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It was hard to miss the loaded headline regarding a convicted psychopathic killer titled “Clemency Probe Fails to Exonerate Kevin Cooper.” It just goes to show that this was intended as a politically motivated exoneration project and not as a search for objective truth. A better and more accurate headline should have read DNA Tests Confirm Kevin Cooper’s Guilt, Again. This recent probe further proves Cooper’s guilt to a degree of accuracy that more than meets the standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. There is a better chance of you having the recent billion dollar MegaMillions ticket than of Kevin...

By 10 years old, the Utah boy had bought and was running a 350-acre farmstead. This is what it looks like to be unafraid to try. Cole Summers Jun 21 Cole Summers at 8 years old. Social media is mostly garbage. My own feed is crammed with doomsday predictions and ads for scammy diets. But every once in a while, between the hashtags and the hysteria, a jewel presents itself. Like Cole Summers. I never met Cole Summers in real life. But I was completely floored by what I learned about him—and from him—online. At first, to be honest, I...

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...

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence for convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, whose 2004 execution was stayed just hours before he was to die by lethal injection. The planned execution was halted after the 9th U.S. District Court of Appeals reopened the case so two DNA tests on a blond hair and a bloody shirt found at the murder scene could be done. DNA testing wasn't available in 1984. Cooper, who has long maintained his innocence, was convicted of the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher...

The next appellate court hearing for Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper has been delayed until January. Cooper, who was sentenced to death for the 1983 murders of four people in Chino Hills, had his case scheduled for oral arguments before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Nov. 2. The court, however, delayed the hearing until Jan. 9, apparently because one of the justices familiar with Cooper's case was unavailable.

Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper will likely be unaffected by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday that gives wider latitude to condemned prisoners who wish to challenge the methods most states use to carry out executions. Cooper, who is on Death Row for the 1983 hatchet murders of four people in Chino Hills, still has no execution date set while he waits for a federal appeals court to weigh the validity of his conviction. Meanwhile, all executions have already been on hold in California since February pending the appeals of another Death Row inmate who claimed the state's lethal injection...

. NEVER FORGET No matter what the KERRY's are trying to do, thru their National Lawyers Guild Defense Attorneys, to get 1981 Chino Hills Slasher KEVIN COOPER off his Date with a Death Penalty execution... 'Tests show COOPER as plausible culprit: DNA efforts haven't paid off for convicted killer' Article Excerpt: "Every Single test we have done has come back concluding that KEVIN COOPER was there and committed the murders. And everytime the evidence comes up pointing to his guilt (his lawyers) have to come up with some other theory on how he didn't do it." ...states NATHAN BARANKIN, Spokesman...

SAN DIEGO (AP) - New DNA tests sought by death row inmate Kevin Cooper failed to exonerate him of the 1983 murders of four people, a prosecutor said Friday. The tests indicated that hairs found on three of the victims were likely their own, which undermines Cooper's theory that other people committed the murder, Deputy Attorney General Holly Wilkens said. Cooper was sentenced to die in 1985 for killing Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 11-year-old friend Christopher Hughes, who was sleeping over at the Ryens' Chino Hills home. Eight-year-old Joshua Ryen had his throat slit but...

The California Attorney General appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday challenging a lower court ruling that halted the execution of Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper last month. The attorney general's petition does not challenge the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal's rationale for halting the execution, but rather claims the appellate court lacked the jurisdiction to stop it in the manner in which it did. "If courts can ignore the law during these 11th-hour, last ditch efforts to halt executions, murder victims' family members and loved ones will be left with little solace, knowing a closure to their grief...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's attorney general asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to review a lower court's order staying the execution of convicted murderer Kevin Cooper. An 11-judge en banc panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Cooper's execution earlier this month. Just hours before the scheduled Feb. 9 execution, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to overturn the ruling, thus allowing Cooper to live. In his first death-penalty case, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had earlier denied Cooper clemency. In the Wednesday legal filing, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer appealed to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor...

<p>Four months after taking office, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has landed in the middle of a death-penalty uproar that pits him against some of his fellow Hollywood luminaries.</p> <p>Last week, Mr. Schwarzenegger refused to grant a clemency hearing for death-row inmate Kevin Cooper, a convicted murderer whose case has become a cause for a host of celebrities and civil rights activists.</p>

On those occasions when the Muse is elusive, when the words don't flow as I might wish, when the writer's demon, the blank page, stares me squarely in the face and says, "Now, what?" I often look to the justices of Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for inspiration. They have seldom failed me. The latest outrage to issue from this court is the stay of execution granted to convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, who was scheduled to die at California's San Quentin Prison at 12:01 Tuesday morning. Some background: On June 2, 1983, Cooper escaped from the California Institute for Men,...

<p>The 11th-hour halt of Kevin Cooper's execution in California was followed Tuesday by a call for a nationwide moratorium on the death penalty.</p> <p>The Rev. Jesse Jackson said California's capital punishment system is flawed, and executions should be halted at the state and national levels so reforms can be devised.</p>

THE NAUSEATING STENCH OF HUMAN BLOOD filled the eight-year-old’s nostrils as he awakened. Much of that blood was his own, covering the bottom of the bathtub where Joshua Ryen had crawled to hide from the dark-skinned man who slashed his throat and left him for dead. The terrified screams that had awakened him earlier that June 4th night in his family’s home were now replaced by deathly stillness. His father Douglas, 41, and ten-year-old sister Jessica and her 11-year-old friend Christopher Hughes had been killed by murderous attacks with a hatchet, buck knife and icepick. His sister Jessica’s body...

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Celebrities Demonstrate Outside Schwarzenegger's Home LOS ANGELES -- A federal appeals court granted a stay that may block the execution early Tuesday morning of condemned killer Kevin Cooper, who has won support from celebrities including Denzel Washington and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday morning granted a request for an 11-judge rehearing of the case. It would be California's first execution in two years. In his first such act as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger denied clemency for Cooper. It was not immediately clear when the en banc panel would hear the...

10:06 PM PST on Monday, SAN FRANCISCO - The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday night to overrule an appellate court's stay of execution for a convicted killer who pleaded that tests on the evidence would prove his innocence. Acting unanimously, the justices denied a request by the state of California to vacate the ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which said earlier Monday that justice demands the execution be delayed. Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg also said they would have stayed the execution based on a separate appeal from Kevin Cooper himself. Cooper, who...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A condemned murderer whose bid for clemency has won support from celebrities including Denzel Washington was set to be executed early today, the first death penalty case for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.</p> <p>Kevin Cooper, who was convicted in the 1983 hacking deaths of four persons, was scheduled to be executed just after midnight at San Quentin Prison after spending 19 years on death row.</p>

SAN FRANCISCO – A federal appeals court on Monday barred convicted killer Kevin Cooper's pending execution, saying evidence in his case should get a fresh look after 18 years of appeals. The decision by an 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals came less than eight hours before Cooper was to be executed by lethal injection for hacking four people to death in 1983. California asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overrule the 9th Circuit and allow the execution to take place; as of Monday evening, the nation's highest court had yet to rule. Cooper's death warrant...

<p>A federal appeals court intervened dramatically Monday afternoon to block the execution of Kevin Cooper, less than eight hours before he was to die by lethal injection for the murders of two adults and two children in 1983.</p> <p>The 9-2 ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left Cooper's fate up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which had the power to lift the appeals court's stay of execution. Even before the appeals court acted, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office asked the high court to undo a temporary stay of execution that the appellate court had imposed Monday morning.</p>