Convicted Killer Seeks Clemency Hearing

In the first death-penalty case to reach Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, attorneys for convicted killer Kevin Cooper have launched an aggressive campaign to postpone his Feb. 10 execution.

The effort is backed by four of the jurors who convicted Cooper but now oppose his execution.

Schwarzenegger, who supports the death penalty, could decide whether to grant a clemency hearing for Cooper as early as this week. The governor is reviewing the case, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

Cooper was sentenced to death in 1985 for the 1983 slayings of a Chino Hills couple, their 10-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old house guest, who were bludgeoned and stabbed with a hatchet, knife and ice pick. He also slashed the throat of the family’s then 8-year-old son, Joshua, who survived and later testified against him and who now opposes the bid for clemency.

In its plea to the governor, Cooper’s newly assembled defense team said there was evidence that could exonerate Cooper, including an alleged confession by a mental health patient and possible DNA evidence from hairs found in the hand of one of the victims.

John Kochis, the San Bernardino County prosecutor in the case, said the effort to spare Cooper’s life was based on evidence already heard and dismissed by jurors and appeals courts.

“This stuff is not a secret,” Kochis said. “It’s been viewed before.”

Cooper’s defense is being aided by Lanny Davis, the Washington, D.C., attorney who helped the Clinton White House with damage control during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and by ex-boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who spent nearly 20 years in a New Jersey prison before his conviction for three murders was overturned.

Carter co-wrote a letter delivered to Schwarzenegger on Saturday on behalf of Cooper, citing the uncertainties in the case and asking for a reprieve. The letter also was signed by Denzel Washington, who won a best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Carter in “The Hurricane,” and fellow actors Sean Penn and Richard Dreyfuss.

Cooper’s attorneys contacted nine of the 12 jurors and alternates from the trial, providing them with information that they said called Cooper’s guilt into question, said Scarlet Nerad, a member of the defense team. Two of the jurors refused to talk and three others opposed a stay of execution. Nerad said she asked the four who expressed doubts about the case to write to the governor.

The letters, shown to The Times, expressed concerns about the conduct of the detectives who investigated the murders and requested further investigation into some of the evidence, including testing of hairs found at the crime scene and a droplet of blood found outside the bedroom of the slain couple, Douglas and Peggy Ryen.

“I know there is evidence that supports Mr. Cooper’s guilt,” one juror wrote. “I also know that the actions of the police have directly led to the many doubts that remain.”

Juror Donna Marie Randle wrote that she found the unanswered questions raised in the case “pretty damn disturbing.”

Randle said Saturday she had no doubt that Cooper was in the Ryen home and committed the murders, but harbors doubts about whether he acted alone.

“At that point, more than 15 years ago, I was convinced he was alone,” Randle said, “but things have come forward in the years since where I’m asking, did we get everything in the trial that we should have gotten?”

Randle said jurors needed six days to reach a verdict and voted several times on the murder counts before reaching a unanimous decision. She described the deliberations as very trying but added, “We did believe we came to a fair conclusion.”

Davis said he hoped the juror statements and questions raised about the evidence would convince Schwarzenegger that the case should be scrutinized.

“I don’t know [Schwarzenegger], but the way he has conducted himself and the quality of the woman he is married to [Maria Shriver] suggest to me that he’s a man of decency and fairness,” Davis said. “I believe the four jurors’ statements to the effect of saying, ‘We weren’t told the whole story,’ is hair-raising.”

Kochis, the prosecutor, said he was unaware of the juror letters, adding that he would not be surprised if jurors expressed some regret about their conviction on the eve of Cooper’s execution. He also questioned some of the tactics used by Cooper’s defense team, led by attorneys David Alexander and John Grele.

“It was a very fair trial. They heard all the evidence allowed by law” and they found Cooper “guilty on all of the counts,” Kochis said. “The defense is free to go out and tell a juror anything, but if they get a juror to express doubt in a unilateral conversation, that doesn’t mean Kevin Cooper gets a new trial.”

The jurors’ letters are part of Cooper’s formal reply to the prosecution’s 74-page brief opposing clemency. The defense reply is due Monday. Cooper’s bid for clemency includes allegations and interpretations of evidence that are hotly contested by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office. Here are the main points of contention:

* Comments by Joshua Ryen, the only survivor of the attack, who immediately after the killings told police he had seen “three Mexicans” near his home on the evening of the slayings. Upon seeing a picture of Cooper after his arrest, Joshua said, “That’s not him.” Kochis said that during Cooper’s trial Joshua testified that he never saw three men inside his house, only one assailant in the shadows.

* Blond hairs found clutched in the hand of 10-year-old victim Jessica Ryen. Defense attorneys say DNA testing of the hairs could help prove that another person was inside the home when the killings took place. The prosecutor said that of the thousands of hairs found at the crime scene, only three had roots, as though they had been pulled from someone, and that many of the hairs were animal hairs because the Ryens’ carpet was filthy.

* An alleged confession by mental health patient Kenneth Koon. Defense attorneys said Koon told a fellow inmate that he and two others were involved in the slayings, which he described as “an Aryan hit gone wrong.” A federal district court judge dismissed the confession in 1997, noting that Koon later denied involvement and that the admission came when both inmates were “pretty wasted with the use of marijuana.”

* Destroyed bloody coveralls produced by a woman who believed her boyfriend was involved in the killings. The prosecutor said the woman told a sheriff’s deputy that she learned of the clothing in a vision that came through a trance with other “witches.” Defense attorneys contend that the man who wore the coveralls had a previous murder conviction.

On the night of June 4, 1983, Cooper emerged from hiding in a small vacant house near the Ryen home. He had escaped from the state prison in Chino two days earlier. According to evidence presented at the trial, Cooper then broke into the Ryens’ home and killed Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their daughter, Jessica, and house guest Christopher Hughes.

San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors said Cooper committed the murders because he was desperate to escape the area and needed time to plan his getaway.

In 1985, a San Diego County jury convicted Cooper and voted in favor of the death penalty. Cooper has unsuccessfully appealed his conviction to the California Supreme Court and U.S. Supreme Court.

He became the first state prisoner to request post-conviction DNA testing on evidence in his case. Last year, those tests verified that his DNA was found in a drop of blood in the Ryens’ home, in saliva left on two cigarette butts found in the family’s stolen station wagon and on a bloody T-shirt found on the side of a road leading from the home.

Schwarzenegger’s review and decision is the next step required before Cooper’s scheduled execution. The governor is a strong advocate of victims’ rights, and the parents of Christopher Hughes, Bill and Mary Ann Hughes, both support death for Cooper.

So does Josh Ryen, who wrote a statement opposing Cooper’s clemency application:

“The day Cooper dies will be the first day of what is left of my life. He took everything from me when he took my family. I loved them and had fun with them and have felt completely empty since they were taken away. They surrounded me with their happy spirit and that is gone.”