David Cooper lured a six-year-old girl out of a backyard and took her to an area underneath the porch of an abandoned house where he lived. While the victim's family members looked for her and called out her name, Cooper sexually assaulted and fatally strangled her.

Police found her body several hours later. She was under the porch, with her shirt pulled up and her panties at her ankles. The sexual assault caused her to bleed, and to suffer numerous internal injuries to her vaginal canal and cervix, as well as to her anal canal. The medical examiner concluded that she had been strangled for four to six minutes.

Cooper claimed that he was drunk during the attack, and that her death was accidental. He had prior convictions for trespassing and a drug offense, and juvenile convictions for disorderly conduct and criminal mischief. He was on parole at the time of the murder. He claimed that he drank daily and used marijuana often, but did not present evidence of his alleged alcoholism or intoxication at his penalty phase.

During his childhood, Cooper had been abused, neglected, and exposed to drugs, alcohol, and violence. He was placed in numerous foster homes, and did not have a relationship with his mother, who drank heavily when pregnant with Cooper.

The jury found the c(4)(f) (escape detection) and c(4)(g) (contemporaneous felony) aggravating factors, and varying numbers of jurors found several c(5)(h) (catchall) factors.

The jury concluded that the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors; therefore, the defendant was sentenced to death. He also received an aggregate noncapital sentence of seventy years with a thirty- five-year parole disqualifier.

David Cooper

On July 18, 1993, after church, Latasha Goodman and her family had sunday dinner at the parish hall in Asbury Park, because they were too poor to have a good dinner. It was a warm summer afternoon.

After dinner, the family visited with relatives. While the adults sat on the front porch, the children played in the fenced-in back yard. A man, stood in the shrubs and watched the children at play for a while. He then approached the children asking would one of them like a quarter? Six year old Latasha said she would go with the defendant.

He lifted her over the fence and led her away by the hand. Her seven year old cousin was yelling "Don't go Tasha, you are going to get kidnapped". The cousin immediately ran around to the front porch and a search was instigated. The family called the police, and neighbors were asked to help find the child.