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Thread: Kevin Cooper - California Death Row

  1. #21
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    District attorney posts harsh response to ABA president’s support for Kevin Cooper clemency

    By Doug Saunders
    The San Bernardino Sun

    San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos posted a harsh response on social media to the American Bar Association president who supports clemency for Chino Hills convicted killer Kevin Cooper.

    “I am disgusted by the comments made by the president of the American Bar Association and the fact that they show no concern or respect for the victims and their families in this case,” Ramos posted on his professional Facebook page Wednesday. “Kevin Cooper committed the most horrendous crimes imaginable against the victims while they were in the sanctity of their home.”

    In a letter sent to Gov. Brown on Monday, ABA president Paulette Brown cast “considerable doubt” that Cooper received due process and constitutional guarantees in his arrest, prosecution and conviction.

    Cooper was found guilty of the June 1983 murders of Doug and Peggy Ryen, along with their daughter Jessica, 10, and 11-year-old Chris Hughes — a neighbor visiting the family. The Ryen’s youngest child, Joshua, 8, survived the attack.

    “He killed a family and two little children, and left their family members to suffer a lifetime of pain,” Ramos posted. “The American Bar Association has no business commenting on a case in San Bernardino County and calling into question the integrity of this office.”

    Paulette Brown’s letter says substantiated evidence of bias and misconduct by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and District Attorney’s Office point to the possible miscarriage of justice and lack of due process as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and according to bar association policies.

    Ramos says just the opposite.

    “This is their last-ditch effort at saving the life of a multiple murderer and apparently they didn’t bother to do their homework,” Ramos said by phone Thursday.

    Ramos said the “evidence” the ABA president says was found has been previously looked over by the higher courts which determined Cooper’s conviction would stand.

    “Kevin Cooper is the perfect example of how dysfunctional the appellate process is and how it is being abused by those on death row in California,” Ramos stated. “He has appealed multiple times to each the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, and each time our case gets stronger.”

    During a 2005 hearing as part of the appeals process, U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn Huff said she believed there was overwhelming proof Cooper is responsible for the quadruple murder.

    Cooper’s claims came to the American Bar Association’s attention because they “implicate a variety of our policies designed to ensure that, (in death-penalty cases), we first have confidence that the process has been fair and all compelling claims have been subject to meaningful review,” the ABA president wrote.

    Brown said in her statement that since Cooper’s arrest and conviction more than 30 years ago, evidence has emerged casting doubt on his conviction and that has never been comprehensively examined by any court.

    Ramos says he’ll continue to fight for the rights of victims.

    “Let me be clear that this office will continue fighting for the families who lost their loved ones at the hands of California’s most violent criminals,” Ramos added. “For them, the pain never ends.”

    http://www.dailybulletin.com/general...ooper-clemency

  2. #22
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Gov. Jerry Brown to consider clemency for death row inmate Kevin Cooper

    After 33 years in jail — 31 spent on San Quentin Prison’s death row — Kevin Cooper’s last hope of avoiding execution rests in the hands of Gov. Jerry Brown.

    The defense team for Cooper, convicted in February 1985 for the 1983 murders of a Chino Hills family and a neighbor, submitted a clemency petition to the governor Feb. 17, three months after a federal court reinstated the death penalty in California.

    As Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Barry G. Silverman wrote when he stayed the convict’s execution in 2004, Cooper “is either guilty as sin or he was framed by the police.”

    Even today, Silverman’s remarks reflect the polarized feelings about Cooper’s beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt guilt or innocence.

    In 1985, a jury found Cooper — who had escaped a minimum-security prison and was holed up near the crime scene at the time of the murders — guilty of butchering Douglas and Peggy Ryen, 41-year-old chiropractors and Arabian horse trainers and breeders; their daughter Jessica, 10, and visiting neighbor Christopher Hughes, 11. He was also found guilty of the attempted murder of Joshua Ryen, the Ryens’ then-8-year-old son who survived a slashed throat.

    San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Richard Garner, presiding over the change-of-venue trial in San Diego, accepted the jury’s recommendation for death. On May 15, 1985, Garner sentenced Cooper to die in the San Quentin State Prison gas chamber.

    No one denies the murders — carried out with a hatchet, knives and either an ice pick or screwdriver — were horrific. But with the state’s moratorium on executions lifted in November, attention to the case has raised questions among some in the legal and law-enforcement communities as well as the anti-death penalty lobby.

    The question of clemency stirs similarly strong sentiments on either side of the “guilty as sin” or “framed by police” argument. Past and present principals involved in the case either favor clemency or clamor for Cooper’s execution. As for Cooper himself, he has maintained his innocence since his arrest on July 30, 1983.

    Neither Gov. Brown nor his staff would comment on the Cooper clemency petition, said Evan Westrup, Brown’s supervising public information officer, adding the governor has offered no timetable to answer the clemency petition.

    A MOTHER’S RAGE

    For MaryAnn Hughes, mother of Christopher Hughes, the neighbor boy who would be 43 now had he lived, Cooper’s execution can’t happen soon enough.

