The Daily - Was Kevin Cooper Framed for Murder?

Episode Date: May 30, 2018

The sole survivor of an attack in which four people were murdered identified the perpetrators as three white men. The police ignored suspects who fit the description and arrested a young black man instead. He is now awaiting execution. Guests: Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California for three decades; Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who has written about Mr. Cooper’s case. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, the sole survivor of a brutal murder identified three white men as the attackers. So why did police ignore those suspects and put a young Black man on death row? Ignore those suspects and put a young black man on death row. It's Wednesday, May 30th.

On the morning of June 5th, 1983, in Chino Hills, California, Bill and Mary Ann Hughes were a little bit concerned because their 11-year-old son had not come back from a sleepover at a neighbor's. Nick Kristof is a columnist for The Times. So at about noon, the dad, Bill Hughes, drove over to pick up his son. Nobody answered the door, so he looked through the sliding glass doors, and all he saw was red. It dawned on him what he was seeing. He kicked down the door. He rushed to the body of his son, who had been stabbed to death.

Doug and Peggy Ryan, both 41, were found in their home hacked to death, along with their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and a young neighbor, 11-year-old Christopher Hughes. And the other son, Josh Ryan, the 8-year-old host of the sleepover, had had his throat slashed and his head bashed in, but he was still moving. One second, you're still alive? Got about four paramedics working on him right now. Is that one second still alive? That's a four. We have a person, an 11-year-old boy still alive.

It was about as gruesome a murder as one can have. It was about as gruesome a murder as one can have. And was there immediately an idea of who had done this, a suspect that everyone seized on? There were some clues almost right away. Nothing was taken from the Ryan house except the family's station wagon. We're looking for the Ryan automobile. The Ryan station wagon had been stolen, and several people had seen three white people inside that station wagon driving it away. There were people who had seen three white people at a bar with bloody clothing.

And then soon afterward, a woman called up and said that she believed that her boyfriend had been involved in the murders. He was a white man who had recently been released from prison for murdering a 17-year-old. And he had come home late on the night of the killings in a vehicle that resembled the Ryan station wagon, and he had left his bloody coveralls on the floor. On top of that, Josh, the kid who survived, said that three or four white men had done this. When we got to the point of asking him how many people were there, I went one, two, three, and he squeezed my hand.

While he was recuperating, Josh maintained that there were three attackers. And so the police initially put out a bulletin looking for three white killers. And were those three white suspects arrested? No. Instead, they arrested a 25-year-old black man, Kevin Cooper, who two days before the killings had escaped from a minimum security prison where he was serving sentence for burglary. I was in prison, and I looked up, and there was a fence. And there was a big-ass hole in the fence. So when I seen that hole in the fence, I just went through it. That's it.

I mean, there wasn't no breakout or nothing. Had that hole not been there, I would not have left. And where did you go next after you walked through? I ran down the road. I ran down the road. Ran down the road. Just ran down the road. And then I ended up in a neighborhood. Not even how I got in the neighborhood, but I was there. But then I saw that

house and I went in here. So Cooper flees the prison and he hides out in an abandoned house, which unfortunately for him is just 125 yards away from the crime scene. I think the police simply looked at this, and it was just too much of a coincidence. How could it be that you have a desperate escaped felon who just happens to be staying in an abandoned house so close to where this brutal crime unfolds? And frankly, I think there was also an element of racism. unfolds. And frankly, I think there was also an element of racism. They looked at the mugshot of Kevin Cooper, and here's this young man. His rap sheet showed that he'd been arrested ever since he was seven years old. He had a long criminal history. And I think they just decided this is it. I was a criminal, not a murderer. I'm ashamed of a lot of things that I've done in my life

as an uneducated, miseducated person. Did I disrespect people? Yes, I disrespected people. Have I hurt people emotionally and psychologically and all that stuff? Yes. So I got a lot of shame, but I'm not a murderer. That's real. but I'm not a murderer. That's real. So the police are looking for Kevin Cooper, but they're not finding a lot of evidence linking him to the murder scene. They don't find fingerprints of him.

