https://socialistaction.org/2020/02/05/death-row-inmate-kevin-cooper-fights-for-his-innocence/
Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper fights for his innocence
Socialist Action
/
2 days ago
By DON HARMON
Since 1983, African American Kevin Cooper has been incarcerated on Death
Row at California’s San Quentin State Prison. Wrongfully convicted
during a nationally-covered
racist frame-up trial in San Bernardino County, Cooper came within hours
of being executed in 2004. But thanks to a broad movement demanding
justice and
freedom and ever-mounting evidence of innocence, a ruling by the 9th
Circuit Federal Court of Appeals stayed his execution, literally at the
mid0night
hour. Cooper has for decades become a leading social justice fighter and
an opponent of the death penalty.
Stretching over decades, Cooper’s case has been repeatedly exposed as
rife with overt corruption, gross incompetence and racial bias. As
followers of American
history will note, African Americans are often subjected to the full
weight of this nation’s racist and classist criminal injustice system.
The details
of Kevin Cooper’s case fully illustrate this ugly tradition; despite all
evidence to the contrary, the “blame it on the Black guy” thesis has
been fully
operative.
Now, in January 2020, Cooper’s attorney, Norman C. Hile of the
prestigious Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe global law firm, sent a
letter to California
Governor Gavin Newsom requesting that the Governor’s office order a
“complete innocence investigation.” Previously, Governor Newsom ordered
a stay of all
further executions in California and in so doing, granted a reprieve to
Cooper.
Attorney Hile’s letter summarizes the key facts proving that Kevin
Cooper is innocent of the brutal 1983 Ryen-Hughes murders in Chino
Hills, California.
[For a detailed expose´ of the Cooper case see: Scapegoat: The Chino
Hills Murders and the Framing of Kevin Cooper by J. Patrick Cooper.]
The recent Governor Newsom-ordered DNA testing on a tan t-shirt and
orange towel – items found at the murder scene – according to the
initial report,
do not match Cooper’s DNA. None of the hairs from the victims’ hands,
according to this report, came from an African American.
Most egregiously, a vial of Kevin Cooper’s blood, taken in 1983, has
been shown to be contaminated with other blood. And a second blood vial
of Cooper’s
blood is missing. These blood vials point to either mishandling of
evidence or deliberate efforts to frame Cooper for the murders. For many
years the prosecution
denied DNA testing that certainly would have resulted in a new trial and
proof of Cooper’s innocence.
Review of Kevin Cooper’s case
Shortly after the 1983 murders of the Ryen family and neighbor
Christopher Hughes, three persons were seen driving away from the Ryen
home in a car that
looked like the Ryen station wagon. Josh Ryen, whose life was saved at
the hospital, identified his attackers as three white or Mexican males.
When Josh
Ryen saw Cooper’s mug shot on the television news, he said that Cooper
was not one of the killers.
The attorney’s letter states that there is now testimony from three
persons to whom Eugene Leland Furrow confessed that he was responsible
for the murders.
Back in 1983, Diane Roper, then Furrow’s girlfriend, turned over to
police coveralls covered in blood. Those bloody coveralls are now missing.
One of the key witnesses testified that Furrow confessed to
participating in the murders and that Furrow was seen by this witness
wearing a tan t-shirt
that matched the one with Doug Ryen’s blood on it. Also, this witness
asserted that Furrow arrived at the Furrow/Roper residence in a station
wagon that
matches the Ryen’s stolen vehicle.
There is further evidence of the corruption flooding over the Cooper
case. One of the prosecution’s forensic experts, William Baird, was
fired because
he was found stealing heroin from various state evidence lockers.
Similarly, San Bernardino County Sheriff Floyd Tidwell, also involved in
the Cooper case,
was convicted on felony charges of stealing hundreds of guns from
evidence lockers over a period of years.
Quoting from the Hile letter: “First, according to a study published by
the National Registry of Exonerations, a majority of exonerations over
the past
30 years have come about not through DNA testing, as effective as that
can be, but from innocence emerging through other, non-DNA factors.
According to
this study, there have been five times as many exonerations from non-DNA
factors as from DNA testing. These non-DNA factors include, as here, (1)
confessions
from the actual perpetrators, (2) the discovery that “junk science” was
used to obtain a wrongful conviction, and (3) that the prosecution
offered perjured
testimony from jailhouse snitches. Those cases also display rampant
racial bias in prosecution, faulty eye-witness testimony, withholding
and destroying
exculpatory evidence, and ineffective assistance of defense counsel. Mr.
Cooper has already shown that the prosecution presented false “snitch”
testimony,
relied on “junk science” and ran an investigation that was improperly
driven by racism.
In addition, Mr. Cooper has shown that the prosecution presented
perjured testimony and destroyed exonerating evidence, and that his
defense counsel was
profoundly ineffective.”
The attorney’s letter concludes that in light of this ongoing
corruption, new evidence and racism, Governor Newsom should order a
complete and thorough
innocence investigation to expose this wrongdoing and prevent this from
happening to anyone else. For further information on Kevin Cooper, see
this 2018 article
in Socialist Action.
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February 5, 2020
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Uncategorized.
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A reprieve for death-row prisoner Kevin Cooper?
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--
___
Sam Harris
“Tell a devout Christian that his wife is cheating on him, or that frozen
yogurt can make a man invisible, and he is likely to require as much evidence
as anyone else, and to be persuaded only to the extent that you give it. Tell
him that the book he keeps by his bed was written by an invisible deity who
will punish him with fire for eternity if he fails to accept its every
incredible claim about the universe, and he seems to require no evidence what
so ever.”
― Sam Harris,
