March 03, 2004 08:00 PM

SHOULD A BLACK MAN BE EXECUTED FOR A WHITE MAN'S CRIME?

Part I. Why Not Trust The Jury and Free The Guy Who Didn't Do It?
by Natasha H.  (Age 12)

Before this writer was born, Clarence Thomas created quite a stir with the line, "high-tech lynching of a black man."  The odd part was that Clarence Thomas was never in danger of being lynched, high-tech or otherwise. But all too many African-Americans throughout history have been lynched by white racists for crimes committed by white men. On February 10, Kevin Cooper almost became a victim of a high-tech chemical lynching of an innocent black man for a white man's crime

Centuries ago, royal children had whipping boys who would take the punishment when these royal children did wrong.  Back then, in some parts of society, it was acceptable to allow someone of a lower social status to take the blame and punishment for what a rich white kid did.  Even today those running society often get others to take the fall for them.  It is no secret that, in America, the rich steal and destroy and get richer while those not in power suffer the injuries, losses and punishment.  But is this ever actually right, especially when the punishment is death?  Does white society have the right to kill blacks for crimes that white people commit?  Have the Rosewood-style atrocities become acceptable as long as the prosecution can withhold or destroy exonerating evidence and set up an innocent black man to take the fall and let the state do the killing in the name of the people? 

Back in 1983, three white or Hispanic men used an ax, an ice pick and a knife to commit four brutal murders and almost a fifth one at the Ryen home in Chino Hills.  A member of the American Board of Pathology said it would be "virtually impossible" for the crimes to have been committed by one person and this was confirmed by the lone survivor, eight-year-old Joshua Ryen, who stated that the three assailants were whites or Hispanics.  After the convenient arrest of an African-American who had walked out of a low security prison where he was serving time for a property crime, Joshua saw pictures of Kevin Cooper on TV and immediately exclaimed to the officer who was present, "That wasn't the guy."  Unfortunately the words of a little boy who wanted justice for himself and his family did not carry any weight.  The jury never heard these words.  Nor was it presented with the sizable number of six-inch long blonde hairs which were found clutched in the hand of Jessica Ryen.  It did not hear that the police threw three white men (two covered in massive amounts of blood) out of a Chino Hills bar the night of the murders.  It also did not hear the confession of Kenneth Koon that he (Koon) and two other men carried out the murders.  It did not hear about a set of bloody overalls which were worn by an additional suspect (Lee Furrows) who had previously used a knife to kill. This later evidence was destroyed by the police before the first juror was sworn in.  When you have a black man in custody, why should you care about giving the defense or the jury the proof of innocence that will blow your case?   The white-supremacist demonstrators holding a mock execution of a toy gorilla outside the courthouse didn't even see the need for a trial.

On February 9, 2002, the 9th Circuit stayed Kevin Cooper's execution to allow for the examination of potentially exculpatory evidence that had never been examined.  The Supreme Court (currently made up of justices who are very conservative on criminal issues) upheld the stay and provided relief to the six trial jurors who said they never would have voted to convict if they knew then what they know now.  It takes twelve to convict but if the jury had been told the truth, the prosecutor would not have received better than a hung jury.  Kevin would be free.  Did the failure to release this information involve any ethics violations?

