this horrible miscarriage of justice, this state sanctioned murder.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/05/177249<snip>
For the first time in two years, a man is to be executed in California.
Kevin Cooper was convicted of a quadruple homicide in 1983 but has long maintained his innocence. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection just after midnight next Tuesday.
In his first clemency decision since taking office, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger denied Cooper clemency last week saying he saw no reason to doubt Cooper's guilt or spare his life.
<snip>
Fact one: A little girl who was murdered on the scene, was found clutching over 100 blond human hairs. Kevin Cooper doesn't have a human hair anywhere - he is an African-American. That evidence was never tested, and the evidence was never heard by the jury, even though the prosecutor said this entire case rests on the assumption that only one man - only one man, killed these four people in under two minutes with three murder weapons.
Fact two: A girlfriend of a man who had come home the night of the murders with bloody coveralls testified that he was acting suspiciously and in panic. He took the bloody coveralls off, and his axe from his tool belt was missing. This was testified to under oath by a detective that that's what this woman told him. Those coveralls disappeared two weeks later, and that evidence was never heard by the jury.
Fact three: A gentleman by the name of, if I can call him gentleman, Kevin Kuhn, a friend of this individual with the bloody coveralls, several months later in prison confessed to a cellmate that he was involved with this Mr. Burrows, the bloody coveralls man, in the murder of the Ryan household. And he described details of the Ryan household that he could not have known had he not been there. That confession was never heard by the jury. And indeed, a judge on the ninth circuit said "Never in my memory have we ever executed anyone where we had a confession to the murder without having that confession heard as evidence at trial."
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Mods, I KNOW this is more than four paragraphs, but you have to see the horrible wrong about to be committed in California and people have got to take action. Please don't delete.
Also, e-mail Ahnold. I did. My letter is here in this forum. Everytime an innocent man is executed, we are all complicit in his murder by not protesting, by doing nothing.
Here is Ahnolds e-mail address. Please help.
governor@governor.ca.gov.
Here is a phone number to call his office
916-445-2840