The 9th Circuit Has To Go
By Frank Salvato (02/12/04)
A panel from the 9th Circuit Court in California has stayed the execution of Kevin Cooper, convicted of hacking to death 4 people in 1985. In what can only be described as an “evidentiary fishing expedition” one of the judges on the panel suggested that we should be in “no hurry” to execute Cooper. Cooper has been on death row for 19 years. It would seem being “in a hurry” would be an exaggeration.
Cooper was convicted in 1985 and sentenced to death for the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes, her 11-year-old friend. The victims were stabbed and hacked to death repeatedly with a hatchet and buck knife. The Ryens' 8-year old son, Joshua, had his throat slit, but survived. He was awakened that murderous night by screaming and was left unconscious with a slashed throat, two hatchet wounds and two stab wounds. "He put all four fingers in his neck to stop his bleeding while he was staring closely at his mother -- dead, and covered in blood. Josh laid there 11 hours," his lawyer Milt Silverman recounts.
Cooper was at the time an escaped convict. He had escaped from prison where he was serving a four-year sentence for burglary when the murders were committed. Authorities suspect his motive was to steal the family's car. Cooper and his attorneys maintain that DNA evidence found at the scene, which matched Cooper’s, was planted by authorities. He has repeatedly asked for tests to re-verify the DNA as his but the courts have rejected his requests saying there is no evidence of tampering and there is overwhelming evidence of Cooper's guilt.
Regardless of the overwhelming amount of evidence and 19 years with which to prove his innocence the 9th Circuit Court has opted to waste some more of the taxpayer’s money re-proving that this monster hacked and slashed the life out of four people all those years ago. This stands as another piece of evidence that liberally motivated judicial activism is embedded like a cancer within the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
To add insult to injury, the family of the victims has to live with the idiocy of activists like Jeanine Garofalo, Sean Penn, Mike Farrell, Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, Jesse Jackson and a myriad of other liberally and ideologically motivated notables who are abusing their celebrity to use Cooper as a tool while speaking out against the death penalty. This comes in the face of the abduction and murder of Carlie Brucia by Joseph Smith, a man that was allowed to remain free by a liberal Florida judge practicing liberal judicial activism.
Time after time we hear about our youth being slaughtered by repeat offenders that have been shown the compassion of a liberal judicial system. These ideological decisions, mistakes by the benchmark of common sense, are costing innocent lives because the liberally hair-brained believe that one can negotiate with evil. It is not the case. Instead of holding these murderous thugs responsible for their actions these self-appointed consciences of society lash out at those charged with dealing with the elements of evil in our society. These members of the celebrity super-culture defend those with blood dripping from their hands while claiming that those in law enforcement are the ones committing crimes by planting evidence and lying under oath. These ideologues claim that the death penalty is cruel and unusual and that it inflicts undo pain. They are right. It inflicts undo pain on the families of the victims and allows those who would otherwise kill someone to steal their car or for their own morbid sexual gratification the ability to sit hand in hand with actors, millionaires who haven’t the slightest idea what terror really means. All the while being abetted in their nauseating malevolence by activist judges who are not worthy to wear the robes of those who seriously dispense justice to those who cross the law.
Cooper and his attorneys have had close to 20 years to refute the verdict served to him by a jury of his peers. If the defense had any credible claims to Cooper’s innocence they would have been addressed long ago. The claim that the authorities planted DNA evidence has become a stock contention ever since OJ Simpson bought his acquittal. It is a contention used by every guilty person to grasp at the very same straws of life that they denied their innocent victims. I find them to be terribly lucky that during their time spent manipulating the system they aren’t all haunted beyond sanity by the begging they heard as they massacred, murdered and eliminated their victims from the face of the planet.
We in the United States have to make it easier to remove those from the bench who practice such blatant judicial activism. This epidemic of stupidity has gone on long enough. It is time for those who embrace common sense to take back our courts. We must remember that the judicial system is a branch of our government, a government of the people, by the people and for the people. We need to make our voices, the voices of common sense, heard before it is too late, before another family is hacked to death by another convicted felon, before another 11-year old girl is taken from our streets and murdered by someone who should have been incarcerated and before the liberal activists and their crony judges set every violent criminal free.
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