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Kevin Cooper (prisoner)

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Kevin Cooper
Cooper in 2006
Born
Richard Goodman

(1958-01-08) January 8, 1958 (age 67)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Criminal statusOn death row
Conviction(s)First-degree murder (4 counts), attempted murder
Criminal penaltyDeath (de jure)
Websitekevincooper.org

Kevin Cooper (born Richard Goodman; January 8, 1958)[1] is a prisoner at San Quentin State Prison's death row in California.[2] Cooper was found guilty of four murders in the Chino Hills area of California in 1983. Cooper's conviction has garnered repeated attention from both Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times[3] and Erin Moriarty on the CBS News program "48 Hours."[4] There have been accusations that Cooper received an inadequate defense, as well as prosecutorial misconduct such as destruction of evidence, withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense, planting of evidence, brainwashing to witnesses, and perjured testimony by the Sheriff's Department. There have also been practical questions raised, such as how Cooper, at 155 pounds, and allegedly acting alone, overpowered a 6-foot, 2-inch ex-military policeman and his athletic wife, both of whom had loaded firearms close at hand. It has also been questioned why a single perpetrator would use 3 or 4 different weapons to commit the murders, and why none of the victims were able to run away while the others were being attacked.

Cooper's habeas corpus petitions have been denied. The evidence in the case of the original trial has been reviewed by the California Supreme Court, by the United States District Court and by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2007, two judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit wrote that "As the district court and all state courts, have repeatedly found, evidence of Cooper's guilt was overwhelming. The tests for which he asked to show his innocence 'once and for all' show nothing of the sort."[5] In a concurring opinion, however, Judge Margaret McKeown said she was troubled that the court could not resolve the question of Cooper's guilt "once and for all" and noted that significant evidence bearing on Cooper's culpability has been lost, destroyed or left unpursued.[5]

In a dissenting opinion written in 2009, Judge William A. Fletcher began by stating: "The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man."[6] Fletcher wrote that the police may have tampered with the evidence and that the Ninth Circuit Court should have reheard the case en banc and should have "ordered the district judge to give Cooper the fair hearing he has never had." Five federal circuit court judges joined in Fletcher's dissent and five more stated that Cooper has never had a fair hearing to determine his innocence.[6] In a lecture, Fletcher declared "the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department framed him".[3]

Early life

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Cooper was born Richard Goodman on January 8, 1958, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he was two months old, his mother placed him in an orphanage. At the age of six months, he was adopted by Melvin and Esther Cooper, who renamed him Kevin Cooper. As a child, Kevin Cooper was subjected to physical abuse and ran away from home numerous times. As an adolescent, he was sent to juvenile custody numerous times.[1]

Previous criminal record

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Cooper's criminal past included theft and burglary. He was sentenced to a one-to-two-year prison term in 1977 for burglarizing a home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Cooper was never tried but later stipulated to kidnapping and raping a minor female who interrupted him during a burglary in Pennsylvania.[7] Cooper agreed to the stipulation on the advice of his lawyer who mistakenly believed this admission would help Cooper avoid the death penalty in the Chino Hills case.[7] During the purported crime, he threatened to kill the teen-age victim.[8] Over the next five years, he was convicted and sentenced to jail twice for burglaries and was released on probation in 1982.[9] He escaped from custodial settings in Pennsylvania 11 times.[7] In late 1982, Cooper fled to California after escaping from a Pennsylvania psychiatric facility.[10] In California, Cooper was soon convicted of two burglaries in the Los Angeles area. He began serving a four-year sentence under the alias David Trautman[11] at the California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino on April 29, 1983, where he was assigned to the minimum security section.[12] On June 2, 1983, Cooper climbed through a hole in the prison fence[13] and walked away from the prison across an open field.[13][14]

