Kevin Cooper (inmate) - Claims of Innocence and Manipulation of Evidence

Claims of Innocence and Manipulation of Evidence

Cooper has continuously denied any involvement in the crimes for almost 30 years. Some arguments supporting his innocence are:

• Multiple weapons were used in the murders, which supporters believe indicates that more than one person committed the crime, whereas the prosecution concluded that Cooper acted alone.
• The sole survivor, Josh Ryen, had told a social worker in the emergency room that the murders were committed by 3 or 4 white men. Josh spelled his message by pointing at letters on a clipboard as he was unable to speak, but the social worker and medical staff observed that he was lucid and could spell his name and address correctly. Judge Fletcher wrote, "Deputies misrepresented his recollections and gradually shaped his testimony so that it was consistent with the prosecution's theory that there was only one killer." Jurors, however, said they disregarded Ryen's testimony because they believed he was confused and traumatized.
• Judge Fletcher argued that the bloody shoe-print was likely to be from a shoe different from the one Cooper would have been wearing.
• Blond hairs were found clutched in Jessica Ryen's hand.
• In the initial search of the Ryen's station wagon, no cigarette butts were found. Judge Fletcher writes, "Some of those cigarette butts could have easily been planted in the car. Moreover, after initial forensic testing, paper from a hand-rolled cigarette butt supposedly found in the station wagon was described as consumed. That same paper later “reappeared” and was offered into evidence. When the paper “reappeared,” it was significantly larger than the paper in the cigarette butt that had been tested."
• Judge Fletcher suggested that the chemical test on the Lease's shower would have returned a positive result in the presence of bleach, as well as of blood, and that the shower had recently been cleaned with bleach.
• Judge Fletcher writes that while a button found in the house came from a green prison jacket, "uncontradicted evidence at trial showed that Cooper was wearing a brown or tan prison-issued jacket when he escaped."
• Judge Fletcher suggested that preservatives found in the blood on the t-shirt indicated that it may have been planted. "If the EDTA testing already performed shows that Cooper’s blood was planted on the t-shirt, or if further EDTA testing does the same thing, that showing greatly increases the likelihood that much of the evidence introduced at trial was false," Fletcher wrote.
• "On June 9, a woman named Diana Roper called the Sheriff’s Department to tell them that her boyfriend, Lee Furrow, had come home in the early hours on the night of June 4. He arrived in an unfamiliar station wagon with some people who stayed in the car. He changed out of his overalls, which he left on the floor of a closet. He was not wearing a t-shirt that he had been wearing earlier in the day. He left the house after about five minutes and did not return. both concluded that the overalls were spattered with blood. Roper turned the overalls over to the Sheriff’s Department and told the deputy that she thought Furrow was involved in the murders. Roper later provided an affidavit stating that a bloody t-shirt found beside the road leading from the murder house had been Furrow’s. It was a Fruit-of-the-Loom t-shirt with a breast pocket. Roper stated that she recognized it because she had bought it for him. She also stated that a bloody hatchet found beside the road matched a hatchet that was now missing from her garage. The Sheriff’s Department never tested the overalls for blood, never turned them over to Cooper or his lawyers, and threw them away in a dumpster on the day of Cooper’s arraignment."
• "Furrow had been released from state prison a year earlier. He had been part of a murderous gang, but had been given a short sentence in return for turning state’s evidence against the leader of the gang. The leader was sentenced to death. Furrow told friends that while he was part of the gang he killed a girl, cut up her body, and thrown her body parts into the Kern River."
• Another prison inmate, Kenneth Koon, told his cellmate, Anthony Wisely, that he had committed the murders but has since recanted his statement.