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Execution of California Man Put on Hold
EFL - not WOT but followup on something posted earlier....
Only hours before the scheduled execution of an inmate whose plight has generated celebrity support, a federal appeals court stayed the death sentence until evidence in the case can be tested for DNA.
Don't they all generate celebrity support?
The decision Monday by an 11-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circus Circuit Court of Appeals came less than eight hours before Kevin Cooper was to be executed. The U.S. Supreme Court later unanimously declined to overrule the court’s stay. "No person should be executed if there is doubt about his or her guilt and an easily available test will determine guilt or innocence," wrote seven of the 11 judges on the San Francisco-based appellate panel.

Cooper, who has maintained his innocence through 18 years of appeals, was convicted in the hacking deaths of four people in 1983. He claims a trio of murderers committed the attacks and says DNA tests on hair and a bloody shirt found at the murder scene will exonerate him. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had declined to grant clemency, saying evidence of Cooper’s guilt was overwhelming. It was the first such plea to cross the governor’s desk. Cooper won support from celebrities such as Denzel Washington, the Rev. Jesse Jackson
Guess which color Cooper is.....
and bad actor and anti-death penalty activist Mike Farrell, who announced the Supreme Court’s decision to nearly 300 protesters outside the gates of San Quentin State Prison. "Thank you for letting the governor know he was wrong," Farrell said to thunderous applause.

The government expressed optimism that Cooper will be executed soon. "We are confident the results of future tests will not cast doubt about Cooper’s guilt," said Hallye Jordan, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer. The 11-judge panel overturned an earlier 2-1 decision by the same court declining to reopen Cooper’s case. Out of deference to the dissenting judge, the majority of the judges agreed to review the case. Judges Barry Silverman and Johnnie Rawlinson, of the larger panel, said the execution should be stayed, but only for as long as it takes to test the shirt for evidence of a preservative that would indicate that Cooper’s blood was planted by police, as the inmate claims.
Shades of O.J.
"The public cannot afford a mistake. Neither can Cooper," they wrote. "Since Cooper’s guilt can be quickly and definitively determined by means of a simple test, there is no reason not to have it performed prior to his execution." Cooper was convicted of stabbing and hacking to death Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and 11-year-old Christopher Hughes in 1983. The Ryens’ son, Joshua, then 8, survived a slit throat. Mary Ann and Bill Hughes, the parents of Christopher Hughes, were on the grounds of the prison late Monday preparing to view the execution and were angered by the court rulings. "We feel that justice is long overdue for our son and for the Ryen family, but we still feel that this is going to happen. This is just a delay," Mary Ann Hughes told KTVU-TV. "Personally, I have no doubt in my mind that Kevin Cooper is guilty, and I have no doubt in my mind that he will be executed," said Bill Hughes. "We lost this round, but we’re not through." Cooper’s death would have been the state’s first execution in two years. In its ruling Monday, the appeals court said Cooper must get a chance to refute evidence that only recently has come to light or was not disclosed at trial.
Will his dead victims be allowed to testify as well?
Jackson, a devout attention whore, who met with Cooper on death row earlier in the day, later thanked protesters for massing outside the prison. "This is part of a struggle across a nation to remove a system with flaws," he said.
So.... what are the odds of him apologising to the family of the victims when Cooper is found to have did the deed?
Posted by: CrazyFool 2004-02-10
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=25964