    It was her husband, William Hughes, who found the bodies of his son, the Ryens and a barely alive Joshua shortly before noon June 5, 1983. Concerned that no one answered the phone and Christopher hadn’t returned home to go to church after his overnight visit at the Ryens, William Hughes set out to look for his son.

    What he found traumatized him and the entire neighborhood dotted with horse ranches and rural properties.

    His fifth-grade classmates, teachers, parents, brother, relatives and friends attended the funeral Mass for Christopher, a boy described as happy and carefree. Her family continues to grapple with the pain of losing him, MaryAnn Hughes said.

    “There is no new evidence,” she said in response to the clemency petition. “There is nothing that wasn’t given to the jury. This thing has been tried for 30-plus years through every avenue we have. Even when there was almost a new trial in 2004, when the Ninth Circuit Court (of Appeals) sent the appeal back to the district court in San Diego, the new things convicted him.”

    There has always been “overwhelming evidence of his guilt. There is no doubt whatsoever that he is the guilty party,” she said. “Clemency is the only thing left for him.”

    LAWYERS LINING UP

    The Hugheses were especially irate over the American Bar Association’s recently announced support of Cooper’s bid for clemency.

    In a letter sent to Gov. Brown on March 14, the American Bar Association alleged Cooper’s “arrest, prosecution and conviction are marred by evidence of racial bias, police misconduct, evidence tampering, suppression of exculpatory information, lack of quality defense counsel and a hamstrung court system.

    “We therefore believe that justice requires that Mr. Cooper be granted an executive reprieve until the investigation necessary to fully evaluate his guilt or innocence is completed,” ABA President Paulette Brown wrote.

    The letter shows the association’s “extra ignorance,” Hughes said, adding that Paulette Brown obviously didn’t understand the law because the governor “doesn’t have the authority to order a new trial or hearing. They (Cooper’s attorneys) have to petition the court to do that. Even the Ninth Circuit Court that sent this back down to the San Diego court didn’t order a new hearing or trial.

    “It’s time for this to end,” Hughes said.

    COOPER’S TEAM

    The attorneys who filed the request for clemency — Norman C. Hile of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s Sacramento office, and Oakland attorney David T. Alexander — joined the Cooper defense team at the request of the Northern California/University of Santa Clara chapter of The Innocence Project. Alexander prepared the 2004 petition that resulted in the Ninth Circuit Court staying the Feb. 10, 2004, execution of Cooper, sending the case back to the district court for full DNA testing of crime-scene clothing.

    “The (clemency) petition asks the governor to stay the execution and then undertake an independent investigation to determine if Kevin Cooper is innocent. That independent investigation would be through the governor’s office, not the courts,” Hile said.

    Hile asked retired Federal Bureau of Investigations veteran Thomas Parker in 2011 to lead the latest investigation. Parker spent 45 years with the FBI as an agent, national investigator of violent crimes and deputy chief of the Los Angeles regional office before retiring and founding The Sentinel Group, a domestic and international criminal justice investigation and analysis firm based in Temecula.

    “I agreed because I was very interested in this case,” Parker said. “Shortly after reviewing some of the preliminary materials in this case, I was absolutely convinced that Kevin Cooper was innocent, and I decided I’d work pro bono (for free) on this. I was totally overwhelmed by the degree and volume of evidence of police malfeasance I found in this case.

    “Unfortunately, it appears Mr. Cooper did not receive the benefit of being innocent until proven guilty. Once they learned of Mr. Cooper’s ‘walkaway’ escape from the minimum security section of a nearby incarceration facility just days before the (Ryens/Hughes) murders were committed, they presumed he was their man and forced the evidence to fit their prime suspect instead of finding the suspect who fits the evidence,” Parker said.

    Parker calls the Cooper case “the most grievous case of police and prosecution incompetency I’ve ever seen in more than 45 years in law enforcement. I am convinced evidence was planted in this case and evidence that could have lead to the real killers was ignored. I’m absolutely convinced Kevin Cooper is innocent.”

    Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe is a global firm better known for its work in handling mergers and acquisitions than handling criminal cases. However, Hile said he and firm executives believe in Cooper’s innocence so strongly, the case will continue to be handled on a pro bono basis.

    Even if Cooper is denied clemency and executed, Hile said he will continue to work to exonerate Cooper posthumously.

    “Our justice system cannot afford to execute someone who’s innocent. We can’t execute innocent people if people are going to believe in our justice system.” Hile said.

    EQUALLY PASSIONATE

    Dennis Kottmeier, San Bernardino County district attorney from 1981 to 1994, and Floyd Tidwell, who served as the county sheriff from 1983 to 1991, are just as adamantly convinced of Cooper’s guilt as Hile, Parker and others are of his innocence.

    Tidwell led the police investigation and international manhunt for Cooper, organizing a special task force of deputies to gather evidence in the case that led to Cooper’s conviction. Kottmeier was the lead prosecutor at trial.

    Kottmeier and Tidwell haven’t budged from their original belief in Cooper’s guilt in 33 years. Nor do they intend to do so, they vowed.

    “He does not deserve ever to get out of jail,” Tidwell declared when he heard about the latest clemency claim.

