American Bar Association Urges Reprieve to Allow Full Investigation of Kevin Cooper’s Innocence Claims

American Bar Association President Paulette Brown has sent a let­ter to California Govenor Jerry Brown urg­ing him to grant a reprieve to death row inmate Kevin Cooper to per­mit a full inves­ti­ga­tion of Cooper’s pos­si­ble inno­cence. The ABA President wrote: ​“Mr. Cooper’s arrest, pros­e­cu­tion, and con­vic­tion are marred by evi­dence of racial bias, police mis­con­duct, evi­dence tam­per­ing, sup­pres­sion of excul­pa­to­ry infor­ma­tion, lack of qual­i­ty defense coun­sel, and a ham­strung court sys­tem. We there­fore believe that jus­tice requires that Mr. Cooper be grant­ed an exec­u­tive reprieve until the inves­ti­ga­tion nec­es­sary to ful­ly eval­u­ate his guilt or inno­cence is com­plet­ed.” The ABA let­ter described Cooper’s case as ​“a par­tic­u­lar­ly unique exam­ple of a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem falling short at every stage” and ref­er­enced a rul­ing by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that Cooper’s con­vic­tion and sen­tence vio­lat­ed his human rights. Cooper has exhaust­ed all appeals in his case, but evi­dence that was pre­vi­ous­ly sup­pressed as a result of offi­cial mis­con­duct rais­es ques­tions about his guilt. New evi­dence includes a state­ment by the sur­viv­ing vic­tim that the per­pe­tra­tors were white or Hispanic (Cooper is black); police destruc­tion of a pair of blood-spat­tered over­alls before test­ing could take place; and unre­li­able foren­sic test­ing that may indi­cate evi­dence con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. In 2009, five judges of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dis­sent­ed from the court’s deci­sion to uphold Cooper’s con­vic­tion, writ­ing, ​“The State of California may be about to exe­cute an inno­cent man.” The ABA let­ter agrees, ask­ing Gov. Brown to use his clemen­cy pow­er to review the case: ​“We request that you grant this reprieve and order a mean­ing­ful inves­ti­ga­tion into Mr. Cooper’s case to pre­vent the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a mis­car­riage of jus­tice — one that can nev­er be undone.”

The ABA does not take a posi­tion on the death penal­ty, but Ms. Brown said, ​“we have a strong inter­est in ensur­ing a fair and accu­rate justice system.”

(M. Neil, ​“ABA urges California gov­er­nor to grant ​‘exec­u­tive reprieve’ to con­vict­ed mur­der­er,” ABA Journal, March 16, 2016.) Read Paulette Brown’s let­ter to Gov. Jerry Brown. See Innocence, Race, and Prosecutorial Misconduct.