They don't find his hairs. They search the house where he was staying, and initially they don't find any evidence. They search the car that belonged to the Ryans that had been stolen. Initially, they don't find anything there either. And then, mysteriously, evidence begins to appear. They find a hatchet sheath that they had missed the first time and a prison uniform button. And they also find cigarette butts that he had apparently smoked. I think the authorities thought they were acting on the side of justice.

I think they thought that Kevin Cooper was a multiple murderer and they were frustrated by the lack of evidence to show that. So I think they helped the process along a little bit. So you believe from your reporting that the police department planted evidence against Kevin Cooper, having concluded in their minds that he did it and that they were doing a public service by putting evidence there that would make it possible for them to arrest and convict him. That's exactly right. arrest, and convict him.

That's exactly right. I was scared to death. I mean, for the first time in my life, I experienced racism in a way I've never experienced it before. I experienced it by a look in a person's eyes. You know, those cops. Sergeant Billy Arthur and his crew from San Bernardino County. You know, when they came to get me.

And the way they treated me all the way from that drive from Santa Barbara all the way back down to San Bernardino. Then when I got down there, they had signs out there. Signs of a gorilla hung in effigies and all this type of stuff. You know, I wasn't going to have no fear of trial. If it was up to those people there, they took me out and hung me right there. You know, this is the mentality that those people had back then in 1983. So I knew I was in trouble. 1983. So I knew I was in trouble.

He is tried. In the end, the juror said that if there had been one less piece of evidence against him, they might have voted to acquit. Kevin Cooper has been convicted on four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. They took a week to convict him. A jury has to decide whether Cooper should be sentenced to the gas chamber. And then he was sentenced to death. And so he was scheduled to be executed in 2004. Yes, February the 10th, 2004. Mm-hmm.

My life was on the clock. And that day, I got up, brushed my teeth and all that stuff, you know, drank some coffee, and about eight or nine officers showed up with pepper spray strapped to them and, you know, all this and that, and placed me in a chair. There was all types of food in that room that morning. I mean, it was halfway up the wall with so much food. I guess they wanted me to eat their food as a celebration since it was supposedly my last day, but I didn't eat their food, and I refused their last meal.

This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded. So they took me in the back. I said all my goodbyes to everybody. One group of officers passed me off to another group of officers. There was like six on each side, and they marched me maybe 150 yards to the death chamber waiting room. They opened the door, and they marched me in, and then I was in there with the volunteer executioners. I had waist chains on, and I was was handcuffed and shackles around my feet. And that death chamber waiting room was so cold, it was freezing in there.

It was like a moral thing. See me? Hold on. No, that's the guard trying to tell me I got five minutes left. I said, no, I got the phone until five o'clock. So they made me strip naked and move out into the middle of the floor. Now I'm surrounded by these executioners. And I do a lot of reading of black history.

And almost every book I read, there comes a time when a slave is on the oxen block. And some of them were butt naked. And some of them were examined from head to toe and all parts in between. And that's what they did to me. They examined my nostrils, my ear holes. They made me hold them in my mouth and stick my tongue out and shine a flashlight down there. They searched my penis and my testicles.

They made me turn around and wiggle my toes and then bend over and spread my butt cheeks so wide. The dude got down on his knees and shot a flashlight up my butt, illuminating my bowels. They say they're looking for contraband, right? But they're not looking for contraband, in my opinion. They're dehumanizing me further, showing me that my body is not my own. That they can do with it whatever they want. That was the most demeaning process I ever went through in my life. And it's your final moments, conceivably, on Earth.

