California: DR Inmate Kevin Cooper's Appeal Is Rejected

The United States Supreme Court rejected the appeal of Kevin Cooper, a California death row inmate convicted of killing four people in 1983.

Mr. Cooper and his supporters argue that others committed the murders and that evidence against him was planted by the police.

Mr. Cooper was hours away from execution in 2004 when the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ordered new DNA tests. A federal judge ruled that the new tests did not exonerate him, and appeals courts have upheld the decision.

Mr. Cooper’s supporters insisted that the conditions for the testing rendered them useless, and a 103-page dissent in the Ninth Circuit’s decision to deny Mr. Cooper a rehearing earlier this year stated that “the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

Source: The New York Times,Nov. 30, 2009

Supreme Court refuses to hear death row inmate's appeal

Kevin Cooper was convicted in 1985 of stabbing to death 2 adults and 2 children. His attorneys argued that exculpatory evidence was destroyed or suppressed, but the high court declined to intervene.

A California death row inmate convicted of killing a Chino Hills couple and two children 26 years ago lost his last appeal Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review his case.

Lawyers for Kevin Cooper, 52, failed to persuade the high court that doubts remain about whether he was the killer and whether authorities tampered with evidence.

Cooper was spared execution in 2004, when the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals intervened just hours before the lethal injection was to be administered. But an evidentiary hearing ordered to evaluate new DNA evidence and Cooper's claims that prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence during his trial failed to convince a federal judge that the San Diego jury erred in finding him guilty in 1985.

The death penalty is on hold in California while corrections officials revise the state's lethal injection protocols. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel ruled in 2006 that the procedures might expose condemned inmates to cruel and unusual punishment if, as alleged in court hearings, the first dose of the three-drug sequence failed to fully anesthetize the inmate.

California put to death 13 prisoners after capital punishment was restored as a sentencing option in 1976. The state's death row now houses 685 condemned prisoners.

Cooper has maintained his innocence since the slayings of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old neighbor Christopher Hughes.

Three different weapons -- an ax, a hunting knife and an ice pick -- were used to inflict at least 143 wounds on the victims and the sole survivor of the attack, the Ryens' 8-year-old son Joshua.

During Cooper's 1984-1985 trial, the jury heard conflicting accounts of Josh Ryen's recollection of the night of the attack. Deputies who spoke with the boy immediately after he was evacuated by helicopter from the gory murder scene testified that Josh initially reported that three white men were in his house and that a television news broadcast showing a wanted poster of Cooper, who is black, prompted him to say Cooper wasn't the killer. Videotaped excerpts of Josh speaking with a psychiatrist were also played for the jury; on the tapes, Josh recalls only one intruder and can't tell the man's race or other details.

Defense lawyers for Cooper argued at his trial and in more than a dozen appellate proceedings that evidence suppressed or destroyed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department pointed to three white men as the perpetrators, including a convicted contract killer.

"Evidence that we discovered after trial shows that Kevin is innocent of the crime for which he is now sentenced to die," Cooper's lead defense attorney, Norman Hile, said in vowing to continue the fight to halt his client's execution despite the high court denial.

The state Attorney General's office argued in its brief to the Supreme Court that Cooper's conviction has been repeatedly upheld by lower courts because the evidence of his guilt is "overwhelming."

The Kevin Cooper Defense Committee, a coalition of death penalty opponents, said the Supreme Court's refusal to review Cooper's case put California on a path "to do what Texas did in the Cameron Todd Willingham case -- execute an innocent man."

Willingham was put to death in 2004 for setting the house fire that killed his three children.

National experts notified the governor and parole board that the fire marshal's scientific analysis in the case was invalid and the arson designation unfounded, but the state officials failed to act ahead of Willingham's execution.

Source: The Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2009

Comments

Florida executes Andrew Richard Lukehart

Jacksonville man who killed his girlfriend’s 5-month-old baby in 1996 executed 30 years later A Jacksonville man who confessed to killing his girlfriend’s 5-month-old daughter and throwing her body in a pond 3 decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening. Andrew Richard Lukehart, 53, was scheduled to receive a 3-drug injection starting at 6 p.m. at Florida State Prison near Starke. He was sentenced to death after being convicted of aggravated child abuse and felony murder in the death of Gabrielle Hanshaw. The baby’s mother told News4JAX she plans to attend the execution.

US | Army lays groundwork for death row executions if Trump gives approval

The Army is preparing to carry out the executions of the military's four death-row inmates if ordered to do so by the president, according to an internal planning document reviewed by ABC News. If carried out, it would mark the first time the military executed convicted American inmates in more than a half-century The plan, dubbed "Operation Resolute Justice" and issued internally in February, directs Army officials to coordinate with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer condemned prisoners from the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to the federal execution facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where the Justice Department carried out a series of non-military federal executions during President Donald Trump's first term.

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

Alabama Plans to Execute Jeffrey Lee Despite Jury Vote for Life

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has scheduled the execution of Jeffrey Lee by nitrogen suffocation for June 11, 2026, even though his capital jury voted 7-5 against the death penalty and chose a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. The trial judge overrode the jury’s verdict and sentenced Mr. Lee to death in 2000, relying on a unique Alabama practice that allowed judges to overrule jury verdicts in death penalty cases. Alabama is the only state where judges overrode jury verdicts of life to impose the death penalty routinely—in more than 100 cases since 1976. As a result, nearly 20% of the people currently on Alabama’s death row were sentenced to death by elected judges even after their juries chose life imprisonment without parole.

Florida | 2-time Jacksonville baby abuser is set for execution

Thirty years ago while on probation for fracturing an infant’s skull, Andrew Lukehart inflicted at least five blows to the head of another baby, then concocted a story that she was abducted before eventually leading authorities to her body in a swamp area. At 6 p.m. Tuesday, June 2, the 53-year-old from Jacksonville is set to become Florida’s eighth man on death row to be executed in 2026. He will become the 36th under Gov. Ron DeSantis after a record 19 inmates were executed by the state in 2025, including another from Duval County: Michael Bell.

Can the state execute a man who already survived? | Opinion

A second execution would be an unimaginable nightmare for Tony Carruthers and a moral horror for the rest of us. Tony Carruthers is not supposed to be alive . On May 21, Tennessee set out to execute him. It failed. Carruthers survived. He is not the first person to survive an execution in the United States, and he won’t be the last. For Carruthers, the question is: Now what? Will the state seek to arrange a second execution?

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog