Jabrai Copney: Kirkland House Shooting, Life Sentence, and Parole

Jabrai Jordan Copney is the New York man convicted of first-degree murder for the 2009 Kirkland House shooting at Harvard, in which he killed 21-year-old Justin Cosby during a botched marijuana robbery in a dormitory basement. He was sentenced to life without parole in April 2011. After a 2024 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling struck down that sentence for people who were 18 to 20 when they offended, Copney became parole-eligible and appeared before the state parole board on February 12, 2026.¹

What Happened at Kirkland House

On the evening of May 18, 2009, Justin Cosby, a Salem State College student who lived near Harvard and sold marijuana, was lured to the basement of Kirkland House’s J entry. Copney, then 20 and not a Harvard student, had posed as one to set up the deal.² He arrived with two accomplices, Jason Aquino and Blayn Jiggetts, planning to rob Cosby of roughly $5,000 worth of marijuana at gunpoint.¹

Cosby refused to hand over the drugs and tried to flee. Copney fired three shots. One struck Cosby in the abdomen, and he died the following morning. Investigators found him carrying nearly a pound of marijuana and over $900 in cash.³ The three men fled to New York City by bus that same night.

Copney turned himself in to Cambridge police on May 21, 2009. He was charged with murder the next day. Jiggetts was arrested in New York on June 9, and Aquino on July 30.⁴

How Copney Got Into a Harvard Dorm

None of the three men who came to Kirkland House were affiliated with Harvard. Copney reached the campus through his then-girlfriend, Brittany Smith, a Lowell House senior who gave the group her university ID and electronic key card.⁵ Smith watched Jiggetts load the gun in her room before the shooting, hid the weapon afterward, and called a taxi to get the men to South Station.

Copney and Smith returned to campus the next day to retrieve the gun, which she had hidden under a bed in a blockmate’s room. Smith pleaded guilty in September 2011 to five counts, including accessory after the fact, unlawful firearm possession, and misleading police and a grand jury. She received three years in prison without parole eligibility, followed by two years of probation, and was suspended from Harvard without a degree.⁵

A Prior Pattern: The 2008 Yale Robbery

The Kirkland House shooting was not Copney’s first armed robbery of Ivy League students over marijuana. Roughly six months earlier, he and Jiggetts had robbed two Yale undergraduates, Jules Bolton and Alexander King, at gunpoint in a Harlem apartment. The parties had met in Cambridge during the 2008 Harvard-Yale football game, and Bolton had agreed to sell Copney $14,000 worth of marijuana. When Bolton arrived to deliver it, Jiggetts pulled a pistol and the men took Bolton’s driver’s license, King’s Yale ID, and three pounds of marijuana.⁶

Jiggetts later told investigators the Yale robbery served as a “blueprint” for the attempted robbery of Cosby.⁷ Prosecutors introduced the earlier robbery at trial, and it would surface again at Copney’s parole hearing more than a decade later.

Trial and Life Sentence

Copney’s three-week murder trial took place in April 2011. Prosecutors argued he and his accomplices had lured Cosby to the basement intending to steal his marijuana at gunpoint, and that Copney shot him when he resisted. Defense attorney John A. Amabile countered that Copney’s intent was to buy the drugs, not steal them, and attacked the credibility of the two accomplices who testified against him under plea deals.⁸

On the third day of deliberations, the jury convicted Copney of first-degree murder under a felony-murder theory, meaning the killing occurred during an attempted armed robbery. Jurors also convicted him of carrying a firearm without a license but acquitted him of the substantive armed robbery charge, apparently because the defense had raised doubt about whether the men ever actually took the marijuana. Judge John T. Lu imposed the mandatory sentence then required for first-degree murder in Massachusetts: life in prison without the possibility of parole.⁸

At sentencing, Cosby’s mother, Denise Cosby, addressed Copney directly: “I hope you think about what you did to Justin each and every day for the rest of your life, as I do. You’re despicable.”⁸

The Appeal

Copney appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, challenging the search of Smith’s dorm room, the admission of the Yale robbery as prior bad-acts evidence, the denial of a mistrial motion, and the felony-murder jury instructions. In a decision issued June 17, 2014, the SJC rejected every argument and affirmed the conviction. The court found Copney had no reasonable expectation of privacy in Smith’s room because his presence violated university policy, and it held the Yale robbery admissible to show his intent and method.⁹¹⁰

What Happened to the Co-Defendants

Both accomplices had faced first-degree murder charges and avoided trial through plea deals. Aquino pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received 18 to 20 years, plus a concurrent four-to-five-year term for lying to a grand jury. An earlier plea capped at five years had been revoked after prosecutors concluded he made false statements.¹¹ Jiggetts pleaded guilty to manslaughter in exchange for testifying against Copney and was sentenced to nine to 12 years.¹²

Why Copney Became Parole-Eligible

On January 11, 2024, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decided Commonwealth v. Mattis, ruling that life-without-parole sentences for people who were 18 to 20 at the time of their offense violate Article 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. The court extended protections previously limited to juvenile offenders to so-called “emerging adults,” citing neurological research on continuing brain development in areas that govern impulse control and susceptibility to peer influence.¹³

For people sentenced before July 25, 2014, Mattis made them eligible for parole consideration after serving 15 years. The ruling affected roughly 200 people serving life-without-parole terms in Massachusetts.¹⁴ Copney, who was 20 when he killed Cosby, fell squarely within its scope. He and six other inmates sued in February 2025 over what they said were delays in scheduling their hearings.¹

The February 2026 Parole Hearing

On February 12, 2026, after serving roughly 14 years, Copney appeared before the Massachusetts Parole Board. Eleven friends and family members of both Copney and Cosby testified. Copney told the board he had reflected on his crime, maintained he never intended to kill Cosby, and said the robbery “got extremely out of control.” He acknowledged that Cosby “did not deserve to die.”¹

Cosby’s mother, sister, and uncle, along with the original prosecutors, appeared to oppose release. They pointed to the 2008 Yale robbery as evidence the Kirkland House shooting was not a moment that spun out of control but the follow-through on a plan Copney had run before. Denise Cosby told the board, “My son is serving a lifetime sentence in his grave.”¹

The parole board did not rule from the bench. A decision was expected within four to six months of the hearing.

1
The Harvard Crimson. Kirkland House Parole Hearing
2
CBS News. NYC Man Convicted in 2009 Murder at Harvard
3
Boston Herald. DA: Harvard Holdup Took Deadly Turn
4
Harvard Magazine. Kirkland House Shooting
5
The Harvard Crimson. Brittany Smith Harvard Shooting Sentenced
6
The Harvard Crimson. Copney Yale Trial Bolton
7
Yale Daily News. Alleged Harvard Killers First Targeted Yalies
8
The Harvard Crimson. Murder Copney First-Degree Jury Guilty Harvard Shooting
9
The Harvard Crimson. Kirkland Copney Appeal Denied
10
FindLaw. Commonwealth v. Copney, 468 Mass. 405
11
The Harvard Crimson. Murder Aquino Years Prison
12
The Harvard Crimson. Jiggetts Sentenced Kirkland Shooting
13
The Sentencing Project. Advocacy Groups Applaud Massachusetts Supreme Court Ruling in Mattis
14
Boston Bar Association. Emerging Adults Can No Longer Be Sentenced to Life Without Parole