#244 Jason Flom with Kevin Cooper

Published Nov 5, 2024, 8:00 AM

On Saturday, June 4, 1983, three members of the Ryen family, as well as their neighbor’s son, Christopher Hughes, were brutally murdered in the Ryen home. 8 year old Joshua Ryen survived horrifying injuries, including a hatchet wound to the head and a slashed throat. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office immediately targeted Kevin Cooper because he had recently fled from the California Institution for Men (CIM), a medium security facility just a few miles from the Ryen home. A botched crime scene left little to go on, so many believe they fixed evidence to make the charges stick while ignoring compelling alternative suspects. Kevin has been defending his innocence from death row for almost 40 years. California Governor Newsom recently ordered a full Innocence Investigation into the case. Kevin and his team are confident that this investigation will finally clear his name.

To learn more and get involved, visit:

https://freekevincooper.com/

https://kevincooper.org/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kevin-cooper-case-death-row-inmate-san-quentin-murder-new-developments-48-hours/

https://lavaforgood.com/with-jason-flom/

Wrongful Conviction is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.

On Saturday, June fourth, nineteen eighty three, and Chino Hills, California, the Ryan family, Doug Peggy, their children, Jessica and Joshua, as well as their neighbour's son, Christopher Hughes, were violently attacked in the Ryan home. Only eight year old Joshua Ryan survived, and at the hospital he described the perpetrators as three white or Hispanic men. At the same time, Kevin Cooper, a black man, had recently escaped from a nearby prison and had holed up in a vacant house near the Ryan home. When the police learned of the prison break, they disregarded the witnesses and tips corroborating josh Ryan's description in favor of the theory that one of the prison escapees was responsible, and as pressure mounted to solve the case with an election fast approaching, Kevin Cooper became an easy scapegoat for the sheriff. Under the DA's orders, the crime scene was dismantled and moved to a warehouse, rendering forensic testing us useless. The prosecution's case a trial was riddled with inconsistencies and problematic evidence, but with a poorly prepared defense attorney and hidden or destroyed exculpatory evidence that jury convicted Kevin of the murders and he was sentenced to death. We're joined by Kevin and his attorney Norman Hile, to discuss the status of his case, as well as the proven evidence tampering misconduct by the Sheriff's department and compelling alternate suspects that should have ended any suspicion into Kevin Cooper back in nineteen eighty three. This is wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction today's episode. I'm going to say this case is as troubling as any case I've ever heard of, and I've been doing this work for a long, long long time. And with me today of course the man himself, Kevin Cooper, who has lived and continues to live through this nightmare, as well as his attorney Norman Hyle of Oric Harrington and Sutcliffe. So Norm, welcome to rafel Conviction. Really glad to have you here. It's great to be here and coming to us from inside the walls of San Quentin, where he remains to this very day. We have Kevin Cooper, Kevin, I'm so sorry here joining us from where you're at where you never belonged in the first place. We don't belong now, but I'm very honored to have you here with us.

Thank you for having me.

This case involves layers and layers of misconduct and incompetence that would be funny if it wasn't so sick. I mean, you're going to hear about so many instances in which evidence was either altered, planted, or tampered with that you're going to find it hard to belie leave. But if it wasn't borne out by the evidence, Norman wouldn't risk his career to say it here today on the show. And this case also involves one of the most terrifying crimes I'm going to say in the history not just of California, but of this entire country. I mean, this is reminiscent of Charles Manson, the Tate Labianco murders, and others that have made it into the popular consciousness. And what's even worse, if you can imagine that, is that the three white or Hispanic perpetrators who are actually responsible for this twisted scenario never were brought to justice because the police targeted Kevin Cooper, who is neither white nor Hispanic, but a black man. And there's not three of him, There's only one. And so before I lose my mind here, Kevin, let's go back before all of the circumstances that led to this web of total insanity. I mean, can you tell us about your early life. You were born Richard Goodman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then you were adopted by Melvin and Esther Cooper.

