The Sacramento Bee reports that the Campaign to End the Death Penalty is lobbying the governor to offer clemency to Kevin Cooper. They could scarcely have come up with a less sympathetic poster child for their cause. Cooper was convicted of the hatchet murders of two adults and two children, and the attempted murder of a fifth victim, in 1983, while he was supposedly in prison for one offense, and was wanted for others. DNA tests were not routine at the time, so Cooper’s lawyers later pressed for DNA tests following the conviction. They got the DNA tests they wanted, which the CEDP proudly announced would supposedly exonerate him. Surprise, surprise; it didn’t. It did, however, kill any reasonable argument (if there was any) that Cooper may be innocent.

Of course, you’ll read none of his on the “fact” sheet offered by the CEDP. Here’s a sampling of what you’ll find instead:

On the night of June 4, 1983, three members of the Ryen family and a houseguest were murdered in San Bernadino [sic] County. Eight year-old Josh Ryen survived to tell police that three white or Hispanic men had killed his family and attacked him. Kevin Cooper, an African-American man, now sits on death row for this crime. Kevin could face execution despite the fact that the case against him is full of holes.

So there you have it – the race card, right up front. The case is so damned racist even Cooper’s own DNA is in on the conspiracy. On to the “ladies and gentlemen of the supposed jury” bit:

The authorities claim that recent DNA tests link four pieces of evidence to Kevin and the crime. But this evidence has been mishandled and very likely tampered with. Destruction of evidence and police misconduct have played a part in the case from the beginning, but neither Kevin nor his attorneys knew the extent of the mishandling of evidence prior to signing the DNA testing agreement.

This type of analysis is what legal experts typically refer to as “blowing smoke.” You can tamper all you want with DNA evidence. Rendering it unreadable is easy – making someone DNA match someone else’s is essentially impossible.

Josh Ryen, sole survivor of the attack, has always maintained that three white or Hispanic men killed his family. Josh and his grandmother have supported Kevin Cooper’s defense team and question Kevin’s guilt.

Josh Ryen was eight at the time, and had his throat slit in the process. Even the testimony of adult witnesses is easily manipulated. DNA evidence, however, is not.

Kevin Cooper had no motive for committing these brutal murders and none was established at trial. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, having just escaped from a minimum security institution where he had been serving a sentence for a nonviolent offense. Police found him an all-too easy target.

“In the wrong place at the wrong time,” huh? That makes it sound as though escaping from prison was something that just “happened” to this career criminal, not something he actually did himself. “No motive” is simply a lie: the motive was a burglary gone bad. All this while he had broken out of prison rather than serve his three year sentence for the “nonviolent” crime of … burglary. And of course he was serving that sentence under an alias, a fact that was conveniently left off of this “fact” sheet. Had this nonviolent burglar given the authorities his real name upon his arrest, they might have found out that he was already wanted for nonviolent rape and nonviolent kidnapping in Pennsylvania. More facts left off the “fact” sheet, out of space considerations, I’m sure.