Posted on 05/14/2009 9:24:34 AM PDT by SmithL
Even when Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals does the right thing - as it did Monday in denying convicted killer Kevin Cooper a hearing on yet another of his dubious appeals - there is always a judge, or in this case five, on the court with an overly active imagination. And those judges don't help the court's results-oriented reputation.
On June 2, 1983, Kevin Cooper escaped from the California Institution for Men at Chino where he was serving time under a phony name for burglary. He hid out at a Chino Hills home until June 4, when he broke into a nearby home, killed chiropractors Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year daughter Jessica and an 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes. Cooper also left 8-year-old Josh Ryen for dead, then escaped to Mexico.
Cooper later returned to California, where authorities arrested him after a woman reported that Cooper had raped her at knifepoint. In 1985, a jury convicted Cooper of the four murders and sentenced him to death.
Cooper was scheduled for a Feb. 10, 2004, execution. His appeals had been rejected. His claims of innocence had been debunked when the DNA tests that he claimed would exonerate him instead nailed his guilt by placing Cooper in the Ryen home, where he said he had never been, and in the Ryen car, which he said he had never driven.
Undaunted by the overwhelming evidence, the Ninth Circuit issued a last-minute stay of the execution...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/05/12/Appeals-court-panel-rejects-death-row-case/UPI-33551242179239/Appeals court panel rejects death row case
SAN DIEGO, May 12 (UPI) -- A federal appeals court judge warned California the state might execute an innocent man if it decides to put Kevin Cooper to death.
. . .Judge William Fletcher wrote a blistering dissent.
"The state of California may be about to execute an innocent man," Fletcher wrote.
Nominated by William J. Clinton - says it all about courts.
Maybe if the RNC could put together a infomercial or Ad campaign that would run across the country showing how appointees of these liberals actually rule against public interest, it would help to keep/expand the Tea Party momentum going through several election cycles. Just saying you don’t want liberal judges without a campaign of specific cases is useless. People forget.
It makes you wonder if he’s been bought off. All of the evidence points to guilt, so what makes this judge think different from the facts?
This is the entire liberal democrat philosophy boiled down to its true essence.
The guilty are innocent and the innocent are guilty.
The poor are the creators of wealth and the wealthy are thieves.
The truth is a lie and their lies are the truth.
No one should be surprised that a lawyer would pursue this course of action or that the liberal ninth district would permit him to spend state funds till dooms day while doing it.
Debra Saundra is the token conservative at the SF Chronicle. She has had some very good columns lately.
The article does not directly address what became of the accusation of official evidence tampering, beyond it getting a stay of execution.
Should tampering be demonstrated, a lot of “good guys” will end up with egg on their faces, and Cooper will be freed and made a multimillionaire.
Um, maybe this guy has an evil identical twin (or cousin - there was a show about that happening) he didn't know about who committed the murders. 
Maybe space aliens framed him.
Maybe Calvin was messing with his DNA.
There are so many possibilities, if you're a 9th Circuit judge. No one is ever proven guilty to their satisfaction.
Yes, he was denied another hearing, but how close is he really to being executed?
I would guess another decade at least before the sentence is carried out. There are some men on California’s death row who have been there since 1978, and are not even close to having an execution date set. Thirty-one years and no end in sight to their appeals.
However it does address how unlikely it would be that the original investigators would have had the foresight to plant DNA evidence at the scene of the crime and in the stolen car or that subsequent officers would falsify evidence (not to mention be able to obtain blood from the defendant with out the knowledge or consent of the defendant to plant) to cover for the original investigators.
This is a pretty clear case of an out of control court that is patently anti-death penalty doing every thing it can to obstruct the clear intent of the law and to obstruct justice.
Would have to see the whole case to make any reasoned comment. For all I know the lead author is coming off the top of her head. To get a chink like that at all, I’d suspect the PD in question had integrity problems in the past.
He should have been decomposed long ago.
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