Is that correct, Yeah, sir, that's correct. Growing up with my adoptive family, it was what it was. I mean, they were a good family. My own issue that I have with them, and basically what my adoptive father was that he was a disciplinarian and he used to violently beat me for things that all kids do. And I couldn't take that beating. My body couldn't take that beating. So over time, as early as seven years old, I was running away from home, and of course, if you run away from home, if you're out on the streets as a child, you have to eat. So I was stealing to eat, you know, and then it's just one.

Thing there to another, right, so you're out there, you know, fending for yourself as early as seven years old, which led to a number of run ins with the law, from petty thefts and things like that, to stay, let's face it, clothed and bed and to meet your basic survival needs. And obviously lift is a crime. But when life deals you a hand like you got, you had to do what you did to survive. And importantly, none of it was violent, and none of it makes you a murderer or a candidate for death row.

You know, they always trying to find the dead and people, right, they're morally good people, and we're more than bad people, especially when you're poor and you're black. I don't apologize for those things I did as a child because I didn't know better. And for a child to teach yourself, what what do you need parents for? My parents didn't teach me. So the people on the street topey how to steal cars, how to get out of the rain, how to get out of the cold. You know, I don't justify it, but I don't apologize for it. And I'll be darned if I'm going to let anybody make me feel bad about it, because that was just my life. Man.

So in nineteen eighty two, you picked up for burglary, right, and in order to avoid prison, you pretended to be mentally incompetent and unfit to stand trial, which puts you in Mayview State Hospital in Pennsylvania. And at this point you'd been there before because of drugs, and you had noticed that it would be pretty easy to escape from. And here's a key part of the story. While you were there, you picked up a driver's license for a man named David Troutman. And when you escape from the facility and with some help made your way off to California, you passed yourself off as this David Troutman guy, right.

Right, Because at that time, driver's license didn't have photos on. It was just a name and a data both and your driver's license ID number, but there was no photo.

Yeah, it's crazy to think about that, no picture on a driver's license. It seems like a different era entirely, which it was. But anyway, so you're in California and you're doing what you needed to do to survive. What you know how to do is survive, and once again you're arrested for burglary there, but this time as David Troutman, and that leads to your incarceration at the California Institute for Man. Otherwise, notice CIM in Chino, California, again under this alias of David Troutman. So none of this makes you a murderer, but it is really crazy, right, and now the story takes another crazy turn. It sounds like a movie. In June of nineteen eighty three, you escaped from that prison, which happened to be in the area of these absolutely horrendous murders. And from what I understand, it wasn't even that hard to escape. I mean, you didn't have to be Houdini, right, Yeah, June.

Sit in nineteen eighty three, I was walking around in the prison, not in my fish, and I get to this one spot in fear. It was a big asshole in the fish. I didn't even think about it.

I was gone, right, And then they searched for several hours and then gave up. Apparently Kevin, of course, now is out, but has no idea where to go, no money, never been in this area before except inside the prison. So he found his way to a bacont house in a residential area and spent two days hiding there before hitchhiking to Mexico on the evening of June fourth. Now it's worth noting, by the way, that in nineteen eighty three alone, fourteen prisoners escaped from this particular prison. That's insane. So this included, of course Kevin, as well as a guy named Ambloro Nori and Michael Martinez. You both escaped two days after Kevin on June fourth, nineteen eighty three, and that's an important date because the murders were getting ready to tell you about took place that very night on June fourth, nineteen eighty three.

The family who was murdered was Doug and Peggy Ryan and their daughter Jessica, and a HouseGuest Christopher Hughes, who was there by chance that night spending the night, who was a friend of Josh Ryan's, the eight year old boy who survived. The Ryans were very strong people. Doug Ryan was a former military policeman and a chiropractor, and his wife, Peggy was not only a chiropractor, but she trained Arabian horses. However, both of Ryan's and their two children and Christopher Hughes were overwhelmed by three people who used three or four different weapons, and there were at least one hundred and forty four wounds on the victims. The adults, Mister and Missus Ryan were left in a posed position similar to the Tate La Bianca murders, as if to indicate there had been some sort of ritual going on as to how they were killed.

Peggy had seventeen hatchet wounds to the face and head and four knife wounds to the chest. Jessica was stabbed forty six times with three different weapons. Douglas suffered thirty seven knife and hatchet wounds and a severed finger, and Christopher had twenty six stab wounds and numerous skull fractures and a severed finger as well.