    “That man committed the most brutal murders I’ve ever noted in my 40-year career in law enforcement,” the former sheriff said. “He should stay on death row. His conviction could be commuted to life imprisonment, but I don’t think even that should happen. He deserves to be imprisoned and to face the death penalty.”

    Kottmeier agreed. He called the new clemency attempt “wrong, especially since he was convicted of killing an entire family.”

    The lone survivor, Joshua Ryen, has had “to grapple with the fact that his father, mother, sister and best friend were murdered and he was almost murdered,” Kottmeier continued. “Kevin Cooper should be put to death.”

    Those who suffered the most and who sought “justice for the victims” were anxious to witness Cooper’s execution, said Kottmeier, who was at San Quentin with John Kochis, now retired San Bernardino County chief deputy district attorney, Joshua Ryen and lead police investigator Sgt. Bill Arthur in 2004 to witness Cooper’s execution. They experienced bitter disappointment when Cooper received a temporary reprieve.

    “We can wait. Am I against clemency for Kevin Cooper?” Kottmeier rhetorically repeated. “You bet.”

    WHO’S STANDING BEHIND COOPER

    But Cooper is picking up supporters, and not just among those on his team.

    They include some jurors who convicted Cooper and recommended the death penalty, the Organization of American States’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and victim Peggy Ryen’s sister, Lillian Shaffer, among others.

    Shaffer said her sister was an expert markswoman and both she and Doug were “very strong people” as chiropractors and horse trainers.

    “It seems impossible that he (Cooper) could have done all of that destruction by himself. … One person certainly did not do it alone. … I ask that a fresh look be taken at Kevin Cooper and his conviction,” Peggy Ryen’s sister said in her letter to Gov. Brown supporting clemency.

    Texas attorney and law professor Sam D. Millsap Jr. called Cooper “a glaring example of the human wreckage, the living flotsam of a system that gets it wrong too often.” Although he believes the American criminal justice system is the world’s finest, he said the human factor “produces mistakes that destroy the lives of too many innocent men and women and could in this case lead to the execution of a man who has been butchered by a system that undermined the promise that our courts are fair and guarantee the protection of the innocent.”

    Millsap called on Gov. Brown to “prevent this execution and say, in the process, that the result to date in this case is beneath the people of the state of California.”

    The Cooper clemency is “a test of sorts,” Millsap added, warning “whether the state ... passes this test will say more about its real values than it does about Kevin Cooper or the miserable creatures who commit horrible crimes.

    “You have the power to ensure that the judgment of history will be that, when it came to Kevin Cooper, the state of California passed the test. Justice in this case is long overdue.”

    A PROSECUTOR TAKES COOPER’S SIDE

    Assistance has come from an unlikely corner — a prosecutor from Louisiana who tried a similar case. The move comes in part because A.M. Stroud III has publicly acknowledged that he ignored evidence that would have proven Glenn Ford’s innocence. Ford was exonerated in 2014 after spending 30 years on that state’s death row. He died of lung cancer a year later.

    “Instead of searching for the truth, I was determined to convict Mr. Ford,” Stroud said. “Because of my actions, an all-white jury convicted Mr. Ford and sentenced him to death in December 1984. Thereafter, appellate courts upheld Mr. Ford’s wrongful conviction. As a result, Mr. Ford spent 30 years on death row in the maximum security penitentiary at Anglola, Louisiana, one of the most horrible prisons in the country.

    “To be frank, when I prosecuted Mr. Ford for a crime he did not commit, I was arrogant, narcissistic and caught up in the culture of winning. I did not seek truth or justice. I sought only to win,” said Stroud.

    The prosecutor has appeared on “60 Minutes” and in other media to apologize for his actions and warn other prosecutors from making “revenge for victims the dominate motivation and winning at all costs the goal.”

    A PROSECUTOR AND SHERIFF WAIT

    The local lawmen currently in office, San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon and District Attorney Mike Ramos, say Cooper’s conviction is just. They issued brief statements through their respective public information officers. Ramos vowed to formally fight Cooper’s petition for clemency.

    The district attorney and sheriff stand firmly against clemency and an independent investigation.

    “In 1983, there was a complete and thorough homicide investigation completed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, identifying Kevin Cooper as the person responsible for the murder of four Chino Hills’ residents,” McMahon’s statement says.

    “Due to the efforts of the district attorney, a jury found him guilty and the ultimate sentence was the death penalty,” McMahon wrote. “Since Kevin Cooper’s conviction, this case has been heard in multiple appellate courts, including the California Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court, and the conviction has been upheld again and again.”

    Ramos’ statement was similar to McMahon’s:

    “Using a hatchet, Kevin Cooper slaughtered Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and an 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes and attempted to kill 8-year-old Joshua Ryen,” Ramos charged in his statement. “Cooper committed these atrocities after escaping from a nearby prison. He was convicted by a jury and his conviction has been affirmed by every court of appeal to review his case, including the California Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court.

    “Enough is enough,” Ramos said.

    http://www.dailybulletin.com/general...e-kevin-cooper

  3. #23
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    YouTube video from February 2016:


    It presents Cooper's case.

