"Fletcher wrote that Cooper "is probably innocent of the crimes for which the state of California is about to execute him." Whether or not that's true, the judge makes a compelling argument that sheriff's office investigators planted evidence in order to convict Cooper and discarded or disregarded other evidence pointing to other killers — creating not just reasonable but serious doubt about his guilt.
This newspaper opposes the death penalty under any circumstances, and we wouldn't object if the governor commuted the sentences of all 697 people on California's death row. But execution is especially outrageous when the prisoner may be innocent. Gov. Schwarzenegger should commute Cooper's sentence."
EDITORIAL: THE LOS ANGELES TIMES.
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BACKGROUND: As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote in a column headed "Framed For Murder?": "California may be about to execute an innocent man. That’s the view of five federal judges in a case involving Kevin Cooper, a black man in California who faces lethal injection next year for supposedly murdering a white family. The judges argue compellingly that he was framed by police. Mr. Cooper’s impending execution is so outrageous that it has produced a mutiny among these federal circuit court judges, distinguished jurists just one notch below the United States Supreme Court. But the judicial process has run out for Mr. Cooper. Now it’s up to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to decide whether to commute Mr. Cooper’s sentence before leaving office.
WIKIPEDIA presents a thorough account of the Cooper case at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Cooper_%28inmate%29
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"Even supporters of capital punishment should object to the execution of someone whose guilt is in serious question. That's the case with Kevin Cooper, who was convicted of four gruesome murders in Chino Hills nearly three decades ago," the Los Angelese Times editorial published earlier today begins.
"Now that the federal courts have failed to prevent Cooper's execution, the burden is on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence to life imprisonment," the editorial continues.
"On the night of June 4, 1983, three members of the Ryen family and an 11-year-old houseguest were hacked to death. Eight-year-old Josh Ryen, his throat cut, was left for dead, but survived. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department focused on Cooper, who had been living in a house near the Ryens' after escaping from a state prison. The day after the murders, Cooper checked into a hotel in Tijuana. Investigators theorized that he had traveled to Mexico in the Ryens' station wagon.
Cooper was convicted after Josh Ryen testified that he had seen a single individual or shadow at the murder scene. Other evidence included a bloody footprint on a bedsheet made by a shoe that supposedly was manufactured only for prisons, and the discovery in the Ryens' station wagon of cigarette butts of the brand smoked by Cooper.
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But much of the evidence against Cooper has been seriously questioned, most comprehensively in an opinion by Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, who dissented from a decision not to hear an appeal by Cooper. Fletcher noted that Josh originally said the killers were three white or Hispanic men (Cooper is black); that the warden of the prison where Cooper had been incarcerated said the shoe that made the bloody footprint was sold to the public; and that the cigarette butts, which were not found in the original inspection of the car, could easily have been planted. What's more, the station wagon turned up in Long Beach.
Fletcher also noted that a woman said that on the day of the murders, her former boyfriend had been wearing a T-shirt similar to one found near the crime scene. She also said he showed up at her house wearing blood-spattered coveralls. (The coveralls were discarded by a sheriff's deputy.) Another woman reported finding a second, possibly bloodstained, shirt on a road near the Ryens' house. And on the night of the murders, two or three men in bloody clothes were seen in a bar near the crime scene.
Finally, long after his conviction, as Cooper was pursuing appeals, a blood test was performed on the T-shirt; according to analysts, the test detected Cooper's DNA. At first, that seemed to be the incontrovertible scientific evidence that had for so long been elusive — but Fletcher noted that the blood on the T-shirt contained signs of a preservative used by the sheriff's office to preserve blood in a laboratory for later testing. According to the judge, that suggested the blood "had been planted on the T-shirt."
Fletcher wrote that Cooper "is probably innocent of the crimes for which the state of California is about to execute him." Whether or not that's true, the judge makes a compelling argument that sheriff's office investigators planted evidence in order to convict Cooper and discarded or disregarded other evidence pointing to other killers — creating not just reasonable but serious doubt about his guilt.
This newspaper opposes the death penalty under any circumstances, and we wouldn't object if the governor commuted the sentences of all 697 people on California's death row. But execution is especially outrageous when the prisoner may be innocent. Gov. Schwarzenegger should commute Cooper's sentence."
The editorial can be found at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cooper-20101223,0,6639888.story
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be accessed at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
For a breakdown of some of the cases, issues and controversies this Blog is currently following, please turn to:
http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=120008354894645705&postID=8369513443994476774
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;