The sole survivor of this mayhem was Josh Ryan, who was eight years old, and he was found the next morning still alive when Christopher Hughes's father came to try to collect Christopher and discovered the victims in the Ryan's master bedroom in their home. Josh Ryan was still alive, although his throat had been cut. They were able to quickly take him to Loma Linda Hospital by helicopter and his life was saved.

So this is a really horrifying crime. But then right away it seems like we see the police mishandling this case to an extreme and I'm talking about. Beginning with the initial investigation.

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department allowed over seventy people to walk through the crime scene during the first twenty four hours that the murders were discovered. The result of that was that most of the evidence was contaminated. What happened next is even more bizarre. The District Attorney for San Bernardino County decided that the best thing to do, perhaps to cover up the way in which the crime scene had been mishandled, was to completely tear down the crime scene, and the walls and the carpets and the furniture and everything was put into a storage facility that did not have air conditioning. And the result of that was that all of the blood evidence that was in what had been taken out of the Ryan bedroom became useless for purposes of trying to do chemical analysis of it. There couldn't be any analysis done of the blood spots and the way in which the bodies had moved, which might have been able to determine how many attackers there were, what snives and hatchets had been used by them, and how the victims had managed to fight back. All of that was lost when the district attorney ordered that the Ryan master bedroom be torn down and taken away.

On the fifth, So, the day after the murders, a hatchet was found on the side of a road leading away from the Ryan's house. Forensics tested the hatchet, but they botched that as well, so any evidence from the hatchet was now rendered useless. You don't have to be a criminologist to know that this is a freaking disaster in the making. I mean, it's really sobering to think about the fact that they were willing to go to these extraordinary lengths to cover up the terrible incompetence in a case that should have been the number one priority to be solved. This is so troubling and it's a miracle that Joshua did survive.

The reason that we know that there were three white or Mexican males who were the attackers is that josh Ryan was able to tell hospital staff and the Sheriff's department that within a few hours of when he was found.

And there were other people that came forward. One neighbor actually reported to investigators having seen three white men driving away from the Ryan home after midnight on the night of the murders. Corroborating Josh Ryan's.

Description, Yes, there were two different sightings of the Ryan station wagon speeding away from the Ryan home of the crimes, and the people who saw them saw that there were at least three people in the station wagon. In addition, that same night, a number of people in a local bar very close to the crime scene reported seeing three white men acting strangely in the bar, and late that night one of them came back in and was in coveralls that were covered in blood and in fact, the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department issued a criminal bulletin on June seventh, which said the suspects were three either white or Mexican males, late teens or early twenties, wearing a white T shirt, a blue short sleeve shirt, a red long sleeve shirt, and Levi's So they had all of this information about who had committed this crime.

Then. Seeing this bulletin, a woman named Diana Roper called the sheriff two days later to apport that her boyfriend Lee Furrow had come home get this around three am the night of the murders. To her, he had arrived in an unfamiliar station wagon with some people who stayed in the car. He changed out of his overalls, which he left on the closet floor. He was not wearing the blue T shirt that he had been wearing earlier that day. He left the house about five minutes later and didn't return. From what we understand, he then went on the lamb to San Diego.

And she gave to the Sheriff's department a pair of coveralls that were covered in blood that her boyfriend had discarded when he came home about three o'clock in the morning the morning after the murders, and ultimately, because it was inconsistent with prosecuting, Kevin Cooper destroyed them without ever testing them to see whether or not the coveralls had the victim's blood on him.

Okay, there's also this blue T shirt that was covered in blood that a woman found two days after the murder near the Canyon Corral bar near the crime scene. If you remember the blue T shirt from the descriptions, Diana Roper also mentioned Lee Burrow missing his own blue T shirt that he had been wearing earlier that day. So this blue T shirt that was turned in was that ever tested.

The sheriff's log reflects that the sheriff's deputy came to where the women had found the shirt and collected the shirt and the short sleeve blue shirt, which fits the description that Josh Ryan gave of one of the assailants disappeared and in fact they now claim that it never existed, even though their own log shows that they got a call about it and that they retrieved them. So they were willing to try to frame Kevin Cooper and to get rid of evidence that might have pointed them to other assailants.