  4. #24
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Man Convicted Of 1983 Chino Hills Massacre Gets High-Profile Support

    (CBS News) — A death row inmate in California is getting high-profile support for a new round of DNA tests that could help exonerate him. Kevin Cooper was convicted for the 1983 murders of four people outside Los Angeles. He says he was framed. Sen. Kamala Harris said in a statement: “I hope the governor and the state will allow for such testing in the case of Kevin Cooper.”

    CBS News’ Erin Moriarty has covered this case for nearly 20 years. She began investigating the story after receiving a letter from Cooper himself in 1999. He was convinced DNA tests would prove his innocence, but when the results came back, they were not what he had hoped for.

    It was called the Chino Hills massacre. On June 4, 1983, Doug and Peggy Ryen, both 41 years old, were found in their home hacked to death, along with their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and a young neighbor, 11-year-old Christopher Hughes.

    Eight-year-old Josh Ryen’s throat was cut, but somehow he lived. Three weapons were used and Josh initially told investigators there were three attackers. But the multiple assailant theory was abandoned when investigators discovered Kevin Cooper next door. He’d been hiding out after escaping from prison on a burglary conviction.

    In February, 1985, Cooper was convicted of the murders although serious questions remain. How did Cooper manage to use three weapons at once. The prosecutor’s explanation? He’s ambidextrous.

    Cooper’s fingerprints were not found anywhere – just a single drop of blood that a state expert said was Cooper’s. The most troubling is the revelation that there was evidence pointing to another suspect and at testimony at trial, it was learned a sheriff’s deputy destroyed it.

    When Diana Roper, now deceased, found bloody overalls belonging to her boyfriend, a man with a violent criminal history, she turned them in. Floyd Tidwell was the sheriff at the time.

    “Wouldn’t you say that taking in coveralls that appear to be covered in blood, not sending them to a lab and throwing them away before trial would be highly unusual?” Moriarty asked.

    “I don’t know that that happened,” Tidwell said. “I’m very vague on that.”

    In the early 2000s, the state conducted DNA tests on evidence from the case. The results matched Cooper. Cooper’s attorneys believe new and advanced DNA testing on existing evidence, including hair samples and blood, could support the theory that there were multiple people involved in the murders.

    There are many, including a federal appeals court judge, who believe the evidence that was previously tested back in 2002 could have been planted. The governor is reviewing Cooper’s request for additional DNA testing.

    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/...-new-dna-test/
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  5. #25
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Governor’s Office seeks more information from death row inmate Kevin Cooper’s lawyer in clemency petition

    By Mike Cruz
    San Bernardino Sun

    The Governor’s Office wants more information from defense lawyer Norm Hile in his clemency petition for death row inmate Kevin Cooper, who was convicted more than three decades ago of the brutal hatchet attack of a Chino Hills family and a young boy staying with them.

    A six-page letter from Legal Affairs Secretary Peter A. Krause sent July 3 asked Hile a series of questions about his requests for additional DNA testing and theories about evidence handling in Cooper’s case. The letter said the Office of Gov. Jerry Brown had considered Hile’s arguments and that attorneys in the Governor’s Office had already met with him, his investigators, and attorneys from the state Attorney General’s Office.

    “Your allegations clearly deserve the serious consideration they have received and we now request more information in order to complete our evaluation of your requests for additional testing,” according to the letter signed by Krause.

    Hile has until August 17 to submit his replies. Prosecutors will then be given a chance to respond. The information received from both parties will determine the next steps in the case, including whether there will be additional testing, according to the Governor’s Office.

    Hile was not available for comment. San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael A. Ramos, whose office prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

    The bloody June 4, 1983, attack
    for which Cooper was convicted and sentenced took the lives of Doug and Peggy Ryen; their 10-year-old daughter Jessica; and neighbor Chris Hughes, 11, who was staying overnight at the Ryens’ home. The boy was a friend of the Ryens’ 8-year-old son Joshua, who suffered a slashed throat but survived the attack.

    Mary Ann Hughes, mother of Chris Hughes, said Cooper’s case is totally adjudicated. There are no more appeals, she said.

    “My son deserves to have justice carried out for him, so does my family and so does Josh Ryen,” Hughes said.

    In February, four law school deans asked Brown to open an independent investigation into Cooper’s case and grant a clemency petition that would put his case temporarily on hold during the investigation.

    Hile, of Orrick Herrington and Sutcliffe LLP, said all they’re asking for is to allow advanced, state-of-the-art DNA testing to be completed — the type of testing not available when Cooper went to trial. Hile pointed to the recent identification of the Golden State Killer through advanced DNA testing.

    The clemency bid seeks further testing, such as Touch DNA testing, to be performed on evidence including the murder weapon, the hatchet sheath, a T-shirt and the prison button — items that were presented at trial and have undergone previous testing.

    Cooper’s trial took place before the use of Touch DNA testing, which analyzes skin cells left behind on evidence, but prosecutors say it can’t provide relevant information in this case or exonerate Cooper, according to an earlier statement from Ramos.

    The hatchet and protective sheath were touched by the owners of the hideout house — a place near the Ryen’s home where Cooper stayed upon first escaping from prison — their families, visitors and guests whenever the hatchet was used to chop firewood. Consequently, many people have touched the exhibits outside of laboratory conditions, prosecutors say.