What about the white guys who did the crime?  Diane Roper gave the police some bloody overalls her then-boyfriend (Lee Furrows) had worn.  She believed Mr. Furrows had been involved in the murders. Police records establish the police threw this potentially exonerating evidence in a dumpster on the day of the preliminary hearing.  Ms. Roper had bought Mr. Furrows a brown T-shirt that matched a T-shirt found near the scene.  Mr. Furrows had previously been involved in a knife killing while Kevin Cooper had not. Kenneth Koon, while in jail for another crime, stated that, after he (Koon) and two friends had committed the murders at the Ryen house, he had taken off his bloody overalls at a girlfriend's house.  A witness saw a car like the Ryens' car (which was stolen about the time of the commission of the crime) driven from the area at a high speed by a young white male on the night of the crime.  A second witness thought she saw the silhouettes of three or four other people in the car.  Then there are the two women who saw the loud, blood-covered men who acted like they were on drugs that night in the nearby Chino Hills bar.  Many people in the area believe that the killings were done by members of the Aryan Brotherhood.  If this is true, the killers will achieve their highest victory if Kevin Cooper is one day executed.  There is also a great deal of speculation that the perpetrators had turned state's evidence in an important drug case and the police needed a scapegoat for the murders.  It is interesting that one of the officers involved in the case was fired in connection with stealing drug evidence from a police evidence locker.  Then there is the information obtained from the statement of former Riverside Sheriff's Department and D.E.A. informant Albert Anthony Ruiz that the murders were the result of a drug-related hit on the wrong family and that Cooper was set up as a scapegoat.

Whether or not Kevin Cooper is executed, he has spent 19 years on death row for a crime he did not commit: That's seven years longer than this writer has been alive.  That's 19 years he could have spent with his family, 19 years he could have spent working as a useful member of society, 19 years he could have used to make this world a better place for all of us.  Picture what you have done in the last 19 years and ask yourselves whether it would be okay for society to take this away from you for a crime you did not commit.  Then ask yourself whether it would be okay for society to go a step further and execute you for a crime you did not commit.   No one can ever make up those 19 years Kevin lost but we can save his life and free him.  It's what we would want someone to do for us.  It's what we, as a society, if we have any decency in us, must do for him.

Opposition to these unjust executions is widespread among those who have studied the issue.  Dennis Kucinich, John Kerry, Al Sharpton and John Edwards have all voiced concerns about the risks of executing innocent people under the current system.  This risk and the fact that the death penalty has been used in a discriminatory fashion against African-Americans are much of the reason Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has called for its abolition. Al Sharpton and John Kerry (except for terrorists) have also shown the courage to oppose to the death penalty.  A great many of Congressman Kucinich's supporters have actively protested the execution of Kevin Cooper.  Those fighting to stop this unjust execution have been joined by other great leaders, such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Rubin Carter, Denzel Washington, Mike Farrell, James Cromwell, Sean Penn, John Heard, Richard Dreyfus, Janeane Garofalo, Danny Glover and Angelica Huston, who have all shown the courage to stand up and say "no" to the racist execution of Kevin Cooper. It is time for all Americans to say "no" to these executions.

While 12.9% of society is black, over 50% of those on death row are black.  Demographically, it is not the blacks who are calling for violence in the form of executions and wars.  These are the products of bloodthirsty whites within our society. The dramatically disproportionate numbers of blacks on death row makes it appear to this writer that there are a lot of black whipping boys out there who are about to lose their lives in the places of the white members of society who have found a way to commit crimes risk-free.  Is this what American justice is about?

The fact that a black man was even arrested in a case where the witnesses identified the assailants as whites or Hispanics is, itself, an indictment of our society.  If the officers who worked on this case had supervised the investigation into the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald, Martin Luther King likely would have been arrested instead of Jack Ruby and the police would have worked hard to make it stick.  Are the adults in our society so blinded by race-hatred that they cannot see that the emperor's case has no clothes? 

Is my generation also expected to pretend that this type of police and prosecutorial racism is justice?  Any adult, who thinks so, should think again.  My generation condemns the racist handling of the Kevin Cooper case and the racist application of the death penalty in general.  It is time that the adult generation grew up and stopped using this double standard they call justice.  It is time to call for a moratorium until we can ensure that no more African-Americans are innocent victims of wrongful executions.  It is time we stopped using African-Americans as scapegoats or whipping boys and found a way to treat all Americans as worthwhile human beings deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Part II    Police Misconduct:  When Will We Learn? When Will We Care?
by Alexandar (age 14)

