California: Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper

Kevin Cooper

The legal effort to prevent the execution of Kevin Cooper has run its course. Unless the governor of California intervenes, Cooper is likely to be put to death next year for the brutal 1983 murders of a Chino Hills couple, their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old houseguest.

Just one eyewitness survived the horrific scene, a 9-year-old boy whose throat had been sliced. His initial account of the attack is one of many disturbing contradictions that led five federal judges to take issue with their colleagues' decision to put a stop to Cooper's appeals.

The boy recalled 3 attackers - all white. Cooper is black. The surviving victim later changed his story to claim that he saw a black man with a great "poof" of hair standing over his parents' bed. Cooper, who had just escaped from a nearby minimum-security prison, wore his hair in cornrows at the time.

"He is on death row because the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department framed him," federal appeals Judge William Fletcher told Gonzaga University law students in an April speech.

Fletcher and 4 fellow judges were searingly blunt in a 2009 dissent that meticulously catalogued the extent that investigators ignored and even destroyed evidence that might have exonerated Cooper.

Especially unsettling is the investigators' disregard for evidence that seemed to point to a white ex-con who had served time for murder. That potential suspect's girlfriend testified that he had come to change out of his overalls on the night of the murder. When she and her father saw they were spattered with blood, they alerted authorities. The overalls were never tested or turned over to Cooper's legal team. They were tossed in a Dumpster on the day of his arraignment.

To be sure, there is evidence linking Cooper to the crime. But when the doubts are sufficient to persuade federal judges that the case against Cooper is not only flawed - but a potential frame job - leaders have a moral obligation to intervene.

Cooper's legal team has asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to invoke his powers to commute the sentence to life without the possibility of parole. If Schwarzenegger refuses, Cooper's attorneys will then press the issue with Jerry Brown when he takes office in January.

Their legal strategy raises the question: If Cooper is innocent, why merely ask for life without parole?

"Right now, we're trying to save a man's life," said Lanny Davis, a former White House counsel to Bill Clinton and member of Cooper's legal team. "Where there's life, there's hope."

As Judge Fletcher pointedly suggested to the law-school audience, faults with the application of the death penalty do not begin and end in Texas. The problems are "widespread and endemic," he said. And they pervade the case of Kevin Cooper.

Californians cannot just look the other way while their state proceeds toward an execution that 5 federal judges have found a sound basis to halt.

It will take an act of courage to prevent a potential lethal injustice.

Gaps and contradictions

Among the flaws in the evidence used to convict Kevin Cooper of the murders of Douglas Ryen, Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old Christopher Hughes:

-- DNA doubts: Was Cooper's blood planted on a T-shirt found near the scene? Lab technicians were startled to find the DNA of 2 people when they tested a vial containing Cooper's blood. Appellate Judge William Fletcher's suspicion: "Remember the trick of the teenager who takes whiskey from his parents' bottle and who then adds something to the bottle to bring it up to the right level?"

-- More DNA doubts: Fletcher questioned the efficacy of tests ordered by the appeals court to determine whether the blood identified as Cooper's on a beige T-shirt found at the crime scene contained a preservative used on samples drawn from suspects - which would have suggested the blood was planted.

-- Shoes: A key prosecution point was that footprints found at the scene matched shoes issued only at prisons - pointed to escapee Cooper. It turned out they were from Pro-Ked "Dude" sneakers widely available at retail stores.

-- Urge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to prevent Kevin Cooper's execution by invoking his powers to reduce the sentence to life without parole. E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, December 13, 2010