    In that earlier statement, Ramos said this was another attempt by Cooper to avoid punishment.

    Cooper, 60, has exhausted all appeals from his 1985 conviction and sentencing and could be one of the first prisoners executed if California resumes the death penalty. He has maintained his innocence.

    https://www.dailynews.com/2018/07/03...ency-petition/
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  6. #26
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Brown will consider new DNA testing in Chino Hills murder case

    By Laura J. Nelson
    The San Diego Union-Tribune

    Gov. Jerry Brown this week said that he would consider additional forensic testing to determine whether a man sentenced to death for a quadruple murder in Chino Hills should have a chance at clemency.

    Through more than a dozen rejected appeals, Kevin Cooper, now 60, has maintained his innocence in the murders that rocked the area in June 1983.

    When 11-year-old Christopher Hughes did not return from a sleepover in time for church one Sunday morning, his father went to a hilltop home to pick him up.

    He peered through the window and discovered the bloodied bodies of Doug and Peggy Ryen; their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica; and his son Christopher. The victims had been stabbed 143 times with an ice pick, an ax and a knife. The Ryens’ 8-year-old son, Joshua, was slashed in the throat but survived.

    Despite early suggestions that the brutal murders may have been committed by three white or Latino men, San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies honed in on Cooper, who had escaped from a prison in Chino two days earlier.

    Cooper was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985. He lost his last appeal in 2009, when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his case. If California resumes executions, Cooper could be third in line to die.

    His attorneys have argued that law enforcement planted evidence to incriminate him and destroyed clues that would have weakened his prosecution.

    In 2016, Cooper asked Brown to postpone his execution and order a new investigation, but there was little movement until the New York Times featured Cooper’s case in May.

    “Your allegations clearly deserve the serious consideration they have received,” Brown’s legal affairs secretary, Peter Krause, wrote to Cooper’s attorney in a six-page letter dated Tuesday.

    Cooper’s attorney, Norman Hile, has until Aug. 17 to respond to questions that seek clarity on which pieces of evidence he wants retested and what a new DNA examination would show. San Bernardino County prosecutors previously have asked Brown to deny Cooper’s petition for clemency.

    Hile did not return phone calls Wednesday. In May, he told the Associated Press: “If there are tests that could be done and we will pay for them, why shouldn't they be done before somebody is executed?"

    Cooper was arrested seven weeks after the killings. The case so rattled the area, according to news reports at the time, that homeowners began locking their doors at night and parents stopped letting their children attend sleepovers.

    During a five-month trial, prosecutors presented no direct evidence linking Cooper to the murders. Witnesses — including the lone survivor — gave conflicting testimonies.

    After Joshua Ryen was airlifted to a local hospital, he told a sheriff’s deputy and a social worker that his attackers were three white men. An hour later, he said they were Latino. Later that month, the boy told a deputy that Cooper was not the killer after he saw the man’s face on a wanted poster on television.

    During three days on the witness stand, Cooper repeatedly said he was innocent. At one point, he told a prosecutor, “You're trying to make me remember detail by detail… I only know what I didn't do.”

    Cooper’s attorneys argued at his trial and throughout the appeals process that the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department had destroyed or suppressed evidence suggesting three white men were the attackers, including a convicted contract killer.

    Police found ample evidence — cigarette butts, a button from a prison uniform, a leather hatchet sheath — that Cooper had spent two days in a house near the Ryens’ after he fled the Chino prison, where he was serving a sentence for burglary.

    But the clues at the Ryens’ unlocked home were scant: a bloody shoe print on a sheet in the master bedroom, and a single drop of blood on a wall in the hallway.

    In 2002, Cooper became the first death row inmate to win approval for additional DNA testing. The results showed that his DNA was on a bloody T-shirt found outside a bar near the Ryens' home, on two cigarette butts inside the family's stolen station wagon and in the blood droplet inside the home.

    But the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals intervened eight hours before Cooper’s execution in 2004, staying the lethal injection and ordering more tests on the bloodied T-shirt.

    "Cooper is either guilty as sin or he was framed by the police," wrote Judge Barry Silverman in the 9-2 majority ruling. "There is no middle ground."

    Tests later revealed that Cooper’s blood stains on the T-shirt had a high concentration of the chemical EDTA, which is used to preserve blood samples in police labs. The chemical was not present in the victim’s blood, suggesting that Cooper’s blood had been added later from a sample that police officers had collected and preserved.

    The 9th Circuit upheld Cooper’s death sentence in 2007. But in a 101-page dissent, signed by four other judges, 9th Circuit Judge William A. Fletcher wrote that Cooper was “probably innocent.”

    Fletcher noted that one witness had told police her boyfriend was a convicted contract killer who had worn a T-shirt similar to the bloodied piece of evidence — and had an ax that resembled the murder weapon. Police also seized a pair of the man’s bloodied overalls but destroyed them without testing them.

