Bdos: Race trumps common sense and due process

Stephen Alleyne argues that Kevin Cooper has been denied his due process rights, which Alleyne thinks pertains to the length of time the accused has remained on death row. Alleyne also opines that there are forensic inconsistencies in the case. Go here for several defintions of due process. Here's one:

"Due Process of law implies the right of the person affected thereby to be present before the tribunal which pronounces judgement upon the question of life, liberty, or property, in its most comprehensive sense; to be heard, by testimony or otherwise, and to have the right of controverting, by proof, every material fact which bears on the question of right in the matter involved. If any question of fact or liability be conclusively presumed against him, this is not due process of law." Black’s Law Dictionary, 6th Edition, page 500."

Just as ignorance of the law is no excuse in a criminal context, even so it is not when you're writing an opinion column. Stephen Alleyne first needs to understand what is meant by due process. Due process pertains not to sitting on death row for years; that is part of the appeals process which has ensured that death row inmates are not put to death in a quick and timely manner, a la the Old West. Due process has to do with this: the accused is Mirandized (you have the right to remain silent, yadda-yadda...); he is charged in a timely manner; the charges against him are specific; he is tried by a jury of his peers; he confronts his accuser; he is defended by legal counsel, which means he is exercising his right to mount an exculpatory defense. That is the sum of due process. After the accused has been found guilty and gone through the penalty phase, then the appeals process kicks in. Here in America, this may take decades, and many lose sight of the horrible crimes committed by the accused. Hence the spate of movies, like Dead Man Walking, which are essentially hagiographies of killers.

That Cooper has been on death row for 19 years means that Cooper has been exercising his constitutional right to appeal his conviction. It is not the State that has kept Cooper there. At any point in time, Cooper could have done as other killers have in the past, Timothy McVeigh, for one, and exercised his rights by refusing to appeal his sentence. That is the only way the sentence can be summarily carried out. However, as other killers before him, Cooper, who dealt a gruesome death to the majority of members in a family, does not want to die himself. What else is new with that?

Mr. Alleyne would do well to research this case before he comments further, and he ought to stop being so star struck. The majority of celebrities in America are unreflecting leftists who have no more than a high school education. Should the courts and the governors listen to these unthinking idiots whose words only make sense when someone hands them a script? I say not. Furthermore, Mr. Alleyne has disregarded the forensic evidence that placed Cooper at the scene of the crime. Ignorance is bliss, but one ought to know that it is the police/FBI crime labs that do forensic testing, unless one is willing to pay for independent labs to test evidentiary matter. The knee-jerk response is to say that cops planted it there. That is so easy and so cheap it's laughable. It worked for O.J. to say it, and we know how hard he is looking for Nicole's murderer. In the almost 20 years since Cooper committed his crimes, forensic science has made tremendous strides. It is reverse racism of a perverse sort (which is redundant) to assume that every time a black man commits a heinous crime and is caught, and there is forensic evidence that supports his guilt, that the cops (in the mind of the speaker/writer the cops are always white) have planted evidence. Nobody says the police are all virtuous, but neither are they all corrupt. Tha's a gross disservice being done to those who wear the badge.

Sitting in Barbados far from thugs like Cooper is easy. Living amongst them is another kettle of fish. What Mr. Alleyne has omitted from his sanitized opinion piece is a description of the gruesome murders. I include a description of what Cooper did to earn him a rope at the end of a high branch. Cooper isn't on death row because he's black; he's there because he's a murderer. Here's part of the files on Cooper that Alleyne could have found had he looked. Here's another.

Cooper, now 46, is “an intensely gentle and kind man,” his Lefty lawyers told the San Francisco Chronicle, “who has found his peace with the system and the injustice that has been done to him.”

“Cooper is a violent man,” replied the brilliant Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders last Friday. “He killed two adults and two children. He [kidnapped and] raped a teenage girl in Pennsylvania. He was caught after the Chino Hills killings because a woman went to Santa Barbara County authorities to report that Cooper had raped her at knifepoint. This ‘intensely gentle and kind man’ has been in trouble with the law since he was 7 years old, he has been institutionalized so many times that he has escaped 12 times, and still was able to kill and rape by age 25.

Here is the story by Lance Pugmire, LA Times Staff Writer. Enter laexaminer for both user-name and password.

A fifth-grader only days away from the 1983 summer break, Christopher Hughes hopped on his bicycle and waved goodbye to his mom as he rode off to a friend's house for a Saturday night sleepover.

"Don't forget," his mother called out as he pedaled down their street in Chino Hills, "be home on time for church tomorrow."

It was the last time Mary Ann Hughes and her husband, Bill, saw their son alive.

That evening, escaped prison inmate Kevin Cooper broke into the home of Doug and Peg Ryen and, armed with a hatchet and buck knife, savagely murdered the San Bernardino County couple, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes. Cooper also slit the throat of Christopher's best friend in the neighborhood, 8-year-old Joshua Ryen, leaving the boy for dead.

Joshua survived. Not only did he testify against Cooper during Cooper's 1985 murder trial, but he'll also be sitting in the witness chamber in San Quentin State Prison when Cooper is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday. Mary Ann and Bill Hughes plan to be right next to Joshua.

"I don't expect him to say he's sorry; I don't think he's afraid to meet his maker," Mary Ann Hughes said. "I don't think there's any forgiveness in him. I just think there's evil in this world, and he's part of it."

Finally, Mr. Alleyne needs to have consideration for the families of the victims. It is all well and good for Mr. Alleyne to squawk about the rights of the murderer. What about the right of the victims and their families to have a swift resolution brought to the horror that has come upon them? What about that? Regardless of race, this is the right that should be accorded to every person whose family has been touched by some murderous thug.

Had Cooper been a citizen of Barbados, or my own country, Trinidad & Tobago, I hope to God they would have hanged him by now, and hanged him high.