What's with the subtitle?  Is there actually police misconduct in America?   Would the good people of this country actually put up with it?  What a ridiculous idea!  Though this might not seem so ridiculous to Rodney King or Donovan Jackson.  In the cases of Rodney King and Donovan Jackson, there was videotaped evidence of racist beatings committed by white officers.  However, even in the Union state of California, no jury in a state court proceeding wants to convict white officers of beating blacks, no matter how blatant and obvious the evidence.  If they did convict these offenders, society would have to look at how racist the behavior of some officers is. If it looked, it would have to oppose itself or change.  It's far easier for the juries to pretend the officers have some unseen reason for the beatings.

It is a miracle that society ever freed Rubin Carter after it was shown that he had been set-up by the police.  It is an even bigger miracle that the jury in the O.J. Simpson case cared enough to listen as Barry Scheck established that the blood spots matching those of O.J. contained preservative, noticed that people do not bleed preservative and presented the court with a quick acquittal once they were allowed to deliberate.  Why isn't a reversal or acquittal an absolute standard when the evidence is so contaminated or mishandled that the truth will always be in doubt?  Resolving cases on the backs of the easiest to arrest, most vulnerable segments of society may make people sleep easier at night.  But does it really make society safer?  Does executing an innocent man make a guilty one stop committing crimes?

There are some good, honest police officers.  Some of these good officers have been members of my family or the families of my friends.  The presence of corrupt officers, no matter how many, will not change this fact.  The corrupt officers give the rest of law enforcement a bad name.  Wouldn't rooting out the abusers raise the standard of law enforcement and bring officers more respect?  Isn't it in the interests of everyone to identify and stop all misconduct that could lead to wrongful convictions?

In the case of Kevin Cooper, police misconduct was at its pinnacle.  Witnesses and circumstantial evidence made it clear three white men, not African-Americans, had committed the crime.  The only eyewitness to the crime itself repeatedly told the police that Cooper was not the assailant and that he was the wrong race.  That eyewitness was one of the victims.  Why would he lie?  Did he want the killers to get away and finish their job on him?  If an eyewitness had said a black man committed a crime would the police have instantly grabbed the nearest white man and then have done their best to make a case solely against Suspect White?  Here they did not bother looking for the white assailants.  Instead they went after the African-American they knew did not do it.

Mary Mellon Wolfe and one of her friends were in a bar when two men drenched in blood entered with a third man on the night of the murders.  After responding to a call from a concerned bartender, the police threw the three men out.   Why should the police check to see where the blood came from or why two of the men acted like they were on drugs?  Drugs?  Blood?  Why would anyone think these three white guys were other than upstanding members of society? Diane Roper gave the police her boyfriend's bloody overalls and informed the police she believed he was the killer. Her boyfriend Lee Furrows had a previous conviction for committing murder with a knife?  Knife murderer and a murder involving a knife: any chance of a connection?  Why did the police throw the overalls away?  Would testing of the blood on these clothes have been the end of the case against Kevin Cooper?  Kenneth Koon said he and a couple of friends had killed the Ryens and provided unpublicized details.  How was Koon able to provide accurate information about the crime that was not in the newspaper?  Could it be that he was telling the truth?  Why was this confession ignored?  Why were all the long blond hairs found in young Jessica Ryen's hand ignored?  Would following these leads have resulted in a "not-guilty" verdict?  If you listen to the jurors in the case, the answer is, "yes."  Isn't the goal of law enforcement supposed to be to get the real culprits and to protect the innocent?

The handling of the evidence and crime scene resembles something that would have been dreamed up by the Impossible Missions Force from that old TV show to set up one of their targets.  The trial judge suggested that he could have done a better job of handling the crime scene than the police did in this case. 

