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<h2><b>Governor, save inmate's life<br>
</b></h2><h3><font size=3><b>Kevin Cooper's conviction in four 1983
murders is in serious question, particularly by a federal judge. It is up
to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to commute his sentence to life in
prison.</b></font></h3><font size=3>December 23, 2010<br>
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cooper-20101223,0,6639888.story" eudora="autourl">
www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-cooper-20101223,0,6639888.story</a>
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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
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/ycklwrw">Kevin Cooper,</a> who was convicted
of four gruesome murders in Chino Hills nearly three decades ago. 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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<b> </b>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.<br><br>
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<b> </b>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."<br><br>
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<b> </b>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Copyright © 2010, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/">Los Angeles
Times</a><br>
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