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Kevin Cooper, center, suspected of having stabbed four people with knife stab, is escorted to Santa Bernadino by a car for transport after arrest by police on the island. of Santa Cruz, July 31, 1983. He is now waiting for new DNA evidence that could dispel it.
((AP Photo))
An inmate who claims to have been sentenced for a 1983 killing may have a second chance to live after 35 years in prison.
Inmate Kevin Cooper, 61, originally convicted in 1985, received a good news on Friday when California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered new DNA tests on some items that did not appear. never been tested during the initial investigation, according to ABC News. Some of these items include the hair, blood and nails of the victim. Another key piece of evidence includes a green button that investigators say Cooper is related to the crime.
The order also suggested re-testing some of the original evidence.
"Especially in cases where the government seeks to impose the ultimate death penalty, I must be convinced that all relevant evidence is carefully and fairly scrutinized," Newsom said in a statement to the chain.
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Among the tests initially tested were a beige t-shirt, an orange towel, a hatchet handle and a hatchet sleeve. Former Gov. Jerry Brown had commissioned tests for these items, on which the Newsom order will be developed.
Brown had placed his previous order after a request for grace from Cooper, who felt that the additional tests would prove his innocence. The affair gained notoriety at the time, with the support of Senator Kamala Harris and celebrity Kim Kardashian.
Cooper claims that he was the victim of the murder in 1983 of the murders of Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and her 11-year-old neighbor Christopher. The family and neighbor were brutally attacked with several weapons, including a hatchet, a knife and an ice pick, while their 8-year-old son survived.
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"We hope these additional tests will lead to the exoneration of Kevin Cooper and the revelation of the person who killed the Ryens and Christopher Hughes," Cooper's lawyer Norman Hile told reporters associated.
In 2001, Cooper was the first to be sentenced to death for DNA testing after sentencing. That did not help her cause, as these results found her DNA on a stain of blood from the crime scene, Ryen family stolen car cigarette butts and a stained blood-stained T-shirt. at the roadside in Chino, according to the report.
Protesters attend a rally in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday, February 3, 2004, to denounce Kevin Cooper's execution on February 10 at San Quentin State Penitentiary. Cooper was convicted of the murder of two children and two adults in a Chino Hills home soon after escaping from the California Men's Institution in Chino in 1983.
((AP Photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez))
Hile says investigators have shed his client's blood on the t-shirt and that, thanks to more sensitive DNA tests, they can, hopefully, find out who has worn the t-shirt. He added that the investigators had gathered other evidence to protect his client, which he described as a young black man of the time. The prosecutor's office disagrees.
"Unfortunately, over time, it seems that the desire of victims to seek justice is becoming less and less important," District Attorney Jason Anderson said in a statement. "Previous DNA tests that Mr. Cooper had requested, accepted, and allegedly exonerated would have all confirmed Mr. Cooper's guilt and the fact that his allegations of falsification of evidence were unfounded."
Newsom notes that some of the evidence may be contaminated, given the age of the file and the processing of documents over the years. California has not executed anyone sentenced to death since 2006.
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