No bloody shoe print was found at the crime scene.  But one was found at the crime lab by officer William Baird of the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department.  This print was made by a Keds shoe.   Officer William Baird had such a shoe (not Cooper's) at the crime lab.  The print was attributed to Cooper at trial because it was believed that Keds were issued to him in prison.  It was later learned that P. F. Flyers and not Keds were the shoes issued to him.  Why did an officer working on the case possess the Keds that matched the bloodstain?  Why did the print mysteriously disappear from the crime lab when it was time for DNA testing?    While in his cell, could Cooper have removed it from the crime lab?  Was it more likely to have been removed by one of the officers who was pinning the crime on him?  Officer William Baird was very resourceful.  He was the one who claimed to find a drop of blood that appeared to be African-American.  What is African-American blood?  This drop of blood and the shoe print were all that tied Cooper to the crime scene during the trial.

So how reliable was Officer Baird, without whose testimony the case would have folded?    How trustworthy was his handling of evidence? It seems he had a history of corruption.  He was later fired for five-fingering some narcotics evidence from an evidence locker for personal use and to sell.  It's a good thing they didn't have some criminal for their main witness.  Oh, maybe they did.

San Bernardino Sheriff's Department Criminologist Dan Gregoris admitted to altering a blood test to get a match of Baird's one drop to Cooper.  Wait a minute.  Aren't the police supposed to be the honest guys?  Personally, I hope the cops working on this case weren't America's finest. 

About 14 years after the trial, blood test-alterer Baird was allowed to check the evidence, including a drawn sample of Cooper's blood, out for 24 hours from the locker where it was stored.  Was this for a science exhibit for college?  Was it because his home needed some new decorations and he wanted to see if this would improve the atmosphere?  Does it take Dick Tracy to figure this one out?  Personally, I would place greater odds on finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq than on Gregoris's motive being other than to tamper with the evidence and plant the defendant's blood where it did not belong. 

Maybe the evidence still needed further improvement if the police were to make the conviction stick.  After Gregoris's twenty-four hour outing with the evidence and before the DNA test, the evidence was again removed from the locker by one of the original officers, in violation of agreement between the defense and the State of California.  If you can't trust the State of California, whom can you trust?  This evidence must have been very charismatic if handling it with no official reason was so desirable.  Perhaps this evidence could be used as the basis of the next Stephen King novel, "Resistance Is Useless." 

Why should the irregularities stop there?  The shirt that was found near the scene, the one that matched the description of the one Diane Roper gave to Lee Furrows, suddenly transformed itself.  A zebra may not change stripes but the number of spots on the shirt when it was found at the scene was different than the number of spots present when it was tested. Later testing on the blood on the shirt was inconsistent with earlier testing. Another future Stephen King novel:  "The Shirt Is Alive and Mutating."

The above oddities might not be enough to keep a modern movie-going audience in suspense.  Fortunately for those easily bored with honest investigations, anyone looking into the case will discover a number of discrepancies between the crime scene photos, the police reports, the arrest warrant and the evidence claims.  Why should they be consistent?  Already the credibility of this case has reached the "Outer Limits."

I may not be a judge or a juror but, personally, I find former Iraqi Press Minister Muhammed Al-Sahaf's claims that the infidels were nearing defeat significantly more credible than the case against Kevin Cooper.

Given all the apparent evidence mishandling, is it likely that there is enough untampered evidence remaining to locate the real killers?  The blond hairs, unless they have changed like the blood on the shirt, may provide the best clue. One thing for certain, the one person in Southern California least likely to have committed the murders at the Ryen house appears to have been Kevin Cooper.

So why should we believe possibly altered evidence above the repeated eyewitness statements Josh Ryen made as a boy that Kevin Cooper was the wrong guy?  Is it time innocence was a reason not to keep someone locked up?    Is the fact that Cooper is so obviously innocent any reason to let him go? 

The police may or may not be able to find the white killers.  If the real killers are never caught, society and the relatives have only the police to blame.  Kevin Cooper has been in prison 19 years too long for a crime he did not commit.  It's time to free him.

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