father Convicted of Killing Daughter Claims Innocence
6
FindLaw. State v. Sanders, Court of Appeals
7
SC Courts. State v. Cope, South Carolina Supreme Court Opinion No. 27303
8
Washington and Lee University. Cope
9
FindLaw. State v. Cope, South Carolina Supreme Court
10
U.S. Supreme Court. Billy Wayne Cope v. South Carolina, No. 13-8427
11
The Island Packet. Rock Hill Man Convicted of Killing Daughter Loses Appeal
12
WBTV. Man Serving Life for Killing Daughter in Disputed Case Dies
13
New York Daily News. South Carolina Man Who Claimed He Was Wrongly Convicted Dies in Prison at 53