New Podcast: Columnist Nicholas Kristof on ​“The Framing of Kevin Cooper”

In his May 20 col­umn in the Sunday New York Times, Pulitzer Prize win­ning colum­nist Nicholas Kristof (pic­tured, left) focused nation­al atten­tion on the trou­bling case of California death-row pris­on­er, Kevin Cooper (pic­tured, right) and the dis­turb­ing evi­dence sug­gest­ing that San Bernardino police plant­ed blood and oth­er evi­dence to frame him for mur­der. Kristof joined DPIC Executive Director Robert Dunham for a Discussions with DPIC pod­cast to talk about his recent col­umn, Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder?, and how police came to focus on a 155-pound Black man as the sole sus­pect in a griz­zly quadru­ple mur­der, despite phys­i­cal and eye­wit­ness evi­dence point­ing to three white men, includ­ing one already con­vict­ed mur­der­er, as the per­pe­tra­tors.

Kristof explained how an opin­ion by a fed­er­al judge led him to write about the case: ​“What real­ly struck me about [Cooper’s case] was that you had a num­ber of fed­er­al judges who not only argued that there was doubt about his inno­cence, but sim­ply argued that, look, he is inno­cent, he is framed by the sher­if­f’s office. And one very well respect­ed Ninth Circuit judge, William Fletcher, came out and said he is framed by the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office, and wrote a hun­dred-page judi­cial opin­ion about that, and that just does­n’t hap­pen in the law.” 

Kristof says that his piece on Cooper, the longest col­umn in New York Times his­to­ry, was also inspired by his own fail­ure, and that of the news media at large, to ade­quate­ly cov­er the pos­si­ble inno­cence of Texas pris­on­er Cameron Willingham, who was exe­cut­ed in 2004. Willingham’s case gar­nered a great deal of media atten­tion only after he was executed. 

“I think Kevin Cooper is inno­cent,” Kristof said, and ​“I want to write while there’s still time to affect the outcome.” 

As he does in his col­umn, Kristof describes the ram­pant irreg­u­lar­i­ties in Cooper’s case that led him to con­clude that Cooper had been framed, but he also talks in the pod­cast about the broad­er sys­temic prob­lems that lead to wrong­ful con­vic­tions, espe­cial­ly in cas­es involv­ing defen­dants of color. 

Kristof point­ed to the lack of account­abil­i­ty for offi­cial mis­con­duct as one of most impor­tant sys­temic issues. ​“There have to be con­se­quences for police or pros­e­cu­tors when they engage in this kind of mis­con­duct,” he said. ​“Too often, there are no con­se­quences. We under­stand that there have to be con­se­quences for bank rob­bery or mur­der, but there also have to be con­se­quences for police offi­cers who per­jure them­selves or sher­if­f’s deputies who plant evidence.” 

Finally, Kristof explains how Cooper’s case is emblem­at­ic of oth­er prob­lems: ​“The rea­son I wrote about the Cooper case is not just because of the injus­tice, I believe, to one man, but more broad­ly, because it’s a win­dow into the way the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is peri­od­i­cal­ly just plain bro­ken, espe­cial­ly with regard to defen­dants of col­or or indi­gent defen­dants in real­ly sen­sa­tion­al cas­es. Sometimes the sys­tem works and some­times it does­n’t, but it should­n’t be a game of lot­tery when peo­ple are arrest­ed and charged with capital offenses.”