Chino Hills murders and arrest

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On the morning of June 5, 1983, Bill Hughes arrived at a semi-rural home in Chino Hills, California, where his 11-year-old son Christopher had spent the night. Inside, he found Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and his own son dead. They had been chopped with a hatchet, sliced with a knife, and stabbed with an ice-pick. Josh Ryen, the 8-year-old son of Douglas and Peggy, had survived. His throat had been cut. Mrs. Ryen's purse was in plain sight on the kitchen counter, but no money had been taken. The family station wagon was gone; it was discovered several days later in Long Beach, California, about 50 miles southwest of Chino Hills.[10]

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputies who responded to the call identified Kevin Cooper as the likely killer. He had admittedly hidden out in the vacant house next door, the Lease house, 125 yards away, for two days. He had made repeated calls from this house to two female friends asking for money to help with his escape, but they had refused. Cooper testified at trial that he had left that house as soon as it got dark on June 4 and had hitchhiked to Mexico. It was established that Cooper checked into a hotel in Tijuana, about 130 miles south of Chino Hills, at 4:30 pm on June 5.

There, Cooper befriended an American couple who owned a sailboat. He hitched a ride on the boat with them as a crew member cruising the Baja and Southern California coasts.

Seven weeks later, while still staying on the couple's boat, Cooper was accused of raping a woman at knifepoint on a boat docked nearby.[15] While visiting the sheriff's office to report the crime, the rape victim saw a wanted poster with Cooper's photograph and identified him as the rapist. Deputies and coast guard personnel detained him as he tried to swim ashore.[16] Cooper was never charged with rape or assault in this matter.[citation needed]

Trial

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On Cooper's motion, the court changed the venue of the trial from San Bernardino County to San Diego County. Cooper pleaded guilty to the charge of escape from prison.[11]

In videotaped testimony, Josh Ryen said that the evening before the murders, just before the family left for the Blade barbecue, three Mexican men came to the Ryen home looking for work. Ryen did not identify the killer, but said in an audiotape with his treating psychiatrist that he saw the back of a single man attacking his mother. Ryen told a sheriff he thought three men had done it because "I thought it was them. And, you know, like they stopped up that night," but he did not actually see three people during the incident.[11]

Cooper testified in his own defense. He admitted escaping from CIM, hiding out and sleeping at the Lease house, but denied committing the murders or being in the Ryen house. Cooper said he left the Lease house on foot, hitchhiked, stole a purse, and eventually made his way to Mexico. The defense pointed out the inconsistencies in Ryen's testimony, presented evidence of other events apparently not involving Cooper that might have had something to do with the killings, and presented an expert witness that criticized the forensic investigation.[11]

A jury convicted Cooper of four counts of first degree murder and one count of attempted murder with the intentional infliction of great bodily injury, and then imposed the death penalty.[11]

During the penalty phase of Cooper's trial, a stipulation was entered that “Kevin Cooper was the man who abducted (the female minor) on October 8th of 1982 from the Heath residence, kidnapped her, and later raped her in Frock Park."[7] Cooper agreed to the stipulation on the advice of his lawyer who mistakenly believed this admission would help Cooper avoid the death penalty in this case.

Assessment by courts, governors and independent groups

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California Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court of California upheld Cooper's conviction in May 1991.[17]

Cooper was scheduled to be executed on February 10, 2004, but on February 8, 2004, a three judge panel consisting of Judges Pamela Rymer, Ronald Gould and James Browning heard Cooper's petition and rejected it by a vote of 2–1.

Judge Browning, the lone dissenter, was able to assemble enough judges to get an en banc ruling blocking the execution to allow further DNA testing. Ultimately, the US Supreme Court unanimously upheld the stay, effectively making it impossible to carry out the death warrant.

