Ex-con steals ID from man who hired him

A clerk working for a prominent champion of prisoner’s rights is behind bars after pleading guilty Thursday to stealing from his boss.

Fulton County prosecutors say Shareef Cousin, 29, charged $42,000 on credit cards he obtained using the Social Security number of his former employer, Stephen Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.

Cousin, of Stone Mountain, was sentenced to 10 years, but may serve only three with good behavior. He’s been incarcerated before, on Louisiana’s Death Row, where he served four years for the 1995 murder of a New Orleans man in the French Quarter.

Cousin was just 16 when convicted. That sentence was overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court, which concluded that evidence was mishandled by the prosecution in Cousin’s case.

It wouldn’t be his last brush with the law. In 2005, Cousin was paroled for an armed robbery charge in Louisiana unrelated to the French Quarter homicide.

Bright offered Cousin the clerk’s job a little more than two years ago. Bright did not return calls seeking comment Thursday but told Fulton County officials he hired Cousin to “help him get his life on track.”

Cousin, who was arrested in June, seemed to be headed in the right direction. In addition to his job with the human rights center, he was attending classes at Morehouse College.

Besides the jail time he received Thursday, Cousin faces up to seven years’ incarceration back in Louisiana if his parole is revoked, Fulton officials said.

According to its Web site, the Southern Center for Human Rights is a nonprofit, public interest law firm dedicated to enforcing the civil and human rights of people in the criminal justice system in the South.

The Center’s legal work includes representing people facing the death penalty.