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Kevin Cooper: Saved from Execution, Still Fighting for Justice

Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the 1983 murders of the Ryen family in San Bernardino, California. He came within hours of execution on February 9 th, 2004. The 11th hour stay was granted after a battle inside and outside of the courtroom shed light on his innocence and the numerous problems that exist in the state’s case against him.

The case has been sent back to the federal district court. Further evidence testing has begun, and activists expect a long legal fight to ensure that the issues of tampering and police and prosecutorial misconduct are raised. Overall, the defense attorneys have found new evidence and witnesses that corroborate Kevin Cooper’s innocence claim, and that show the errors and conscious misconduct on the part of the state of California.

We know that left in the courts, Kevin Cooper may not be able to win real justice. We need to continue to build a movement that can show the flaws in his case and make the connections to the broad problems that exist in the capital punishment system. We need to demand a moratorium, so that Kevin Cooper and the other 630+ inmates on death row in California do not have to face the machinery of death. Here are some of the facts about the case, the long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, and some of the new information that has surfaced since the stay of execution.

The Case:

• At least three weapons were used in the brutal murders, indicating multiple perpetrators. A member of the American Board of Pathology said it would be “virtually impossible” for one person to have committed this crime. Prosecutors were unable to account for this, claiming that Kevin Cooper acted alone.
• Hostile, racist demonstrations were held near the courthouse after Kevin Cooper was taken into custody. At one demonstration a toy gorilla was hung in effigy.
• A pair of bloody coveralls was submitted to the police by a woman claiming that they had been left at her house by her boyfriend, who she believed was involved in the murders. Police records show that the coveralls were deliberately disposed of in a dumpster by the police without any testing. The woman was never brought in to testify. This same woman has said that she bought her boyfriend a brown Tshirt that matches a T-shirt found at the scene of the crime.
• A prison inmate confessed to the crime, providing his cellmate with accurate information about the crime that was not in the newspapers. The man who confessed was also a friend of the woman who provided the bloody coveralls.
• A prison inmate confessed to the crime, providing his cellmate with accurate information about the crime that was not in the newspapers. The man who confessed was also a friend of the woman who provided the bloody coveralls. The prosecutor's investigator took steps to make sure this confession would not be investigated.
• Kevin Cooper had no motive for committing these brutal murders and none was established at trial. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, having just escaped from a minimum security institution where he had been serving a sentence for a nonviolent offense. Police found him an all-too easy target.

The Evidence:

• In 1983, a single, isolated drop of blood was found in the Ryen's house at some distance from the murders. During the original trial, prosecutors said the blood came from an African-American and suggested that it provided a link to Kevin Cooper. Criminalist Daniel Gregonis subsequently altered initial lab test results to fit Kevin's profile. He also made a number of serious errors and failed to follow proper procedure while conducting his initial tests.
• In 1999, several pieces of evidence from Kevin Cooper's case were released to Gregonis without a court order or the knowledge of Kevin's legal counsel. The reason for checking out the evidence for 24 hours was never explained. Evidence tampering would have been very easy during this time. These events, combined with previous mishandling, raise great concerns about the integrity of this evidence.
• The Sheriff’s deputy who found the lone drop of blood at the crime scene—as well as a bloody shoeprint that somehow was not discovered until it landed in the crime lab—recently admitted he was using narcotics at the time of the trial. He was fired from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s department for stealing five pounds of heroin—which he both used and sold to drug dealers—from the evidence locker. The blood drop and the shoeprint were the only two pieces of evidence that linked Kevin to the crime in the original trial. Recently a Sheriff who worked on the case was found guilty of stealing over 500 guns from police lockers during his tenure.
• There are a number of discrepancies between the police reports, arrest warrant, and evidence claims. An example of this is a handrolled cigarette butt that appears sporadically in these reports. Another is a manufactured cigarette that the state claims was found in the victims' car, yet which is clearly not there in the original crime scene photographs. Because Kevin occupied a house in the surrounding area of the victim's house, and was a smoker at the time, the police had access to cigarette butts that they could claim were found on the victims' property.

Recent Developments

• Despite the Attorney General’s allegations, much new information has come to light since the stay of execution that further points to Kevin Cooper’s innocence. The testing of evidence, however, has come back inconclusive—these tests do not implicate Cooper but have not conclusively exonerated him
• Only 8 out of the hundreds of blond hairs were tested, some match the victims and some are not human hair. While these tests were being done, blood reference samples from Kevin Cooper were sent to the lab for comparison. Not surprisingly, the blond hairs did not match Cooper. Interestingly, however, when they analyzed the blood sample on file for Cooper there were multiple DNA profiles, which should not have occurred. No explanation was provided for this by the state.
• The blood drop is currently being tested for EDTA, a preservative that Cooper’s attorneys hoped to find to show the possibility of evidence tampering. These test results are inconclusive, partially due to a number of errors by the prosecution, and further tests need to be done.

Here are just a few samples of the positive information that has been discovered since the stay:

1. Many new witnesses have come forth and testified to the fact that on the night of the murders, three white men were in a bar near the victims’ home, with blood on them and one wearing a light colored t-shirt. One of these new witnesses was approached before testifying at recent hearings by what was assumed to be a policeman in an unmarked car, telling him that it was “not in his best interest to speak about the Kevin Cooper case.”

2. The former warden of the prison that Cooper had escaped from testified at the hearing that the tennis shoes that the state used to place Cooper at the crime scene were not prison-issued shoes—they could have been purchased at retail stores.

3. During one of the hearings Cooper’s attorneys discovered a series of police logs. Within those logs was a June 5 th 1983 report that said that a woman reported finding a blue shirt, possibly with blood on it, very close to the bar where the three white men were seen. A police officer picked up the evidence, but was never introduced in the case and Cooper’s defense team was never made aware of its existence. Interestingly, one of the witnesses from the bar on the night of the murders stated that one of the three white men was possibly wearing a blue shirt.

4. Two cigarette butts that were said to be found within the victims stolen car were identified as containing Cooper’s DNA when the state tested them in 2001. At the time of the original trial in 1984, one of the butts was listed as measuring 4 millimeters in length. When the sate butt was measured in 2001 it was 7.7 millimeters in length. In addition, at the original trial the butt had to be taken apart for testing. In 2001 it had returned to its original shape. The second cigarette butt was listed as yellow at the time of the original trial, but in 2001 was white.

Unfortunately, the criminal justice system rarely corrects its own problems. We can. Putting a stop to this injustice, and all of the flaws in the death penalty that it represents, will take a movement of concerned community members, students, and activists. For more information about fighting against this injustice, and to read essays written by Kevin Cooper, visit www.savekevincooper.org. Contact: crystal@nodeathpenalty.org or 510-333-7966.

Click here for an article on Kevin's case: "We CAN end the death penalty: The story of the struggle that saved Kevin Cooper," New Abolitionist, March 2004.