The postponement followed a campaign by various groups in the Bay Area and around the country, such as the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the ACLU, Death Penalty Focus and The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Denial of clemency by California Governor Schwarzenegger

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On January 30, 2004, the office of Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger issued the following statement regarding his decision not to grant clemency to Kevin Cooper:

I have carefully weighed the claims presented in Kevin Cooper's plea for clemency. The state and federal courts have reviewed this case for more than 18 years. Evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming, and his conversion to faith and his mentoring of others, while commendable, do not diminish the cruelty and destruction he has inflicted on so many. His is not a case for clemency.[18]

On December 17, 2010, Cooper filed a second clemency petition to Governor Schwarzenegger. This petition laid out new developments in the evidence that were not known when the first one was denied in 2004.[19] The second clemency petition also cited the conclusions and observations of twelve appellate judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, including the fact that blood taken from Cooper after he was arrested was contaminated with the DNA of another person,[20] that a sheriff's deputy had lied at Cooper's trial about destruction of key evidence,[21] and that three witnesses, never interviewed by the prosecution, had come forward with strong evidence of other possible perpetrators.[22]

Just before Governor Schwarzenegger left office in January 2011, his office wrote a letter to Cooper's lawyer stating that the application "raises many evidentiary concerns which deserve a thorough and careful review of voluminous records."[23] The letter further stated that since the Governor had only two weeks left in office, he had decided to leave the matter for Governor-elect Jerry Brown's determination.

U.S. Ninth Circuit Court and U.S Supreme Court deny appeals

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Cooper has filed multiple appeals and applications for a writ of habeas corpus, all of which have been denied. On December 4, 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Cooper's third federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The panel concluded: "As the district court, and all state courts, have repeatedly found, evidence of Cooper's guilt was overwhelming. The tests that he asked for to show his innocence 'once and for all' show nothing of the sort."[5] While Judge McKeown concurred, she expressed doubts about the certainty of Cooper's guilt, saying that critical evidence had been lost due to mishandling by the investigators.

On May 11, 2009, the Ninth Circuit denied Cooper's request for a rehearing en banc of the 2007 panel decision. Four judges (Fletcher, Wardlaw, Fisher, and Reinhardt) filed dissents, indicating that they disagreed with the decision. Judge Fletcher stated that there was a strong likelihood that the police tampered with the evidence and accused Judge Huff of both deliberately ignoring the Court's instructions to perform proper testing and intentionally rigging the testing in favor of the state, while Judge Wardlaw stated "as far as due process is concerned 25 years of flawed proceedings are as good as no proceedings at all." Eleven judges joined the dissents (fourteen votes were required to grant the request for a rehearing), though Judge Stephen Reinhardt hinted that the gap may have been closer.[6] Judge Rymer, who authored the original panel decision, filed a concurrence defending both the original decision and the decision to deny an en banc hearing, arguing that Fletcher should have deferred to the AEDPA rather than questioning the integrity of the state's expert.

Cooper's petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court was denied on November 30, 2009.

Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recommends a review

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In April 2011 Cooper filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) alleging that his human rights had been violated in multiple respects by his prosecution, conviction and death sentence. The IACHR concluded that the United States had violated Articles I, II, XVIII and XXVI of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. The Commission found eight instances where Cooper's due process rights had been violated, that Cooper had received ineffective assistance of trial counsel, and that there were serious questions about racial discrimination in Cooper's prosecution. The IACHR recommended that Cooper be granted "effective relief, including the review of his trial and sentence."[24]

American Bar Association recommendation for clemency

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On Saturday, March 19, 2016, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Paulette Brown, submitted a letter to Governor of California Jerry Brown, suggesting that Cooper be granted clemency due to claims of racial bias, police misconduct, evidence tampering and poor-quality defense counsel. "We recommend that this investigation include testing of forensic evidence still available to be analyzed to put to rest the questions that continue to plague his death sentence. This is the only course of action that can ensure that Mr. Cooper receives due process and the protection of his rights under the Constitution," Ms. Brown wrote.[25]

New DNA testing order by California Governor Brown

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In May 2018, Nicholas Kristof wrote an article in The New York Times highlighting the case, arguing that the truth could be determined by doing advanced testing on the bloodstained t-shirt, the hatchet handle and the hand towel used by the murderer and including diagrams showing both that Lee Furrow's stepmother lived close to where the victim's car was recovered and that Officer Steven Moran most likely planted evidence to frame Cooper. Soon afterward, the Attorney General of California Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein both publicly called for advanced DNA testing. In response, DA Michael Ramos submitted a response to Cooper's petition, calling for the petition to be refused. Ramos would also file to have Cooper executed following his failed attempt to be re-elected.

