New York Times Columnist Says Kevin Cooper May Have Been Framed, Urges DNA Testing That Could Prove His Innocence

Citing exten­sive evi­dence that California death-row pris­on­er Kevin Cooper (pic­tured) may have been framed, New York Times Pulitzer Prize-win­ning colum­nist Nicholas Kristof has urged Governor Jerry Brown to per­mit advanced DNA test­ing of evi­dence that could poten­tial­ly prove Cooper’s inno­cence. In a col­umn elec­tron­i­cal­ly post­ed by the Times on May 17, 2018 and sched­uled to appear in the paper’s May 20 Sunday print edi­tion, Kristof joins a for­mer FBI agent, the American Bar Association, and Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in call­ing for clos­er review of the case. 

In his col­umn, Kristof calls Cooper’s case ​“a fail­ure at every lev­el,” and says that he believes Cooper was framed by the San Bernardino​’s sher­if­f’s office, which had a his­to­ry of plant­i­ng and mishandling evidence. 

Cooper, who is Black, became the lead sus­pect in the 1983 killings of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daugh­ter Jessica Ryen, and 11-year-old neigh­bor Chris Hughes, in spite of state­ments by 8‑year-old Josh Ryen, the sole sur­vivor of the attack, who twice told inves­ti­ga­tors that three White men had com­mit­ted the mur­ders. The four vic­tims had been stabbed or slashed a com­bined 140 times with an ice pick, a hatch­et, and at least one knife — an assault, Kristof said, that a sin­gle per­pe­tra­tor, much less the 155-pound Cooper, was unlike­ly to have been able to carry out. 

Multiple wit­ness­es saw three White men dri­ving a vehi­cle fit­ting the descrip­tion of the Ryens’ car — which had been stolen from their home — near the time of the mur­ders. Other wit­ness­es report­ed three White men in bloody clothes act­ing strange­ly at a near­by bar the night of the crime. When the car was found 30 miles away, Kristof writes, it ​“incon­ve­nient­ly had blood on the driver’s seat, the front pas­sen­ger seat and the back seat — sug­gest­ing at least three killers.” 

Cooper came under sus­pi­cion because he had escaped from a local prison, where he had been incar­cer­at­ed for rob­bery, and had hid­den in an emp­ty house near the Ryen fam­i­ly’s home. An ini­tial police search of Cooper’s hide­out turned up no evi­dence, but the day after they iden­ti­fied him as a sus­pect, police ​“found” the sheath of a hatch­et and a bloody prison-uni­form but­ton in a room they claimed — false­ly, Kristof says — to have not pre­vi­ous­ly searched. The hatch­et itself was found in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, near the path the Ryens’ vehi­cle took the night of the mur­der, and the but­ton lat­er turned out to be a dif­fer­ent col­or from the uni­form Cooper had been wearing. 

Numerous leads point­ed to an alter­na­tive sus­pect, a recent­ly released con­vict­ed mur­der­er whom Kristof iden­ti­fies only as ​“Lee,” but police destroyed key evi­dence — a pair of bloody cov­er­alls giv­en to police by Lee’s girl­friend — before any test­ing took place. 

In 2004, Cooper was allowed to test a blood sam­ple from a tan T‑shirt that was found near the mur­der scene. The shirt was the same col­or, size, and brand as a T‑shirt Lee’s girl­friend said she had recent­ly bought for him and that he had been wear­ing ear­li­er on the day of the murders. 

The test­ing found Cooper’s blood on the shirt, but his blood was con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with a chem­i­cal used in pre­serv­ing blood sam­ples, indi­cat­ing that it had like­ly been plant­ed on the shirt. The lab then test­ed the sam­ple of Cooper’s blood held by the sher­if­f’s office and found mul­ti­ple blood types, sug­gest­ing that Cooper’s sam­ple had been topped off with some­one else’s blood. 

Testing of oth­er evi­dence, includ­ing the mur­der weapon and strands of hair found at the scene, could prove Cooper’s claim that he is innocent. 

Kristof said, “[I]f we exe­cute a man in so flawed a case with­out even both­er­ing to test the evi­dence rig­or­ous­ly, then a piece of our jus­tice sys­tem dies along with Kevin Cooper.” [UPDATE: U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, who as California’s Attorney General had opposed Cooper’s requests for DNA test­ing and had ini­tial­ly declined to com­ment for the sto­ry, joined in Kristof’s request for DNA test­ing. On May 18, she post­ed on Facebook: ​“As a firm believ­er in DNA test­ing, I hope the gov­er­nor and the state will allow for such test­ing in the case of Kevin Cooper.”]