[Ppnews] Kevin Cooper - Governor, save inmate's life

[Political Prisoner News]

Governor, save inmate's life


Kevin Cooper's conviction in four 1983 murders is 
in serious question, particularly by a federal 
judge. It is up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to 
commute his sentence to life in prison.

December 23, 2010
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cooper-20101223,0,6639888.story

Even supporters of capital punishment should 
object to the execution of someone whose guilt is 
in serious question. That's the case with 
<http://tinyurl.com/ycklwrw>Kevin Cooper, who was 
convicted of four gruesome murders in Chino Hills 
nearly three decades ago. Now that the federal 
courts have failed to prevent Cooper's execution, 
the burden is on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to 
commute his sentence to life imprisonment.

On the night of June 4, 1983, three members of 
the Ryen family and an 11-year-old houseguest 
were hacked to death. Eight-year-old Josh Ryen, 
his throat cut, was left for dead, but survived. 
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department 
focused on Cooper, who had been living in a house 
near the Ryens' after escaping from a state 
prison. The day after the murders, Cooper checked 
into a hotel in Tijuana. Investigators theorized 
that he had traveled to Mexico in the Ryens' station wagon.

Cooper was convicted after Josh Ryen testified 
that he had seen a single individual or shadow at 
the murder scene. Other evidence included a 
bloody footprint on a bedsheet made by a shoe 
that supposedly was manufactured only for 
prisons, and the discovery in the Ryens' station 
wagon of cigarette butts of the brand smoked by Cooper.

But much of the evidence against Cooper has been 
seriously questioned, most comprehensively in an 
opinion by Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. 
9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who dissented from 
a decision not to hear an appeal by Cooper. 
Fletcher noted that Josh originally said the 
killers were three white or Hispanic men (Cooper 
is black); that the warden of the prison where 
Cooper had been incarcerated said the shoe that 
made the bloody footprint was sold to the public; 
and that the cigarette butts, which were not 
found in the original inspection of the car, 
could easily have been planted. What's more, the 
station wagon turned up in Long Beach.

Fletcher also noted that a woman said that on the 
day of the murders, her former boyfriend had been 
wearing a T-shirt similar to one found near the 
crime scene. She also said he showed up at her 
house wearing blood-spattered coveralls. (The 
coveralls were discarded by a sheriff's deputy.) 
Another woman reported finding a second, possibly 
bloodstained, shirt on a road near the Ryens' 
house. And on the night of the murders, two or 
three men in bloody clothes were seen in a bar near the crime scene.

Finally, long after his conviction, as Cooper was 
pursuing appeals, a blood test was performed on 
the T-shirt; according to analysts, the test 
detected Cooper's DNA. At first, that seemed to 
be the incontrovertible scientific evidence that 
had for so long been elusive ­ but Fletcher noted 
that the blood on the T-shirt contained signs of 
a preservative used by the sheriff's office to 
preserve blood in a laboratory for later testing. 
According to the judge, that suggested the blood 
"had been planted on the T-shirt."

Fletcher wrote that Cooper "is probably innocent 
of the crimes for which the state of California 
is about to execute him." Whether or not that's 
true, the judge makes a compelling argument that 
sheriff's office investigators planted evidence 
in order to convict Cooper and discarded or 
disregarded other evidence pointing to other 
killers ­ creating not just reasonable but serious doubt about his guilt.

This newspaper opposes the death penalty under 
any circumstances, and we wouldn't object if the 
governor commuted the sentences of all 697 people 
on California's death row. But execution is 
especially outrageous when the prisoner may be 
innocent. Gov. Schwarzenegger should commute Cooper's sentence.

Copyright © 2010, <http://www.latimes.com/>Los Angeles Times
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