This episode is underwritten by AIG, a leading global insurance company. AIG is committed to corporate social responsibility and is making a positive difference in the lives of its employees and in the communities where we work and live. In light of the compelling need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of AIG's commitment to criminal and social justice reform, the AIG pro Bono Program provides free legal services and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. So there was overwhelming evidence mounting that a group of three white or Hispanic men were responsible. Meanwhile, there's the specter of this prison break. So the police were also following up on the theory that a recent escape bee from CIM might have been responsible, and when CIM officials gave them the info on all of the recent escapees, they found out that one of them, David Troutman will Not wasn't his real name, so as we know, that was Kevin's alias at the time, and so their focus turned away from Diana roper Lee Furrow, the bloody T shirt and coveralls, and all of the other evidence that corroborated Josh Ryan's description of a gang of three white or Hispanic men, and now they just turned to Kevin the lone black.

Man com es cecil chill. Anyone who studies this case that one person who weighs one hundred and fifty five pounds, a skinny little kid, cannot murder four people want to kept their murder of.

Fifth, the idea that three or four weapons were used, that there were one hundred and forty four wounds, that two adults were overcome. Both mister and Missus Ryan had loaded weapons at their bedside, and neither of them was able to get to those weapons when they were attacked, which clearly shows that they were more than one attacker. The fact that the Sheriff's department changed its story from being three whier Mexican men was that Kevin Cooper was a very convenient target. And at the time, the sheriff for San Bernardino County, a man named Floyd Tidwell, was running for sheriff that fall, and he needed to solve this crime as quickly as possible, and therefore Kevin Cooper became the convenient scapegoat.

So now they began to try to find some evidence to support that theory. So they swept the area to Buying where Kevin had been hiding out after his escape, and the owner of that house, Larry Lease, who obviously had not been at home while Kevin was there, he called the police asking them to come by and check out the house.

That's correct, and the first time that the Leae house was inspected after the crimes had been discovered, two detectives went into the house from the Sheriff's department. They didn't find anything, and they wrote a report saying they didn't find anything with respect to that might have tied Kevin to the crime. But the next day they went back and suddenly in a room that they had said they before had no evidence in it. There was a green prison jacket button on the floor in the middle of a carpet, and a hatchet sheath. The fact that they were not seen on the first inspection of the house and were seen for the second one says to us that they were planted. The green button, of course, didn't turn out to be consistent with what Kevin Cooper was wearing. There is testimony from a guard who saw Kevin having escaped, who reported that he was in a brown prison jacket, so the green button was clearly planted because the Sheriff's department didn't know what color jacket Kevin was wearing at the time. The hatchet sheath is clearly a hatchet sheaf for a hatchet that was kept at the Least house and that disappeared. The hatchet that was found outside the Ryan home that was one of the murder weapons was a different hatchet with a different color handle. But the prospers Jushon obviously wanted to try to tie Kevin to the crime by planting the hatchet chief that went with the hatchet from the Leice house in order to frame Kevin Cooper.

There's literally no end to what they were willing to do in order to make sure that no justice was done in this case. Yeah wow. And while this horrible cover up of this ridiculously botched crime scene and investigation was going on, Kevin had hitchhike to Mexico, right, I mean, he's unaware of this quadruple murder, but he did still escape from prison. So he checked into a hotel in Tijuana, and there he befriended an American couple and he hitched a ride on their boat. He was arrested when they pulled into Pelican Bay, which is near Santa Barbara, and he sat in jail for about two years before even going to trial.

So the one piece of evidence that the prosecution relied on Pond was a blood spot on a wall outside the Ryan bedroom, and that blood spot has been the source of dispute ever since. At trial, the Sheriff's Department forensic scientist said that the blood type matched Kevin Cooper's blood type, but when he was cross examined by defense counsel, it became clear that he had botched the test and gotten the wrong blood type to be a match to Kevin, and had changed his notes to make the blood type match Kevin, and that was shown to the jury. Meanwhile, that blood spot had been subjected to testing only by the prosecution, and it had been tested so much that it was exhausted, there was none left of it.