    Fletcher added: “We owe it to the victims of this horrible crime, to Kevin Cooper and to ourselves to get this one right.”

    http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/...704-story.html
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  7. #27
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Governor’s Office seeks more information from death row inmate Kevin Cooper’s lawyer in clemency petition

    The Mercury News

    The Governor’s Office wants more information from defense lawyer Norm Hile in his clemency petition for death row inmate Kevin Cooper, who was convicted more than three decades ago of the brutal hatchet attack of a Chino Hills family and a young boy staying with them.

    A six-page letter from Legal Affairs Secretary Peter A. Krause sent July 3 asked Hile a series of questions about his requests for additional DNA testing and theories about evidence handling in Cooper’s case. The letter said the Office of Gov. Jerry Brown had considered Hile’s arguments and that attorneys in the Governor’s Office had already met with him, his investigators, and attorneys from the state Attorney General’s Office.

    “Your allegations clearly deserve the serious consideration they have received and we now request more information in order to complete our evaluation of your requests for additional testing,” according to the letter signed by Krause.

    Hile has until August 17 to submit his replies. Prosecutors will then be given a chance to respond. The information received from both parties will determine the next steps in the case, including whether there will be additional testing, according to the Governor’s Office.

    Hile was not available for comment. San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael A. Ramos, whose office prosecuted the case, declined to comment.

    The bloody June 4, 1983, attack for which Cooper was convicted and sentenced took the lives of Doug and Peggy Ryen; their 10-year-old daughter Jessica; and neighbor Chris Hughes, 11, who was staying overnight at the Ryens’ home. The boy was a friend of the Ryens’ 8-year-old son Joshua, who suffered a slashed throat but survived the attack.

    Mary Ann Hughes, mother of Chris Hughes, said Cooper’s case is totally adjudicated. There are no more appeals, she said.

    “My son deserves to have justice carried out for him, so does my family and so does Josh Ryen,” Hughes said.

    In February, four law school deans asked Brown to open an independent investigation into Cooper’s case and grant a clemency petition that would put his case temporarily on hold during the investigation.

    Hile, of Orrick Herrington and Sutcliffe LLP, said all they’re asking for is to allow advanced, state-of-the-art DNA testing to be completed — the type of testing not available when Cooper went to trial. Hile pointed to the recent identification of the Golden State Killer through advanced DNA testing.

    The clemency bid seeks further testing, such as Touch DNA testing, to be performed on evidence including the murder weapon, the hatchet sheath, a T-shirt and the prison button — items that were presented at trial and have undergone previous testing.

    Cooper’s trial took place before the use of Touch DNA testing, which analyzes skin cells left behind on evidence, but prosecutors say it can’t provide relevant information in this case or exonerate Cooper, according to an earlier statement from Ramos.

    The hatchet and protective sheath were touched by the owners of the hideout house — a place near the Ryen’s home where Cooper stayed upon first escaping from prison — their families, visitors and guests whenever the hatchet was used to chop firewood. Consequently, many people have touched the exhibits outside of laboratory conditions, prosecutors say.
    In that earlier statement, Ramos said this was another attempt by Cooper to avoid punishment.

    Cooper, 60, has exhausted all appeals from his 1985 conviction and sentencing and could be one of the first prisoners executed if California resumes the death penalty. He has maintained his innocence.

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/07/...ency-petition/
    In the Shadow of Your Wings
    1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit!

  8. #28
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    'They framed me': On death row for decades, Kevin Cooper pushes for new DNA tests in Chino Hills murders

    The Los Angeles Times

    In a tiny visitors cell at San Quentin State Prison, Kevin Cooper makes a pitch for his innocence — an argument that, after three decades on death row and endless legal battles, suddenly has new life.

    In 1983, he was a convicted burglar and prison escapee accused of hacking two adults and two children to death in San Bernardino County. He was convicted and sentenced to death. His supporters claim in a clemency petition that he was framed by sheriff’s deputies, undone by poor defense lawyers and railroaded by racism.

    “They framed me because I was framable,” says Cooper, now 60, his graying hair falling from cornrows to the nape of his neck. With countless letters to reporters and media interviews over the years, he has skillfully attracted public attention to a case that prosecutors and the courts have long considered closed.

    Doubts about Cooper’s conviction have grown since the trial, even as state and federal courts have repeatedly upheld the verdict. At least three jurors have said they are no longer sure he is the killer. Lillian Shaffer, the sister of one victim, now says “it seems impossible that he could have done all of that destruction by himself.” A federal appellate judge, in a vigorous 2009 dissent, warned that the state might have the wrong man.

    In May, Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called for fresh DNA testing after a New York Times column called the case against Cooper “outrageous.” Earlier this year, four California law school deans called on Gov. Jerry Brown to open an independent investigation, declaring that Cooper’s claim of innocence “has never been fully and fairly evaluated.”

    With Cooper’s judicial appeals exhausted, his fate lies principally with the governor, whose legal staff has been digging deeply into Cooper’s 2016 clemency petition and the case record, as well as discussing the situation with the current prosecution and defense teams.

    In a July 3 letter to the defense, Brown’s legal affairs secretary, Peter A. Krause, left the door open to further DNA testing while pressing defense attorney Norman Hile, in nearly six single-spaced pages, to justify the arguments he is making.