On July 3, California Governor Jerry Brown hinted that he might be willing to approve DNA testing, sending Cooper's attorneys a list of questions. On August 17, the defense submitted their response, revealing that they had managed to acquire Lee Furrow's DNA for testing. On October 6, Nick Kristof wrote a follow-up in which he reported that Lee Furrow had told him that he was now open for testing to "clear his name."

In December 2018, outgoing Gov. Brown ordered new DNA testing in the Cooper case.[26] The testing has since been revealed; insufficient DNA was recovered from the shirt but a profile that was neither Cooper or Furrow was recovered from a hand towel taken from the victim's house.[3] While Vial VV-2 only had Cooper's profile, it was also found drained of blood save for residue at the bottom, which was described as "unusual" by DNA experts Bicka Barlow and Marc Taylor (both of whom stated that testing in 1983 was such that only a small amount of the blood would have been used.)

Independent investigation order by California Governor Newsom

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On May 28, 2021, governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order appointing the law firm Morrison & Foerster[27] to "launch an independent investigation of death row inmate Kevin Cooper’s case as part of the evaluation of Cooper’s application for clemency. The investigation will review trial and appellate records in the case, the facts underlying the conviction and all available evidence, including the results of the recently conducted DNA tests previously ordered by the Governor to examine additional evidence in the case using the latest, most scientifically reliable forensic testing."[28] The investigation would ultimately reject Cooper's claim, but acknowledged that it had not fully evaluated claims of prosecutorial and law enforcement misconduct "except in instances in which they determined that they were relevant to Cooper's claim of innocence." The investigation also acknowledged that it had not evaluated claims that Cooper's trial and the verdict had been influenced by racial prejudice, and also failed to examine previously undisclosed documents.[29] Cooper's attorneys responded the following day, arguing that the investigation was "demonstrably incomplete" and that the investigators had "failed to follow the basic steps taken by all innocence investigations that have led to so many exonerations of the wrongfully convicted."[30]

Cooper's attorneys would release another response to the Special Counsel on October 26, 2023, claiming that the investigation had been fatally compromised by only reviewing prosecution documents that had been presented at trial despite Morrison Foerster having earlier requested all documents in the prosecution's possession. They also argued that Alan Keel (the DNA expert used by Morrison Foerster to assess the evidence) was unreliable due to having professional ties with both Daniel Gregonis (who Cooper's attorneys accused of both incompetence and actively forging evidence) and Ed Blake (who had been involved in the 2002 DNA testing and rejected the idea that tampering had occurred), alleged misconduct in the Jane Dorotik case (Dorotik was exonerated in 2022 and would later sue both Keel and Blake in June 2023), and perceived scientific errors in made in his assessment (Keel tried to guess a sample's age based on how degraded it was even though the rate of degradation depends on environmental factors like heat, light and moisture, and he was also unaware that when blood dried it created an easily transferrable powder, and also claimed that EDTA would automatically stop any degredation.).[31]