So they changed the blood type to match Kevin Cooper. Exactly what in the war? They changed the freaking blood type? Who does these things? There's also some Harris found right that didn't match their narrative at all, but they didn't bring that up. Right.

Jessica Ryan had hairs clutched in her hand when her body was found that were blonde in color, and the jury was never told that a trial. The prosecution didn't want that to be known, and the defense lawyer did not do a good job. Bear in mind, there were no hairs from an African American at the crime scene note ever found.

And so the prosecution brings up the station wagon. Doesn't make a big deal that the blood evidence of the car clearly shows that three perpetrators had stained the seats beneath them. But they do bring up cigarette butts, cigarette butts that somehow were not found during the first inspection of the Ryan station wagon.

The origin of those cigarette butts, of course, is the cigarette butts that they collected in the lease house after they inspected it, which disappeared, and then suddenly cigarette butts with Kevin's blood type bottom are discovered in the Ryan station wagon. There's another part to the forensic Marie ass that is this case, which is that at the lease house they tested the shower area for blood. The problem with that is that the test that they did is a test that could be showing either blood or bleach, and the woman who had left the lease house the week that the murders were committed testified that she had in fact cleaned the tub with bleach. So there was clearly that basis for the finding that there was bleach not blood in there. But of course that whole theory is inconsistent with the theory that if he had committed these murders, gone to the lease house and taken a shower, he wouldn't have left blood in three different seats in the car. But all of that was overlooked.

So what was presented, if anything, in his defense by his team.

Obviously, Kevin's lawyer did a good job of showing that the blood spot evidence was faulty, but the problem that he faced with his defense was that his lawyer, who was a public defender, wanted to defend this case on his own without any help from anybody else. Meanwhile, the prosecution had countless lawyers and investigators and forensic people, and so the lawyer for Kevin was simply overwhelmed, and he never bothered to read the documents that were produced by the prosecution, as it's required by law, and he didn't know how to get any evidence forward that would have shown that there was, for instance, blonde hairs in Jessica's hand. And he basically told the trial judge that he was exhausted and couldn't go forward, and the judge said to him, well, you should have gotten help. It's too late now.

Let me just throw that back for a second. So you did say that the defense lawyer, the one hope in hell that Kevin had, at one point, said he was too exhausted and couldn't go on, yes, and didn't bother to read the for its prosecution the view that they did turn over to him, which he's required by ethics and everything else to do.

That's correct. Probably the most crucial piece of evidence at trial was the testimony that the prosecution presented of Josh Ryan. As you recall, Josh Ryan had identified the assailants as three whiter Mexican men the morning after the crimes and.

He saw my pitscrow TV. He seen it wasn't me. So what did they do to the Loane high witness? They flipped him. They makes him say that he didn't see me per se, but he saw a shadow with a puff of hair and a puff of hair meaning that air room.

And they presented a videotape of him where he simply said that all he saw was one shadow of the assailants. And the jury never was able to understand how that change came about, and therefore the most crucial evidence in the case from Josh Ryan was gone, as well as not having the bloody coveralls that were turned over to the Sheriff's department by the girlfriend of the person who we think actually committed these crimes, or the blue shirt with blood on it which matched the description that Josh Ryan gave shortly after he was taken to the hospital. So what you have is a very distorted picture that the jury was shown of the evidence and of the crime and of Kevin Cooper because of evidence that was destroyed or hidden and evidence that was planted.

How long did the jury deliberate?

Jury actually deliberated for a week, seven days, and the jury members have told us that if there had been one less piece of evidence, they would have acquitted Kevin.

So, Kevin, when the jury went out to deliverate, can you tell us what you were feeling then, what was going through your mind?

Well, I'm feeling good because they deliberate seven days. I mean, you would think that if they were going to find me right away. So I'm thinking, damn, I got a shot. And then I come back and they found me guilty, and you know, that was It's unreal. I can't put into words. The person has to experience that personally for them to truly understand the out of body experience that that is. Now, after that I was a convicted murderer, society said that I don't deserve to live, and that's how they treated me. They put me in the back of a police car like at two o'clock in the morning and drove me from San Diego all the way up here to San Quentin Prison until I got here, and they in nineteen eighty five, I was on death room and I've been here every since. I got here when I was twenty seven. Now I'm sixty four. My life has says a lot. I have survived a lot, and I've been through they own back. I did not commit murders. I would not commit me. I'm not a murder That's not in me to do. You know I've been in Saying put prison nineteen eighty five. You know I've never been in a fist writing. I'm on the mainline death U York. I've never been to ac I've never been in any trouble. I never had a whole unquote prison writer for miscontent because I Missitusseaslas. It's just because this stuff was not in me.

And since then it's been a winding road through the appeals process and the bad actors in this case. There's still a whole lot more to come, right.

Well, talking about the appeals, first, on direct appeal to the California Supreme Court, the California Supreme Court actually decided for the first time to ascribe a motive to Kevin Cooper, and in their opinion, even though the prosecution had never asserted this, said that the reason for the murder of the Ryots was for Kevin Cooper to steal the Ryans car. Well, the Ryan station wagon which was taken away by the ackers had the keys in it, so there was no need for anybody to harm the Ryans if that was the reason for the crimes. The California Supreme Court also rejected a number of other claims of ineffective assistance of its council and of evidence being planted and evidence being destroyed. Federal courts under a piece of legislation called the Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, it was passed in the nineties, those federal courts are not allowed to make findings that are inconsistent with what the state court findings are, and that has been a real legal hurdle for Kevin Cooper to assert his innocence and overturn this conviction, even though the evidence that the California Supreme Court relied upon has now been disproven. So Kevin's appeals continued in the federal courts, handcuffed by this law, and finally, in February of two thousand and four, Kevin was scheduled to be executed when a stay was issued by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, giving Kevin the right to file a new federal Habeas corpus petition James L.

Brownie, he wrote a descent. He took that this in around to all the other judges and for the first time in the history of nestility case in California death roal Indmaker in balk hearing, I got a nine or two decision because she only did eleven judges at that time, and they stayed not execution. But normally, when people get a state, the United States Supreme Court will lift that state and those animates will ultimately get execute But in this case, there was so much wrong that they're not a state Supreme court. They refused to lift the state, and that's why I'm still here today.

He came within three hours and fifty seven minutes of being executed. We had a new habeas corpus proceeding in federal court in San Diego, and that judge, unfortunately, was the one who had decided against Kevin twice in previous Habeas corpus petitions, and she refused to listen to any of the evidence that we put on.

There's also the issue of the DNA right the blocking of the DNA being tested. Tell us how it came to be that the DNA in this case, which was available with the modern technology that was developed long after Kevin went to prison, that it took literally decades, in case after case and brief after brief to try to get anybody to test the DNA am I right.

Yes, there was DNA testing done in the early nineteen nineties. And what that DNA testing showed was that prosecution had tampered with the evidence that they had said they were going to allow DNA testing for. So while some of the DNA testing seemed to exonerate Kevin, some of it did not. We were able to do some testing which showed that, in fact, Kevin's blood had been planted on the T shirt that had been tested for Kevin's DNA.

How could the testing have proven that they planted this blood? I mean, I've heard of something called EDTA. Can you explain that? And how this could have been the key that literally unlocked the doors of the president sent him home years and years and years ago.

The only thing that has tied Kevin to the Ryan House is the supposed finding of a blood spot outside the crime scene in a hall. When Kevin was arrested, they took vials of his blood to be able to compare his blood type to the blood at the crime scene. We felt that the prosecution had taken Kevin's blood that was taken at the time that he was arrested and put it on the T shirt and on the blood spot. And the way to prove that is to see whether or not in addition to the blood, there is a chemical that is used by law enforcement to preserve blood when it is taken, called EDTA, and the prosecution hired a scientist to do the testing for EDTA, and his results showed that there was heightened DTA. But as soon as he found out that that was his result, he withdrew said there'd have been a contamination in his lab and that was why the result showed that there was a high level of DTA, and the judge at the time accepted that, and the.

Beat goes on.

Right.

