Kevin Cooper argues case before 9th circuit court

[carolinem]

PRESS RELEASE

Campaign to End the Death Penalty

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DEATH ROW INMATE KEVIN COOPER ARGUES CASE BEFORE NINTH CIRCUIT COURT

January 8, 2007/San Francisco—The Campaign to End the Death Penalty and other supporters of Ca. death row prisoner Kevin Cooper will provide an update on Cooper's case on Tuesday, January 9 th after the 1:30 p.m. hearing of U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals meeting at 95 Seventh Street in San Francisco. The hearing is scheduled to start at 1:30 and is expected to be one hour. The press conference will start directly after the hearing ends at around 2:30 and will be held on the courthouse steps.
Oral arguments from the prosecution and defense will focus on 10 key issues in Cooper's case, including actual innocence, prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations. Further information about Cooper's appeal is available at www.savekevincooper .org <http://www.savekevi ncooper.org/>

Speaking will be:
Elizabeth Terzakis, member of Campaign to End the Death Penalty and advocate/friend of Kevin Cooper
Barbara Becnel, advocate of executed death row prisoner Stanley Tookie Williams
Natasha Minsker, Death Penalty Policy Director, ACLU of Northern California
Veronica Luna, family member of a California death row prisoner
###


Action Alert!

Kevin Cooper, who came within hours of execution in 2004, has been granted a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing on January 9th, 2007, in San Francisco. He needs your support! This hearing ( Oral Arguements) allows him to appeal 10 key issues including actual innocence, prosecutorial misconduct and constitutional violations. Kevin Cooper has not received justice since winning a stay of execution in 2004.

This very important hearing is a great place for you to show your support for Kevin Cooper and opposition to the death penalty:

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

Hearing @ 1:30 p.m.
(meet outside the court building at 1:00)

Press Conference/Rally immediately following
2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m.
(outside of the court building)

9th Circuit Court of Appeals
95 Seventh Street
San Francisco, CA 94103

Court map and info: www.ca9. uscourts. gov/ca9/courtinf o.nsf/6f311f8841 e7da248825640500 6827f0/a4884bc0b 0ca961d882566500 01e9365?OpenDocu ment <http://www.ca9. uscourts. gov/ca9/courtinf o.nsf/6f311f8841 e7da248825640500 6827f0/a4884bc0b 0ca961d882566500 01e9365?OpenDocu ment>

Press Conference to be held by Stop Executions California, a coalition of anti-death penalty groups in the Bay Area. For more information about the press conference e-mail stopexecutionscalif ornia@yahoo. com <http://www.savekevi ncooper.org/ stopexecutionsca lifornia@ yahoo.com>

For more information on Kevin Cooper's case, contact the Campaign to End the Death Penalty at 510-333-7966.


"The Merits"

by Kevin Cooper

It is my understanding that on [January 9th, 2007], a three-Judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will have Oral Arguments in my case, and do so "on the Merits!"

If this is truly the case, then it will be the very first time in over 20 years, or since I was first arrested in 1983, that this will happen.

All I have ever asked, and all that I have a right to ask, is that the whole truth be told about this case. So far, despite what the state claims, this has never happened. I am not asking for just my side to be told in this, and I most definitely don't want just the state's one-sided side to be told as it has been with the help of the mainstream news media.

I want both sides to be told, I want the truth to be told! I want this case to truly be heard "on the Merits" this around! So far the state has lied about evidence, destroyed evidence, withheld evidence, ignored evidence, tampered with evidence, contaminated evidence, used a lying jailhouse snitch/informant and even allowed the D.A. who helped convict me to lie in Federal District Court when he was under oath!

Yet despite all of this, the attorneys who are representing me are, for the very first time, about to be heard "on the Merits!" Maybe there is justice after all.