But they don't give a damn about that. They don't give a damn about that. And how much time do you have now until you're supposed to be executed? It's a quarter to seven, so I've got like maybe, what, five hours and 15 minutes left or something like that. And I've got a big old clock in there, and I'm watching the second hand go around. And my pastor's in the next cage, and I'm listening to her praying for the executioners and praying for me. You have 60 seconds remaining. And I just stayed there in that cold room, waiting and waiting for me. You have 60 seconds remaining. And I just stayed

in that cold room, waiting and waiting and waiting. Every time a minute goes by, it brings me one minute closer to being strapped down to that gun and being tortured with lethal poison

and murdered by these people. You know? I also watched the lieutenant take cotton swabs and other things such as that. You have 30 seconds remaining. Alcohol pads and all that

type stuff to that room where the death chamber was. Materials they would use to kill you. Yeah. I watched all that. Hey, the phone's already cut off. Let me call you back, all right? We'll be right back. Thank you for using Global Telelink.

Kevin? Kevin? Yes. Hey, it's Michael again. So you're seeing this happen, and you're watching the clock, and you're seeing these materials move around, and then what happens? Then the phone rang. Out of the blue.

Oh, that was my attorney, Jeannie Stumberg. Boom. Oh, she told me that she just heard from the United States Supreme Court. It just,

well, I would not be executed that night. I immediately looked at the prison guards and I said, I mean, you guys, no disrespect, but you're not going to do your job tonight.

And that's how my night ended that night. Before me, everybody else who walked in there, every inmate walked in there, came out in a body bag. I was the first one to ever walk in there and then turn around and walk out. The court granted a stay to find out whether Kevin Cooper's blood on that T-shirt came from him or came from a test tube of his blood that had been taken by the sheriff's department after he was arrested. And so the court said that they could test that blood stain

to see if it had a blood preservative called EDTA in it. It preserves the blood in a test tube. Exactly. And so this was basically an attempt to see was that blood planted or did he bleed in the commission of the crime? So what happens when they actually do retest this T-shirt? They find elevated EDTA in that bloodstain.

So it seems to have come not from Kevin Cooper's arteries or veins, but rather from the test tube that had been taken of his blood held by the sheriff's department. That would suggest that the evidence of blood on this t-shirt was planted. Was planted. And to back that up, they went back to the test tube that had been taken and they checked the blood that was in it. And it turned out now to have the blood of two or more people. So it seemed that some blood had been spilled out on that shirt. And then to top it up, they put somebody else's blood in it so that it wouldn't be suspiciously low. So what happens to Kevin Cooper after that discovery? Well, at this point, his judicial appeals have essentially run out. So he is making political appeals to allow the evidence to be

tested using advanced techniques that hadn't existed before. And so he makes these appeals of Governor Schwarzenegger, who at the end of his term says, well, this is actually pretty serious, but I don't have enough time left in office, and I hope my successors will review this carefully. He appeals to Kamala Harris when she is attorney general of California, and her office refuses to allow advanced DNA testing. He appeals to Governor Brown. And one of the reasons I wrote about this case is this is not Alabama. This is not Mississippi. This is not Texas. This is a blue Democratic state. This is California. This is a Democratic liberal governor, Jerry Brown, who was refusing to allow testing. Kamala Harris before that.

And so people for whom liberal policies around law enforcement have become kind of default. Absolutely. So let's see whether we manage to get justice in California under a Democratic governor. And that will be a measure of the degree to which things have changed, to which there has been real progress in criminal justice on race since 1983. So it seems pretty clear from what you've said and from your reporting, that the police planted evidence against Cooper. But for years now, many high-level figures would seem to have known this or have been brought evidence of it, and Cooper is still on death row. Are we missing anything here about why that would be the case? Is there a version of this story where perhaps evidence was planted,

but Cooper is indeed guilty of this crime? I'm trying to wrap my head around why so many smart people in positions of power could have known so much of what you're now bringing forward, and yet here we are, he's still on death row. You know, I've been racking my brain to try to understand how this could happen. It's such an egregious case of framing of an innocent man on death row. And I can't come up with any explanation other than just the degree to which institutionally, once somebody is found guilty, there is this resistance to defense appeals. And the system kind of sets in motion this process that ends up with somebody on a trajectory to be executed.