I mean, it's crazy that there's so many people, so many years after the fact, that are still in positions of great power who are actively engaged in continuing this grievous injustice. And I want to say not everyone, right, because while Kevin's habeas petitions have been repeatedly denied, there was a judge, judge William Fletcher. So Judge Fletcher dissented from the Ninth Circuit Court's opinion, and in it he argued that the police may have tampered with the evidence and that the Ninth Circuit should have reheard the case en banc, which of course means the entire panel of judges, and ordered the Federal District judge to give Cooper the fair hearing. He has never had strong words. Right. And then here are some of the arguments that were proposed post conviction. Right. But it's interesting that Judge Fletcher concurred with many of these findings. Right. He said, quote, deputies misrepresented Josh's recollections and gradually shaped his testimony so that it was consistent with the prosecution's theory that there was only one killer. End quote. He referenced to blonde hairs that were found clutched in Pjessica Ryan's hand. Obviously, Kevin is not blonde, but that that was disregarded. He pointed out that the initial search of the station wagon, no cigarette butts were found. Judge Fletcher wrote, quote, some of those cigarette butts could have easily been planted in the car. Moreover, after initial forensic testing, paper from a hand rolled cigarette butt supposedly founded the station wagon was described as consumed That same paper later quote reappeared and was offered into evidence. This is still the judge's quote. By the way, when the paper reappeared, it was significantly larger than the paper and the cigarette butt that had been tested end quote. Fletcher wrote that while the button found in the house came from a green prison jacket quote, uncontradicted, evidence a trial showed that Cooper was wearing a brown or tan prison issue jacket when he escaped end quote. Fletcher further said the preservatives found in the blood on the T shirt indicated that it may have been planted. He wrote that if the EDTA testing already performed shows that Cooper's blood was planted on the T shirt, that showing greatly increduces the likelihood that much of the evidence introduced a trial was false end quote. I mean, this judge laid it out, man, he laid it out. And then there's all the evidence of the alternate suspects, right, especially Lee Furrow.

We now have evidence from him to third parties that he in fact was the killer. So he is confessed to a number of people about having done this, although he has not confessed to law enforcement.

We can't leave out another guy, Lee Furrow's one time boss, Clarence ray Allen, who was a notoriously violent guy who happened to also run a criminal organization, and he and Farrow had had a big falling out over the murder of a teenage girl, Mary Sue Kit, who had witnessed some of their criminal activity.

Back in the nineteen seventies. At Clarence rey Allen's direction, Lee Furrow strangled this young lady and cut her body up and threw it into a drainage ditch. Lee Furrow was captured and charged with his crime, and in order to get a reduced sentence, he turned state's evidence against Clarence ray Allen, and so Pharaoh only served three and a half years in prison for the murder of Mary Sue Kits, while the Clarence rey Allen ultimately was convicted and sentenced to death. So Farroh has a pretty nefarious background which links him to the type of crime that was perpetrated on the Ryan family in nineteen eighty three.

Now, even with the multiple confessions by Lee Furrow, were unsure why they killed the Ryans. But some people, and you'll remember that Peggy raised Arabian horses. Clarence ray Allen was in that business as well, and some people believe that it was a horssale gone awry. It's also believed that Clarence ray Allen contracted many more murders from behind bars, and Lee Furrow kept himself safe by working off his debt to Clarence ray Allen, by carrying out these executions. You don't need to be a genius to figure this one out, you really don't. But here we are today, and thirty eight years later, Kevin remains in prison, suffering day in and day out. Now, of course we go to a little bit of a hopeful development, I guess you could say, which was that on May twenty one, Governor Gavin Newsom ordered a full innocence investigation into the case. Now, Governor Newsom has granted already eighty six pardons ninety two commutations in twenty eight reprieves. So there's reason to believe that there could be hope, especially with this Melissa. And I think he's a great governor, and I think that he is a man who believes injustice, He believes in fairness, and he believes in righting wrongs. So all of that gives me hope. So, Kevin, what are you thinking about this now? After everything you've been through? Are you feeling optimistic about this?

