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

Comments

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

Two Executions In Six Hours: Florida Set For Historical Double Execution Tuesday

Florida is preparing to execute two death row inmates on Tuesday, July 28, in an action that would mark the state’s first double execution in more than 60 years. Former police officer James Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12 p.m., followed six hours later by 80-year-old Dominick Occhicone at 6 p.m. If carried out, these will mark the 39th and 40th executions under Gov. Ron DeSantis and the 11th and 12th in the state since the beginning of 2026. In response, Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (FADP) has launched petition and letter-writing efforts asking DeSantis to halt both procedures. The group has organized two public vigils outside Florida State Prison in Raiford, set for 11 a.m. and 5 p.m., contingent on whether stays are issued.

Florida executes Dominick Occhicone

Florida executes 2 men in a day. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has made Florida's death chamber the nation’s busiest at the end of his final term. STARKE, Fla. — Florida on Tuesday became the first state in nearly a decade to carry out two executions in a single day, the last an 80-year-old man who was the second-oldest inmate known to receive a lethal injection in modern U.S. history. Hours earlier, the state executed a former police officer convicted of killing a young girl.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog