Attorneys for Kevin Cooper Respond to Special Counsel Report

Kevin Cooper (pic­tured) is a death-row pris­on­er in California who was con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing four peo­ple in 1985. He has main­tained his inno­cence of the offense. On January 13, 2023, a spe­cial coun­sel appoint­ed by Governor Gavin Newsom to con­duct an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion of Cooper’s case released a report dis­miss­ing his claims of inno­cence, stat­ing, ​“The evi­dence of Cooper’s guilt is exten­sive and conclusive.” 

In response, Cooper’s attor­neys made the fol­low­ing state­ment: ​“The spe­cial counsel’s inves­ti­ga­tion ordered by Governor Newsom in May 2021 was not prop­er­ly con­duct­ed and is demon­stra­bly incom­plete. It failed to car­ry out the type of thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion required to explore the exten­sive evi­dence that Mr. Cooper was wrongfully convicted.” 

Cooper’s attor­neys argue that the evi­dence cit­ed in the report rais­es ques­tions about the find­ings of the inves­ti­ga­tion. Cooper main­tains he was framed by the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department, and that a man named Lee Furrow com­mit­ted the mur­der. Two con­struc­tion work­ers, who had worked with Furrow in Pennsylvania, told California’s inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tor that in 2018 they heard Furrow say, ​“me and my boys, we butchered a whole family.” 

In addi­tion, Furrow’s for­mer girl­friend told the inves­ti­ga­tor that she saw Furrow wear­ing cov­er­alls cov­ered with blood­stains. Six months lat­er, the sheriff’s deputy ques­tioned Furrow and dis­posed of the cov­er­alls with­out test­ing the blood­stains. Josh Ryen, the only sur­vivor of the attack attrib­uted to Cooper, told the police, ​“That wasn’t the guy that did it,” after see­ing a pho­to of Cooper.

Cooper’s attor­neys assert that pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct is also cen­tral to the case: ​“Most fun­da­men­tal­ly, we are shocked that the gov­er­nor seem­ing­ly failed to con­duct a thor­ough review of the report that con­tains many mis­state­ments and omis­sions and also ignores the pur­pose of a legit­i­mate inno­cence inves­ti­ga­tion, which is to inde­pen­dent­ly deter­mine whether Mr. Cooper’s con­vic­tion was a prod­uct of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct.” The spe­cial coun­sel not­ed in the report that it did not assess whether Cooper’s tri­al had been unfair and ​“improp­er­ly influ­enced by Cooper’s race.”