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I was 18 when Kevin Cooper escaped from
the minimum security California Institution for Men (CIM) where
he was serving time for a nonviolent offense. I was working the
early shift at a roadside diner, having just graduated from an
integrated high school in New York, 3000 miles away from 12-year-old
Paula Priamos's home near the CIM in southern California.
Sometimes, in the search for
justice, distance can be very important.
The year that Cooper escaped,
1983, was some ten years before the Brookings Institution's John
Dilulio used the term "superpredator" to describe minority
youth, but nevertheless "tough on crime" rhetoric was
rampant. I remember my senior year in high school being marked
by racial tension. School authorities seemed anxious to read
every instance of adolescent conflict as prelude to a "race
riot."
This was the national mood
when Cooper, who is African American, escaped, when Douglas,
Peggy, and Jessica Ryen and their houseguest Chris Hughes were
murdered, and when 8-year-old Josh Ryen had his throat cut but
miraculously survived.
Perhaps this mood had something
to do with the fact that when the San Bernardino Sheriffs Department
found out that Cooper had escaped, they dropped all other leads
and went looking for him. There were more likely suspects--such
as the three men that Josh Ryen initially identified, or the
three blood-spattered men spotted in a bar near the crime scene
that night, or the three men noted in a police log as driving
a car that matched the Ryen's stolen station wagon.
This mood was expressed more
sharply at Cooper's preliminary hearing where, outside the courthouse,
members of the American Nazi Party carried signs demanding that
the State "Fry the N*gger" and "Kill the African
Troglodyte."
I mention this because when
I read Paula Priamos's essay in the Los Angeles Times Magazine
("Prisons Without Walls, " September 17, 2006) two things occurred to me. One is
that she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),
which is understandable given her youthful proximity to such
a horrible murder. The other is that the particular shape her
trauma has taken--the desire for Kevin Cooper's death--is a product
of racism.
Long before I met Kevin Cooper,
I knew that he could not have committed the crime for which he
was convicted. I knew, not because of some faith in his moral
fiber--I hadn't met him--but because simple common sense told
me that one man could not kill four people and mortally wound
a fifth using a knife and a hatchet unless they stood still for
it.
As I dug deeper into the case,
my initial suspicions were confirmed. Doug Ryen was an ex-Marine,
and Peggy Ryen was a horse trainer. There were loaded guns in
the house. I believe Mary Howell, Peggy Ryen's mother, who said
in a TV special decades after the crime that the people in her
family were fighters. Their murders were clearly the work of
more than one person. To believe otherwise is to accept the racist
idea that African Americans are super-powerful monsters.
Priamos bemoans the fact that
Cooper's execution was stayed, despite DNA tests-the first post-conviction
DNA tests ever granted-that implicated him in the crime. She
rejects the idea that this implication occurred because the evidence
was tampered with, even though the State's criminalist was found
to have taken the evidence out of its locker for 24 hours to
"examine it" without the prior consent or even knowledge
of the defense. She rejects the idea that evidence could have
been tampered with even though the Sheriff's department is known
to have destroyed a pair of bloody coveralls brought to them
by a woman who thought her boyfriend-a white man-had murdered
the Ryens.
I met Kevin Cooper in person
for the first time in 2000. I had been studying his case for
three years by that time, throughout the late 90s. Some more
social context: it was during the late 90s that the LAPD Ramparts
scandal broke. It was revealed that law enforcement officers
were working in gangs to plant evidence on and falsely convict
young men of color. Not long after, police in Philadelphia and
Miami were found to be up to similar antics. There seemed to
be a nationwide epidemic of evidence tampering and fabrication.
Given this context, it struck
me as odd that many of the people in positions of authority I
spoke to-including Attorney General Bill Lockyer and various
members of the press-refused to entertain the idea that Cooper
had been framed by the San Bernardino Sheriff's department. Upon
reflection, it is not odd at all. It is racist. Only someone
who believes that African Americans are inherently criminal could
believe that their vast overrepresentation in the nation's prisons
is not the result of a desperately biased criminal justice system
in which evidence manipulation is a routine matter.'
Priamos also complains that
Cooper has access to the press through a website maintained by
his supporters. I encourage people to go
to that website and read the dissent that led to the staying
of Cooper's scheduled execution on February 9, 2004.
Ninth Circuit Judge James R.
Browning writes:
"Contrary to the State's
assurances, Cooper did not have a fair trial. Cooper has presented
a sworn declaration of a state prison warden that, if believed,
suggests that the State fabricated crucial evidence linking Cooper
to the murders for which he has been convicted. Nor is the evidence
of Cooper's guilt overwhelming. Indeed, as the evidence mounts
that the State used unreliable and fabricated evidence to convict
Cooper, the evidence of his guilt correspondingly diminishes."
Browning's dissent has never
found its way into the mainstream press. For those who will scoff
at the Ninth Circuit's supposed left-wing bias, I encourage you
to recall that, on February 9, 2004, the very clearly conservative
United States Supreme Court upheld the Ninth's Circuit's stay
unanimously. And the evidence of Cooper's innocence has been
mounting ever since, leading the Ninth Circuit to grant him a
new hearing on the merits of his claims of evidence tampering,
evidence destruction, and civil rights violations.
I was 38 in 2004 when Kevin
Cooper came within four hours of being executed by the state
of California. I was preparing to enter the prison to witness
the execution when the stay was announced. And, consequently,
I know someone beside Paula Priamos who suffers from PTSD, and
that is Kevin Cooper, who sits in his four-foot by nine-foot
cell in San Quentin-which is far from the pleasure palace Priamos
makes it out to be-fighting for a new trial and, by extension,
his life.
Elizabeth Terzakis is an editor at Haymarket Books. She
can be reached at: emterzakis@aol.com
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