What's been the reaction since you wrote this story for the time, since you revealed everything that you have found? Kamala Harris called me up the next day to say she felt terrible about the case. She issued a statement calling for advanced DNA testing in the case. So reversing herself from her time as attorney general of California. That's correct. And several other California politicians have done the same, a candidate for governor, a candidate for attorney general. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the other senator, has done the same.

Jerry Brown has not spoken. Senator has done the same. Jerry Brown has not spoken. The San Bernardino County District Attorney put out a statement saying that Kevin Cooper is guilty, that there should not be testing. So he's sticking with the conclusions of this case despite everything. That's exactly right. Kevin, since Nick published his story in The Times, Senator Kamala Harris has come forward and she has urged Governor Brown to do what you're asking.

Right. And in response to that, Michael Ramos said it can't be tested. And we haven't heard anything else from the governor's office, but I'd like to say this. When Camelia Harris was attorney general, and my case was taken to her, she turned her back on it too. So she has no room to talk. So you're not as appreciative as she might think. No, I'm not.

Because this should have been done. Do you think that you have a chance now? No. No. No. I think this may have hastened my date with death. You do?

Yes. Why? Because you don't understand this system the way I do. The man didn't say, yes, we'll test it. He said, no, we can't test it. So he wants everything

to stay as it is. It's like we're not playing checkers, man. We're playing chess. But every time they make a move, we counter that move with another strong move.

And every time we make a move, they do something. So in your mind, the more the situation moves theoretically towards justice, the more the system finds a way to move away from justice, to kind of keep the status quo. And just because I believe that I'm still going to be murdered by these people doesn't mean that I can't try to expose what they did to me and what they're doing to me and what they want to do to me in this so-called justice system.

I wonder, when you think about all that's happened to you, who in your mind do you blame? Me. Yourself. First and foremost, I blame Kevin Cooper. And not because I'm a murderer. No.

I blame myself for putting myself in a position for the system to get their hands on me. Once they got their hands on me, they did the rest. But if I had not have ever walked away from that prison or if I had not have been a small-time criminal in my teenage years and all that stuff

and put myself in a position for these people to assassinate my character and dehumanize me and do what they wanted to do with me, I would not be here. So I have to blame myself, first and foremost, and I do. And there's a lot of times when I get up in the morning and look in that mirror, man, I get angry with me. Even though I love me and I'm my own best friend in this joint, sometimes I'm very upset

with me. And I'm ashamed of me. Kevin, what do you want to happen now? What are you asking for? I'm asking for a fair trial, man. I'm not even asking for these people to let me go. I'm asking for them to give me what they said I could have when they put it on paper all those centuries ago.

A fair trial. Good process. Kevin, I really want to thank you for talking to me. You've called us many times to make this work. It's logistically challenging for you, and we're so grateful for your time. I'm really glad we spoke. Thank you very much. I'm very grateful, too, and the system, that's what they do. They interrupt. That's their job, man. They interrupt.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Have a good night. I hope we can do this again. I hope so, too. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you very much, man. Okay. Bye. Peace out. Kevin Cooper remains on death row as Governor Jerry Brown reviews his request for additional DNA testing. Last week, the San Bernardino District Attorney, Mike Ramos, filed a petition opposing such testing, citing, quote, false claims from Cooper and his propaganda machine, designed to undermine public confidence in the just verdict.

in the just verdict. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, North Korea's top nuclear weapons negotiator, Kim Jong-chol, arrived in New York to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the strongest signal yet that a possible June 12th summit with President Trump may still occur. Kim Jong-chol is officially barred from entering the U.S. because of sanctions put in place in 2010, following accusations that he was responsible for torpedoing a South Korean Navy vessel, which killed 46 people.

And in the latest effort to count the dead from Hurricane Maria, researchers on Tuesday estimated that the storm killed 4,600 people in Puerto Rico last year, many of them from delayed medical care. That figure is dramatically higher than the official Puerto Rican government tally, which found that just 64 people had been killed because of the hurricane.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.