On December 14, 2023, ABA President Mary Smith would write a letter to the Governor urging further investigation, arguing that the failure to examine the undisclosed documents in the state's possession made it impossible to have confidence in the accuracy of the verdict.[32]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "COOPER'S BACKGROUND". February 7, 2017. Retrieved March 30, 2023.
  2. ^ (CDCR), California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "State of California Inmate Locator". inmatelocator.cdcr.ca.gov. Archived from the original on February 4, 2021. Retrieved March 6, 2018.
  3. ^ a b c Kristof, Nicholas (January 23, 2021). "Opinion | Is an Innocent Man Still Languishing on Death Row?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved October 28, 2021.
  4. ^ "A death row inmate's case is getting a fresh look after more than three decades. But evidence is missing and some witnesses are dead". CBS News. January 31, 2022. Retrieved March 21, 2022.
  5. ^ a b c Cooper v. Brown, 510 F.3d 870 (9th Cir. 2007).
  6. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference enbancdenial was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b c d Ramos, Michael A.; Bulloch, Robert C. "DA Response to Cooper clemency petition" (PDF). San Bernardino County District Attorney. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 19, 2018. Retrieved August 19, 2018.
  8. ^ Cooper v. Brown, 3rd Federal Reporter, p 895 (United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit December 4, 2007).
  9. ^ O'Connor, J. Patrick (2012). Scapegoat: the Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper. Rock Hill, SC: Strategic Media Books, LLC. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-9842333-7-3.
  10. ^ a b Williams, Carol J. (January 3, 2010). "Doubts remain -- but legal recourse does not -- in Kevin Cooper case". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 25, 2012.
  11. ^ a b c d e People v. Cooper, 53 Cal. 3d 771 (1991)
  12. ^ O'Connor, J. Patrick (2012). Scapegoat: The Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper. Rock Hill, SC: Strategic Media, Inc. pp. 55–58. ISBN 978-0-9842333-7-3.
  13. ^ a b O'Connor, J. Patrick (2012). Scapegoat: the Chino Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper. Rock Hill, SC: Strategic Media, Inc. p. 59. ISBN 978-0-9842333-7-3.
  14. ^ Cooper v. Brown, 565 F.3d 581 (2009), p.582
  15. ^ "FindLaw's United States Ninth Circuit case and opinions". Findlaw. Retrieved March 30, 2023.
  16. ^ "Suspect in California Slayings Captured After Rape on Boat". The New York Times. August 1983.
  17. ^ Peoplev. Cooper (Supreme Court of California May 6, 1991), Text.
  18. ^ "Press release". Office of the Governor of California. January 30, 2004. Retrieved December 26, 2006. [permanent dead link‍]
  19. ^ Petition for Executive Clemency, Kevin Cooper, December 17, 2010
  20. ^ Cooper v. Brown, 565 F.3d 581, 599 (9th Cir. 2009)
  21. ^ Exhibit 11, 29:22-31 of Petition for Executive Clemency 2010, citing transcript of miscellaneous hearing before the Hon. Marilyn Huff, Friday April 1, 2005
  22. ^ [Petition, page 2]
  23. ^ Letter to Norman Hile from Andrea Lynn Hoch, Legal Affairs Secretary to Governor Schwarzenegger, dated January 2, 2011
  24. ^ Tadayon, Ali (September 23, 2015). "CHINO HILLS: Retrial sought for Kevin Cooper, convicted in 1983 massacre". The Press Enterprise. Retrieved October 28, 2015.
  25. ^ "Bar seeks clemency for Kevin Cooper". March 19, 2016. Retrieved March 25, 2016.
  26. ^ "Gov. Jerry Brown orders new tests in quadruple-murder case of death row inmate Kevin Cooper". Los Angeles Times. December 25, 2018. Retrieved June 15, 2023.
  27. ^ Newsom, Gavin (May 28, 2021). EXECUTIVE ORDER N-06-21. Sacramento, CA: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
  28. ^ "Governor Newsom Announces Clemency Actions, Signs Executive Order for Independent Investigation of Kevin Cooper Case" (Press release). Sacramento, CA: Office of Governor Gavin Newsom. May 28, 2021. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
  29. ^ Cite error: The named reference la-times-special-counsel-report was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  30. ^ "Cooper statement" (PDF). freekevincooper.org. January 14, 2023. Retrieved March 30, 2023.
  31. ^ "Cooper-Rebuttal" (PDF). freekevincooper.org. October 26, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2024.
  32. ^ "ABA-Letter" (PDF). freekevincooper.org. December 14, 2023. Retrieved February 21, 2024.
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