Philadelphia Rapper Cool C Granted Temporary Stay Of Execution

By Nolan Strong
Date: 2/4/2006 2:30 pm

Condemned rapper Christopher “Cool C” Roney was granted a stay of execution by a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday (Feb. 1).

The rapper was scheduled to die on Mar. 9 for the 1996 murder of police officer Lauretha Vaird.

When Vaird, 43, responded to a silent alarm at a PNC Bank branch in Philadelphia, she was shot in the chest as she entered the bank, according to reports. She was not wearing a bulletproof vest that day.

Cool C, 36, along with rapper Warren “Steady B.” McGlone and Mark Canty were convicted of first-degree murder for their role in killing Vaird, a nine-year veteran who was Philadelphia’s first female officer ever killed in the line of duty.

In Oct. 1996, McGlone and Mark Canty were sentenced to life in prison, while Cool C was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

Last month, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell signed the rapper’s execution warrant. But Judge Gary Glazer has issued an order to put Cool C’s execution on hold until his post-conviction litigation is resolved.

An early pioneer in Hip-Hop, Cool C was a member of the Philadelphia-based rap collective The Hilltop Hustlers in the late 1980s. He hit it big with “Juice Crew Dis” and the 1989 hit single, “Glamorous Life.”