    “Each time, additional forensic testing has been performed in this case…the test results only further established Mr. Cooper’s guilt,” Krause wrote, asking Hile to answer by Aug. 17.

    Hile promised to reply to Krause’s queries.

    “It’s about time they acted,” Hile said in an interview. “We’re glad that they’re considering the DNA testing.”

    Michael Ramos, the San Bernardino County district attorney, strongly objects to further testing, arguing in a May statement addressing renewed interest in the case that the lone survivor and the relatives of the victims have suffered “repeated and false claims from Cooper and his propaganda machine designed to undermine public confidence in the just verdict.”

    Brown, who has issued far more pardons than any modern predecessor in California, must confront two central questions: How sure does the state have to be to put a man to death? How sure can it be that Kevin Cooper committed this crime?

    Figuring out what happened 35 years ago is complicated. Memories have faded. Witnesses and investigators have died. This story is the result of a 10-week investigation by 10 reporters with Northwestern University’s Medill Justice Project who interviewed more than three dozen people, reviewed thousands of pages of documents and spent hours with Cooper at San Quentin.

    The crime

    On June 5, 1983, William Hughes peered through a sliding glass door into the master bedroom of the Ryen family’s house in Chino Hills. He spotted the bloodied body of his 11-year-old son Christopher, who had spent the night with the family. Nearby were Peggy and Doug Ryen, hacked and slashed to death. Eight-year-old Joshua Ryen lay on the floor, his throat slit, but alive. Out of sight in the hall was Jessica Ryen, 10, no longer breathing.

    Three days earlier, Kevin Cooper, then 25, had escaped from the California Institution for Men in Chino, about four miles away.

    He broke into an empty house on English Place, about 150 steps across a grassy field from the Ryen home. He spent two nights there, planning his next move. He called two friends asking for money. They declined. Phone records show that one of the calls was made from the hideout house shortly before the murders.

    Cooper would say later that he knew nothing about the killings and was by that time on the road to the Mexican border, about two hours’ drive away. Although police said they found prison-issued tobacco and DNA consistent with Cooper’s in the Ryens’ stolen station wagon, he told the jury he had never been in the car.

    San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department detectives soon named Cooper as the primary suspect. By the time Cooper was captured on July 30, rowing away from a dock near Santa Barbara, community sentiment ran strongly in favor of his guilt. Protesters shouted and raised signs. One poster read, “Hang the nigger.”

    The verdict

    During the trial a year later, prosecutors said a drop of blood taken from the wall of the Ryens’ home was consistent with Cooper’s genetic profile. They pointed to the hand-rolled cigarettes in the station wagon. They produced a blood-stained hatchet found in the weeds near the Ryens’ house and showed the jury a hatchet sheath found in a closet in the house where Cooper had stayed.

    Prosecutors said footprints found on a spa cover and a sheet in the Ryens’ house matched one in the hideaway house. The footprints were consistent with Pro Keds Dude tennis shoes issued to California prison inmates. Investigators also shared evidence of what may have been blood on shower walls in the hideout house, suggesting that the killer washed up there before fleeing.

    Joshua, the sole survivor, said on a videotape shown to the jury that he saw a single man or a single shadow during the attack. He said the person had a “puff” of hair. In an earlier photo that prosecutors sought to present in court, Cooper wore a dashiki and his hair in an Afro.

    The trial lasted four months, stretching into 1985. After deliberating for five days, the jury found Cooper guilty of all four murders and the attempted killing of Joshua. They returned to the jury room and, a few days later, concluded that Cooper should be executed.

    Over and over, state and federal courts rejected Cooper’s assertion that he was wrongly convicted. In 1991, the California Supreme Court ruled that it was “utterly unreasonable” to imagine that someone else in the neighborhood where Cooper was hiding committed the murders. The “sheer volume and consistency of the evidence is overwhelming,” the court wrote.

    In February 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit stepped in and stopped the clock just three hours and 42 minutes before his scheduled execution. Previous DNA testing had connected Cooper to the crime scene and to a bloody T-shirt found not far away, but the court ordered more tests, on strands of hair found in Jessica Ryen’s left hand and on the shirt, which the prosecution had not introduced at the trial.

    The tests on the hair suggested that it came not from the scalp of an attacker, but from the Ryen family or from animals. Cooper’s blood on the shirt tested positive for a preservative used in blood samples, leading his defenders to accuse the government of tampering.

    After reviewing the tests and hearing testimony from 42 witnesses, Chief U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff said in 2005 that the conviction should stand: “There is overwhelming evidence that Petitioner is the person guilty of these murders.”

    Cooper appealed again to the 9th Circuit, often considered the most liberal federal appellate court in the country. A three-judge panel affirmed Huff’s decision in 2007.

    A majority of the full court declined to reopen the matter in 2009. But one 9th Circuit Judge, William Fletcher, wrote a 100-page dissent, adopted in full by four of his colleagues. He wrote, “The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man.”

    Cooper's questions

    Cooper says he was convicted in a “bogus-ass trial.” Others share his doubts.

    “Too much continues to bother me about the case,” one juror wrote in 2004 in support of Cooper’s clemency petition. Referring to the verdict and death sentence, the juror said, “I now regret that decision.”

