Call, fax or email Governor Schwarzenegger TODAY!

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Phone number: 916-445-2841
Fax number: 916-445-4633
E-mail address: governor (at) governor.ca.gov



*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. Eight year-old Josh Ryen survived to tell police that three white or Hispanic men had killed his family and attacked him. Kevin Cooper, an African-American man, now sits on death row for this crime. Kevin could face execution 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 likely tampered with. Destruction of evidence and police misconduct have played a part in the case from the beginning, but neither Kevin nor his attorneys 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 before the court through an Integrity of Evidence hearing. They are also attempting to do further testing on blond hair that was found in one of the victims' hands.

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:

- 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.
- Clumps of long, blonde hair were found in the hands of one of the victims. Photographs of this hair-which is definitely not Kevin Cooper's, as Kevin is African-American-were never shown to the jury. The hair may soon be tested, which could identify someone other that 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.
- 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.
- 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 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 was found to have lied about having been in a room where Kevin had stayed (not in the victim's house). Nevertheless, "evidence" that reportedly came from that room mysteriously appeared and was used to support the state's case. This "evidence" was not documented during the initial search of the premises.
- 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.

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.