The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request
    for an 11-judge panel to rehear the case of Kevin Cooper
    Kevin Cooper
 Innocent on California's Death Row ?
   
"... Josh Ryen, sole survivor of the attack, has always maintained that three
     white or Hispanic men killed his family. Josh and his grandmother have
        supported Kevin Cooper's defense team and question Kevin's guilt. "

savekevincooper.org     Visit Kevin's Official Homepage for more information on his case

Print up these cards and mail or fax them to Governor Schwarzenegger:      .pdf format:   http://detention.la-archdiocese.org/Erics%20Stuff/Cooper/Postcard.pdf

Justice For Kevin Cooper                           Another webpage with more information on his case

Amnesty International Alert On Kevin Cooper

News About Kevin Cooper (2004)           News about Kevin's scheduled execution date, and his current appeal status

Kevin Cooper - Statement Since Winning Stay of Execution

                  A CASE FULL OF HOLES

On the night of June 4, 1983, three members of the Ryen family and a houseguest were murdered in San Bernadino County. Kevin Cooper, an African-American man, now faces an execution date of February 10th, 2004. Kevin could be executed despite the fact that the case against him is full of holes.

The authorities claim that recent DNA tests link four pieces of evidence to Kevin and the crime. But this evidence has been mishandled and very susceptible to tampering. Police destruction of evidence and general misconduct have played a part in the case from the beginning, but neither no one knew the extent of the mishandling of evidence prior to signing the DNA testing agreement. Kevin's defense attorneys are attempting to bring this information to light. Despite the numerous problems with the evidence, the state is refusing to do further testing on blond hair that was found in one of the victims' hands or other tests that would show if the evidence had indeed been tampered with.

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Kevin's supporters ask you to review the following facts and decide for yourself whether Kevin's guilt has been established "beyond a reasonable doubt", as the state claims.

The Case

Clumps of long, blonde hair were found in the hands of one of the victims. Photographs of this hair were never shown to the jury. The hair could be tested using different DNA technology, which could identify someone other than Kevin as being involved in the crime.

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 T-shirt that matches a T-shirt found at the scene of the crime. There may be a discrepancy between the number of bloodstains reported to be on the T-shirt when it was found and the number of bloodstains reported to be on the T-shirt when it was tested. This T-shirt is one of the pieces of evidence linked to Kevin by the DNA results.

On June 11th, 1983, the victims' stolen car was found in Long Beach, CA. The person who found the car told police that he did not remember it being there the previous day. Kevin Cooper was in Tijuana, Mexico on June 5th, 1983.

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.

9th circuit court of appeals' Justice Browning stated in a dissenting ruling that Kevin Cooper may very well be executed without the colorful evidence that someone else confessed to the murders ever being heard in court on its merit.

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 Ryens' 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.

A deputy working on the case perjured himself: He lied about not being present in a room where evidence did not originally appear but was later "found", including the closet where Kevin hid for two days.

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 victims' 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.

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.

    Visit Kevin's Official Homepage for more information on his case at:
            savekevincooper.org


       You can contact the Save Kevin Cooper campaign by:
                                  Phone: 510-895-0332
                    E-mail: savekevincooper@yahoo.com

                        By mail: c/o Cameron Sturdevant
                            PMB 111, 665 Lewelling Blvd
                                San Leandro 94579 USA

                                            You can also write to Kevin:
                          
                             Kevin Cooper
                           C-65304 3-EB-82
                    San Quentin State Prison
                     San Quentin, CA 94974

       E-mail: savekevincooper@yahoo.com

    Visit Kevin's Official Homepage for more information on his case at:
            savekevincooper.org

   Contact Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
                State Capitol Building
                Sacramento, CA 95814
                  Phone: 916-445-2841
                    Fax: 916-445-4633  
       Email:  governor@governor.ca.gov


                 The CCADP offers free webpages to over 500 Death Row Prisoners
                                               Contact us for more information.
            
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This page was last updated February 18 2004         Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty
This page is maintained and updated by Dave Parkinson and Tracy Lamourie in Toronto, Canada