Well, first and foremost, this just didn't happen on its own. There have been a lot of a lot of people, including my attorney else the former put in a lot of work to get these people to see the truth. This Innocents Investigation will reveal the truth. We're not afraid of the truth. It's the other side who's afraid of the truth. The truth that has been exposed so far about the case and the corruption, you know, the champion with evidence, the fanting of governess, the intimidation and witnesses and all this other stuff has been revealed by us. And so it is my hope and it is my prayer that this innocence investigation, which is the first for a death row inmate in the history of the state of California, will do exactly what it is designed to do, investigate the innocence and come up with the treatment.

Yeah, well, absolutely so, Kevin. I know a lot of our listeners are going to want to learn more about your case. Is there a website that you can refer them to go to. I know there've also been a ton of national press done about your case as well.

Anyone who wants to learn more about my case, you can go to free Kevincooper dot com. You can go to my Facebook page. You can look at death row stories on Natino's Hills, murders on a Mountain. You can look at forty eight Hours. Over the twenty years since nineteen ninety nine, Aaron Morioty of CBS News at forty eight Hours has done i think five stories on this case, and so the information is there.

We'll put links to all of that in our bio and I hope that you are listeners will get involved in this case. If you have it already, this wrong can still be righted. And with people like Norm on the case and the governor of the great State of California, I hope that we'll be welcoming Kevin home very soon. And with that, we have a tradition here at Ronful Conviction, which is my favorite part of the show, and it's probably most people's favorite part of the show. It's called closing arguments and it works like this. First of all, I thank you too, guys for coming here and courageously sharing. I'm going to talk to you now, Kevin, of course your story, and Norm for all the work you're doing. So without further ado, I'm going to turn my microphone off for the section of the show we call closing arguments. I'm gonna kick back in my chair, turn the volume up, leave my headphones on, and let you guys share any final thoughts you want to share with our audience. So Norm, let's start with you, and then you can just hand the mic off to Kevin and let him take us out.

We hope that this travesty of justice will be reversed, and we definitely are very thankful to Governor Newsom for having ordered an investigation of this case. We're confident that an investigation into what happened here will show that Kevin Cooper is in fact innocent and should be released from prison and pardoned and Kevin over to you.

America is not just dealing with the racial reckoning in this country, also dealing with a truth reckoning, a truth reckoning that is based on this denial of its racial problem here in this country. This criminal justice system is truly last messages of slavery. Nothing more is true about that. Then it comes to dealing with police on the front end of the criminal justice system, execution is on the back end of the justice system, and all in between this justice system there's a bunch of people, not all of them, but a bunch of them who are that same mentality to lack us or get rid of us. Now I am to blame to a degree for being on death thrill. Why because I walked away from that person, and I put myself in a position by doing so to let those body snatchers get their hands on me, and they did the rest. And the only reason why I'm alive, And I really to this day don't know why I'm alive unless it's God and he has a plan for me bigger than I know, because I honestly thought on February nine, two thousand and four, when they had me sitting inside that Jeff Chamber of waiting room, that I was going to die that night. How and why I'm still alive today, I don't know other than their turns who fly for me then are still fighting for me now. And the truth about this case just keeps coming out, and it proves that I did not commit those murders and that somebody else did. So all master for is my day in court. Here in this country the claims to be the land of the free and the home of the brave, when it should be called the land of the oppressors and the home of the moral cowards. Because of this moral coworkers, these people have taken. Damn, they're forty years out of my life. Not just prosecutors, but these judges who refuse to look at the truth, corpor stamping my case on through even though all the evidence is there, that evidence was planted, evidence was destroyed. Witness will temperat with and belave me. If these people get the opportunity, they will put that death chamber back together, they will reassembly. And I'm the first online for them to murder, not because I'm guilty, and because I'm fighting back, and that's the worst thing that those people see in me. I'm a fighter.

Thank you for listening to Rafel Conviction. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Justin Golden, Jeff Cliburn, and Kevin Wadis, with research by Lyla Robinson. The music in this production was supplied by three time Oscar nominated composer Jay Row. Sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also follow me on both TikTok and Instagram at it's Jason Flap. Wrongful Conviction is the production of Lava for Good podcast and association with Signal Company Number one

Wrongful Conviction

Hosted by celebrated criminal justice reform advocate and founding board member of the Innocence Pro 
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 522 clip(s)