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Hell
Parker Spitzer clueless on Kevin Cooper
CNN's Parker Spitzer ran a segment Tuesday on Kevin Cooper, the man sentenced to death for the 1983 murders of Chino Hills chiropractors Doug and Peggy Ryen, their ten-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old house guest Christopher Hughes.
Kathleen Parker actually said, "When you look at the facts in this case, nearly everything points toward Cooper's innocence."
Really? DNA tests placed Cooper at the Ryen home and in the Ryen's car, even though Cooper testified that he had never been in either. Before DNA testing, a jury found Cooper guilty based largely on physical evidence that tied him to the crime. The California Supreme Court upheld the conviction, and a majority of the uber-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Cooper's bogus grounds for appeal -- because nearly everything pointed toward his innocence? Can Parker really believe that?
As I've noted before, the whackier and more convoluted Cooper's tall tale becomes, the more gullible professionals flock to his corner. Part II of the Cooper phenom: The further away journalists are from Chino Hills, the easier it is for them to ignore mountains of evidence.
AP, Damian Dovarganes
Kevin Cooper victim Christopher Hughes' mother Mary Ann
I talked to Mary Ann Hughes, mother of Christopher Hughes after the Cooper PR-campaign blitz began, but before the CNN puff piece aired. Hughes told me, "I try not to let this stuff get me too upset, especially over the holidays. My son would have been 39 this Saturday."
| December 15 2010 at 11:07 AM
Kevin Cooper is guilty, continued
While Nick Kristof and The Chronicle have urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to commute the death-penalty sentence of Kevin Cooper, the governor does not have the authority to commute Cooper's sentence unilaterally. As the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation's Kent Scheidegger blogged, the California Constitution won't let him. Article V, Section 8 notes,
The Governor may not grant a pardon or commutation to a person twice convicted of a felony except on recommendation of the Supreme Court, 4 judges concurring.
Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle
Kevin Cooper knows: The whackier your story, the more activists you attract
Now the make-up of the state's top court has changed. But in 1991, as the court ruled against Cooper's appeal, it wrote.
"It is utterly unreasonable to suppose that by coincidence, some hypothetical real killer chose this night and this locale to kill; that he entered (the neighbor's) house just after defendant left to retrieve the murder weapons, leaving the hatchet sheath in the bedroom defendant used; that he returned to the (neighbor's) house to shower; that he drove the Ryen station wagon in the same direction defendant used on his way to Mexico; and that he happened to wear prison issue tennis shoes like those of the defendant, happened to have the defendant's blood type, happened to have hair like the defendant's, happened to roll cigarettes with the same distinctive prison issued tobacco, and so forth."
This is before the DNA nailed Cooper by proving he had been in the Ryen house and car, despite his claims of never having been in either. The Arabian ruling also noted that prosecutors had proven that Cooper raped a young Pennsylvania girl in 1982. As Alan M. Dershowitz and David B. Rivkin Jr wrote in the Los Angeles Times, Cooper is "no angel."
In 1991, two California Supreme Court justices dissented with the majority opinion on Cooper. After the DNA testing, five Ninth Circuit judges dissented with the majority. Oddly, the whackier and more convoluted Cooper's story gets, the more judges and journalists advocate for him.
| December 14 2010 at 11:29 AM
Kevin Cooper is a murderer
They're back. Those gullible defenders of convicted multiple murderer Kevin Cooper are trying to free Cooper, who was convicted in the brutal 1983 slaying of chiropractors Doug and Peggy Ryen, their ten-year-old daughter Jessica, and 11-year-old house guest Christopher Hughes. Cooper also slit the throat of son Joshua Ryen, 8, and left him for dead. New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, whose work I usually admire, blew it. In "Framed for murder", Kristof suggested that California law enforcement deliberately framed a black man. Kristof urged Gov. Schwarzenegger to commute his capital punishment sentence.
Attorneys Alan Dershowitz and David R. Rivkin Jr. wrote a similar piece, "A Time for Clemency".
I've seen Cooper's team of attorneys spin this tale, and they do a fine job -- because they leave out salient facts.
As I wrote in 2004,This is a crime that never should have happened. It occurred after Cooper escaped from a Pennsylvania institution, then raped a teenage girl who interrupted him during a burglary. Cooper fled to California where he was arrested for two more burglaries. In June 1983, Cooper escaped a minimum- security facility, then hid for two days in an empty Chino Hills home that overlooked the Ryens' house. Prosecutors believe Cooper committed the murders so that he could steal their car, which turned up in Long Beach, as he escaped to Mexico.
AP, Damian Dovarganes
Kevin Cooper victim Christopher Hughes' mother Mary Ann
After Cooper was convicted, he claimed that he was innocent and asked the courts to conduct DNA testing, which he claimed would exonerate him. If the tests implicated him, Cooper said, he would drop his appeals.
But the DNA tests nailed Cooper.
During his 1985 trial, Cooper testified he had never entered the Ryen house. But the DNA tests showed that blood found in the home was his. Cooper had testified that he didn't drive the Ryen car. But investigators found Cooper's DNA on cigarette butts found in the Ryen car. Cooper's DNA was linked to blood found on a T-shirt, along with DNA from Douglas Ryen.
So Cooper came up with a new story. He did not drop his appeals. He claimed he was framed, as authorities had planted his DNA.
If you care to know more about his farcical chemical-in-the-DNA argument, read here.
But if a jury conviction and multiple court decisions against Cooper do not convince you, try this: I talked to two people who had worked on for Cooper's defense and publicly stated that Cooper's planted-DNA charge was bogus.
Dr. Edward T. Blake boasts that he has been "involved in more post-conviction exonerations than anybody in the world" and has worked for Barry Scheck's The Innocence Project. Cooper's lawyers had hired Blake to prove Cooper's innocence. Instead Blake found, as he wrote in a court document, that the DNA tests "proved" that Cooper was the source of blood at the Ryen home, the source of DNA found on two cigarette butts found in the Ryen car, and the source of blood smears on a T-shirt also containing Doug Ryen's blood.
Former Pomona cop Paul Ingels worked as a private investigator on the Cooper appeal. As I wrote in another column,"It proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Kevin Cooper was involved in the murders," Ingels told me over the phone.
What about the claims that Cooper was framed? "They're just making this stuff up," was Ingels' assessment. As for Cooper's latest set of lawyers, "They're doing everything they can, professional, unprofessional, ethically, unethically," Ingels opined. "The end justifies the means."
It would be one thing for Cooper's defenders to object to his execution because they oppose the death penalty. But in arguing that he was framed, Cooper's advocates in effect are working to set him free. In describing Cooper as "an intensely gentle and kind man who has found his peace with the system and the injustice that has been done to him," his legal team ignores Cooper's history as a violent repeat offender, who had been institutionalized so many times that he has escaped 12 times, and only got caught after the Ryen murders because a victim went to Santa Barbara authorities to report that Cooper had raped her at knifepoint. But apparently Cooper's groupies don't care.
| December 13 2010 at 06:23 AM
Steven Slater unbuckled
The New York post declared, "Move over Chesley Sullenberger, make room for Steven Slater." You can see why the flight attendant is turning into a folk hero.
Have a beer and a slide
For one thing, you know his punishment will be harsh as he faces federal charges.
For another, if you fly with any frequency, you've seen passengers dump on airline workers for circumstances beyond their control -- like the weather. It's amazing this sort of thing does not happen more often.
Besides, we all grumble when other passsengers overdo carry-on.
| August 10 2010 at 11:07 AM
Racism Down Under
I'm in Melbourne, Australia today as the release of latest Mel Gibson tapes has made TV news.
AFP,Getty, Jewel Samad
Think these two deserve each other?
It's a story of the Australian-raised local-boy made-good gone-bad.
I feel dirty just listening to the tapes. He's a racist. Former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva comes across as a piece of work for taping him -- and having spent time with him.
These days you hear the word racist bandied about too freely. With Gibson, however, the R-word truly applies. You can always spot a racist because he'll bring up race on any issue, no matter how unrelated.
| July 09 2010 at 04:06 PM
Elena Kagan, meet your tormentors
If you were Elena Kagan, which torment would you choose -- being waterboarded just once or having to sit there and listen without comment -- until the end of Monday --to the 19 bloviating members of the Senate Judicary Committee?
AP
Three Senators who can make minutes feel like hours.
What must Kagan have been thinking? Probably she was trying to decide which Senator is the biggest windbag -- Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., or Sen. Arlen Specter, ?-Pa. That could take hours.
But it's the question and answer sessions that started Tuesday -- with long-winded solons asking such wordy questions that she barely has an opportunity to answer -- that really separate the wheat from the gaffe.
I see newcomer Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, is fixing to give Hatch, Leahy and Specter some competition. He actually congratulated Kagan for her "responsiveness," after she said precious little, while allowing him to ramble.
| June 30 2010 at 11:00 AM
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