    Cooper’s current attorneys question the competence of his initial defense team. David Negus, who represented him at the trial, said in a 1996 declaration on Cooper’s behalf that his performance in the case was “negatively affected” by his stress and exhaustion. Negus added that he did not keep up with the daily trial transcript and rejected Cooper’s request to bring on a second lawyer, something he recognized only later was beneficial in complex death penalty cases.

    One motion, the lawyer said, was just “thrown together” for lack of time and he did not complete a comprehensive statement on the physical evidence in the case. Interviewed this year by The Medill Justice Project, he said that with more experience he could have done a better job.

    A key piece of evidence in the trial was a series of shoe prints at the scene.

    http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...htmlstory.html
    In the Shadow of Your Wings
    1 A Prayer of David. Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit!

  9. #29
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Condemned California man seeks special DNA investigation

    A California death row inmate with some high-profile supporters on Friday asked Gov. Jerry Brown to appoint an independent special master to reinvestigate the case and oversee new DNA testing.

    Kevin Cooper's lawyer says the extraordinary steps would show Cooper is innocent and that law enforcement officials planted false evidence.

    Cooper is awaiting execution for the 1983 Chino Hills hatchet and knife killings of 4 people. He escaped from a nearby minimum-security prison east of Los Angeles 2 days before the slayings of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old neighbor Christopher Hughes.

    California's former attorney general and now U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris and New York Times' columnist Nicholas Kristof are among those calling for new DNA testing.

    "Nothing could be more important to the integrity of our justice system than ensuring that an innocent person is not executed," Cooper's attorney, Norman Hile, wrote.

    The 45-page letter he sent to Brown on Friday asks for "a broader innocence investigation to be overseen by a special master appointed by the governor."

    The filing came in response to the governor's request last month for more details in Cooper's clemency petition. The governor's office said Friday the response was being reviewed.

    San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos did not immediately respond Friday. Ramos has opposed additional testing and says Cooper, now 60, is indisputably guilty.

    Brown was asked to order new DNA testing that Hile says would be 5 to 6 times more sensitive than the tests on evidence that implicated Cooper in 2002 and 2004.

    It also claims that 2 witnesses recently came forward with details of separate confessions by the real killers. Hile wouldn't provide their names or declarations "due to considerations for their personal safety."

    Hile says he also has obtained a DNA sample from a man they say was the real killer to be compared to the new DNA samples they want Brown to order as part of his clemency consideration.

    (source: Associated Press)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  10. #30
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Death row inmate gets special DNA review in Jerry Brown’s final Christmas pardons

    By Sophia Bollag and Amy Chance
    Sacramento Bee

    In one of his last acts as California governor, Jerry Brown on Monday ordered new testing of physical evidence in an infamous 1983 murder case.

    Kevin Cooper, the defendant in the case, is on death row, but argues DNA testing will show he was framed.

    Brown announced the order as part of his Christmas Eve clemency actions, which include 143 pardons and 131 commutations. They include pardons for several people who entered the country legally but now face deportation, as well as for two people affected by the Camp Fire in Paradise.

    The actions cap Brown’s second eight-year stint as governor during he sought to reduce prison populations. With 283 commutations and 1,332 pardons, he’s granted more clemency requests in his last eight years in office than any of his last eight predecessors.

    “You’ve got to manage this,” Brown told The Bee in an interview earlier this month. “Having people locked up with zero hope... that’s the best way to build prison gangs -- to have tens of thousands of people locked up with no chance of getting out.”

    Cooper, now in his 60s, is awaiting execution for the slayings of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old neighbor Christopher Hughes in Chino Hills. Prosecutors had asked Brown to deny Cooper’s request for new testing.

    His case has attracted national media attention and calls by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, and state Treasurer John Chiang for new DNA testing.

    Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger twice rejected Cooper’s clemency petitions.

    In his Monday order, Brown called for new testing of a t-shirt, a towel and the hatchet used in the murders.

    “I take no position on Mr. Cooper’s guilt or innocence at this time,” Brown wrote. “But colorable factual questions have been raised about whether advances in DNA technology warrant limited retesting of certain physical evidence.”

    Also on Monday, Brown pardoned former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who was convicted on conflict-of-interest charges more than 25 years ago. He was accused of steering government contracts to a nonprofit run by his wife, according to Bee archives. He served almost four years of probation and one year in jail.

    Brown wrote that Honig has led an “honest and upright life” since he completed his sentence and has stayed involved in public education work.

    He’s the second politician Brown has pardoned in recent months. Last month, Brown pardoned former state Sen. Rod Wright, who was convicted of felony perjury and voting fraud in 2014.

    In making decisions about commutation, Brown said he considers the inmate’s behavior and sentence length. He says he often looks at people with very long sentences who have used state programs to improve their lives.

    “Many of them avail themselves of programs,” Brown told The Bee. “They avoid bad behavior, they follow the rules, or if they did have bad behavior they change.”

    Seven of Brown’s clemency attempts have been overturned
    by the state Supreme Court in recent weeks, marking the first rejections of a governor’s clemency attempts in at least half a century, according to the state’s Judicial Council.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article223518905.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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