I assume its overkill to continue listing the evidence against death row inmate Kevin Cooper, duly convicted of committing a quadruple murder back in 1983. The blinding proof of his guilt was covered in last weeks column.
To review, this included shoeprint evidence, footprint evidence, cigarette and tobacco evidence, blood evidence and DNA evidence, proving that this violent rapist and mental hospital escapee:
hid out in a house next to Doug and Peggy Ryens Chino Hills, California, home for two days after escaping from prison;
used a hatchet and hunting knife taken from his hideout to hack to death two adults and two children at the Ryen home andcritically wound a third child;
stole the familys station wagon and later abandoned it in Long Beach, along with his DNA on prison-issued cigarettes, before escaping to Mexico;
returned to California, where he raped a woman at knifepoint, leading to his capture.
This week, well consider the specific claims made by The New York Times Nicholas Kristof purporting to raise doubts about Coopers guilt.
Kristofs special pleading proves that no one on death row is innocent. I didnt pick this case. The anti-death penalty zealots picked it, splashing it across the Newspaper of Record. I have to believe they didnt choosetheir worst example to showcase,so lets look at the honesty of their arguments about Kevin Cooper.
KRISTOF:
Although Josh [the 8-year-old who miraculously survived the hatchet attack] had indicated that the attack was committed by several white men, the sheriff announced just four days after the bodies were found that the sole suspect was Kevin Cooper
First of all, eyewitness testimony is the least credible evidence, particularly in the case of children - as the child molestation hysteria of the 1980s demonstrated and even more particularly in the case of a child whos found lying in a bloody mess surrounded by his murdered familymembersafter having his throat slit and being attacked with a hatchet.
In any event, Joshnever said he saw three men.He said he initially thought it must have been the three Mexicans who had stopped by the house looking for work earlier in the evening. But even in his initial interviews from his hospital bed, he said he onlysawone assailant in the house:a man with bushy hair.
KRISTOF:
Sadly, a tan T-shirt believed to have been worn by one of the killers didnt produce enough DNA to provide a profile.
That IS sad. Luckily, its also not true. The Department of Justice DNA lab at UC Berkeley did find Coopers DNA on the tan T-shirt discarded near the murder house, which also containedpartial DNA profiles of two of the victims, Doug and Peggy Ryen.
KRISTOF:
Could the San Bernardino County Sheriffs Office really have planted evidence, including placing Coopers blood on the tan T-shirt? We do know that the sheriffs office had a history of going rogue. Floyd Tidwell, the sheriff, was himself later convicted of four felony counts for stealing 523 guns from the evidence room [further denunciations of the sheriffs department].
The planted evidence ruse is a popular one for springing murderers, except oops! the T-shirt tested by the Berkeley DNA labwasnt in the possession of the sheriffs office.The tan T-shirt, along with the cigarette butts from the Ryens station wagon, had been in the custody of the San Diego Superior Court Evidence Clerk from the end of the trial right up until 2001, when they were shipped directly to the Berkeley DNA Laboratory for testing.
KRISTOF:
Likewise, hairs found clutched in the victims hands werent Coopers (no hairs from an African-American were found at the crime scene) but didnt lead to a match with a suspect, either.
While I love the idea of a 10-year-old girl ripping an African Americans hair out by the root as he came at her with a hatchet, the clutched hair nonsense has already been thoroughly investigated and dismissed by the courts.
A team of DNA experts spent weeks testing hairs from Jessicas hands, as well as two hairs found on Doug Ryens right hand and one hair from Christopher Hughes arm. Their conclusion? The testing failed to identify another assailant and confirmed that all tested hairs most likely came from one or more of the victims.
As U.S. District Court Judge Marilyn L. Huffexplained:
This should not be surprising.The hairs adhered to the victims bodies, including their hands, because there was a large amount of blood on the victims and a large amount of hair on the debris-ridden carpet. Also, the victims each sustained hatchet wounds to the head, causing clumps of cut hair to fall to the ground. Both animal and human hair were recovered from the hands of the victims. Just as with the animal hairs, the cut and shed human hairs adhered to the bloodied victims hands because the victims came in contact with the carpet when they were dying on the floor.
Finally, Kristof tries to pin the murder on other suspects (whom we know arent guilty or hed be defending them).
KRISTOF:
A different longtime suspect in the case recounted, not long after the murders, how he had killed the Ryens and Chris Hughes.
I guess confessions are only questionable in the case of the Central Park rapists. Kristof doesnt say who the confessor is specifically, but it sounds like the one repeatedly put forward by Coopers lawyers. Courts have characterized this so-called confession asa mental patients secondhand version of a confession.
KRISTOF:
This other suspect is a white man whom Ill identify just by his first name, Lee, for he must be presumed innocent
Lee came to the attention of the authorities during the investigation after his girlfriend, Diana Roper, fingered him as the killer: She reported that he had returned home late on the night of the killings wearing bloody coveralls, in a car that resembled the Ryens station wagon.
Roper turned Lees bloody coveralls over to the sheriffs office which eventually threw them away without testing them. By then, the sheriffs office had arrested Cooper, and deputies didnt want a complication.
Dont be fooled by Kristofs fake humility he must be presumed innocent all that blather about what Roper said was invented by defense attorneys.
Roper was not technically Lees girlfriend: She was his bitter ex. Far from bloody, the few red splotches on the coveralls were most likely paint (along with manure and dirt). Roper told investigators that she didnt even know if the coveralls belonged to Lee.
But let me quote from the court that reviewed the coveralls evidence: [I]ssues of guilt, innocence and sentence should never be decided on information obtained from persons whobelieve they are witches and believe an article of clothing is connected to a crime because of a vision they receive during a trance.(Emphasis mine.)
Yes, Ropers evidence was based on a vision she had during a trance because she believed she was a witch. These facts are exhaustively detailed in court orders and opinions but are entirely absent from the vast news coverage of Coopers case. Might distract from the claim that the sheriffs office tossed the coveralls only to avoid a complication in their single-minded pursuit of the wrong man as Kristof claims.
No one on death row, not one person, is innocent. Believe nothing you read in the media about their putative innocence. Its always lies and nonsense, as with Kristofs pet murderer, Kevin Cooper.