In Struggle From Death Row

At San Quentin Prison,

Kevin Cooper

[carolinem]

The Campaign to End the Death Penalty and other anti-death penalty activists had a great showing at Kevin Cooper's hearing on January 9th. Thanks to everyone who worked hard and showed up to make it happen. We had a crowd of about 75, with which we easily packed the courtroom and overflowed into the cafeteria as planned. Several local stations covered the rally and stayed for the press conference, and although the judges themselves didn't actually make an appearance at the courthouse, our presence was definitely felt.

The press conference speakers included: Elizabeth Terzakis from the CEDP, Natasha Minsker of the ACLU, Barbara Becnel, Veronica Luna (whose uncle is on death row), Rebecca Doran of the Mobilization to Free Mumia, Derrel Myers from Murder Victims Families for Human Rights, plus speakers from the National Lawyers Guild and Critical Resistance.

The issues in the hearing included:

1) the testing of a t-shirt which happened after Kevin got a stay of execution which was conducted in an extremely unfair manner to the defense and which Kevin's attorney called "inconclusive, bothced and useless."

2) consitutional "Brady" violations: the prosecution at the original trial withheld information from defense and knowingly presented misinformation in the original trial. The witheld information was in regards to a pair of shoes that the prosecution claimed were solely "prison-issued" even thought they had proof to the contrary, proof they did not share with the defense. This is a very serious violation of Kevin's constitutional rights. This would seem to lead to the conclusion that the judges, by rights, should vacate the guilty verdict and award Kevin a new trial.

3) New information. The state claimed that defense had no new evidence and no new issues. This is not true. Defense catalogued this information at the end of his rebuttal: prosecution witnesses lied about the destruction of the bloody coveralls, prosecution withheld information given by Prison Warden Midge Carroll about the disputed tennis shoes, two women, Christine Slonaker and Mary Melon Wolf testified to having seen three, drugged up, blood-spattered white men in a bar on the night of the murders, Lance Stark testified to seeing same and was threatened by law enforcement officers not to share his observations with the defense, a police log was uncovered that indicated more withheld information: that the initial APB that was sent out described the Ryen's stolen stationwagon as being driven by three young males, and that a couple (the Leonards) saw the stationwagon and said it was occupied by three white males, etc., etc.

These issues should raise doubts in the judges minds, and they are included in detail in the brief. And we will just have to wait and see what they decide to do about it.

For background on Kevin Cooper's case, see our recently updated fact sheet at www.savekevincooper .org <http://www.savekevi ncooper.org

> and also visit www.nodeathpenalty. org <http://www.nodeathp enalty.org> for ways to get involved in the movemen.

We need to keep fighting for Kevin Cooper and for abolition!


Death row inmate's lawyer says his client was framed

> The attorney requests that Kevin Cooper's case be returned to a lower court
> for further review.

> By Henry Weinstein, Times Staff Writer
> January 10, 2007
>
> SAN FRANCISCO — More than 20 years after Kevin Cooper was sentenced to
> death for brutally murdering four people in Chino Hills, his attorney told a
> federal appeals panel Tuesday that questions about the case remained
> unresolved and that Cooper was entitled to further hearings and testing to
> clear up the mysteries.
>
> During oral arguments before the panel, defense lawyer Norman Hile
> suggested that Cooper had been framed, that prosecutors at trial withheld
> material evidence that could have cleared him, and that his client had not
> received a full and fair hearing from U.S. District Judge Marilyn Huff in
> San Diego, the last jurist to consider the case.
>
> But a veteran appellate lawyer for the California attorney general's office
> countered that Cooper was "guilty as sin" and that it was time to bring the
> case — which has been the subject of numerous appeals — to a close. "Enough
> is enough," said Deputy Atty. Gen. Holly D. Wilkens.
>
> Cooper was sentenced to death in Riverside County Superior Court for a 1983
> rampage in which a married couple and two children were hacked to death in
> Chino Hills.
>
> Prosecutors alleged at trial that Cooper, then serving time for burglary,
> had faked a medical condition to escape from the state prison in Chino in
> 1983, then took refuge in a small house with a view of the hilltop home of
> Douglas and Peggy Ryen.
>
> Two nights later, prosecutors stated, he broke into the Ryens' home and
> used a hatchet, knife and ice pick to kill the couple; their daughter,
> Jessica, 11; and houseguest Christopher Hughes, 11.
>
> Prosecutors said Cooper also slashed the throat of the Ryens' 8-year-old
> son, Joshua, who lay next to his mother's body for 11 hours before he was
> found. He survived and later testified against Cooper.
>
> Cooper, now 49, admits that he hid in the house near the Ryen residence.
> But he has steadfastly maintained that he hitchhiked out of the area and
> that he was not involved in the murders.
>
> In February 2004, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a vote of 9 to
> 2, granted a last-minute stay of execution and ordered new testing of blood
> and hair evidence in the case. At the time, Barry Silverman, one of the
> judges in the majority, said: "Cooper is either guilty as sin or he was
> framed by the police. There is no middle ground."
>
> More than a year later, after hearing testimony from 42 witnesses and
> reviewing test results, Huff in San Diego concluded in a 150-page ruling
> that Cooper should not receive any legal relief from the courts.
>
> Noting post-conviction DNA testing that linked Cooper to a drop of blood in
> the hallway outside the Ryens' bedroom, saliva from cigarette butts found in
> the hallway and blood smears on a T-shirt abandoned outside a bar near the
> murder scene, Huff wrote that she was convinced that Cooper "is the one
> responsible for these brutal murders." She added that Cooper "is simply
> making unsubstantiated allegations of tampering as to evidence that was used
> against him at trial, or that subsequently confirmed his guilt from
> post-conviction DNA testing."
>
> But Cooper's lawyers contend that Huff abused her discretion by denying
> some discovery and additional forensic testing. Hile, the defense lawyer,
> urged the appeals court to send the case back to Huff and order further
> testing, as well as admission of evidence about "three suspicious men," one
> wearing bloody clothes, who reportedly were seen shortly after the murders
> in a bar not far from the crime scene.
>
> The three judges hearing the appeal are Pamela Ann Rymer of Pasadena, an
> appointee of former President George H.W. Bush; Margaret McKeown of San
> Diego, an appointee of Bill Clinton; and Ronald Gould of Seattle, also a
> Clinton appointee. Whatever they decide, the ruling is likely to be appealed
> to a larger 9th Circuit panel and eventually to the U.S. Supreme Court.
>
> Rymer and Gould, both of whom rejected Cooper's bid for a stay in 2003,
> appeared skeptical Tuesday of defense claims of evidence-tampering.
>
> McKeown asked several questions related to footprints of Keds shoes found
> inside the home and on a spa cover outside the master bedroom. Prosecutors
> stated at trial that the shoes were prison-issue and could not have been
> bought from a store.
>
> Hile said Tuesday that when the former warden of the prison at Chino heard
> the prosecutors' contention, she called the San Bernardino County sheriff's
> office to tell them that the shoes could have been bought at a store. The
> defense was not informed of the call, a violation of the prosecution' s
> obligation to turn over any potentially exculpatory evidence, Hile said.
>
> Deputy Atty. Gen. Wilkens countered that there was no doubt Cooper was
> wearing that type of shoe at the time of the murders. Even if the shoe was
> commercially available, it proves nothing, she said.
>
> After the hearing, a group of death penalty foes, some holding placards
> proclaiming "Free Kevin Now," held a rally outside the courthouse. Attorney
> Natasha Minsker, the death penalty coordinator for the American Civil
> Liberties Union of Northern California, said it was very troubling that
> there were so many unresolved questions about the case so long after the
> murders.
>
> She said the case showed that the state had "insufficient standards and
> safeguards" for the handling of forensic evidence. That issue, and related
> ones, are to be taken up in Sacramento today at a hearing of the California
> Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.

>
> henry.weinstein@ latimes.com