SAN BERNARDINO – (INT) – The long-running murder case of condemned killer Kevin Cooper is back in the headlines.

The Death Row inmate is asking for clemency from Governor Brown insisting he is innocent in the 1983 hatchet murders of of Doug Ryen, Peggy Ryen, 10-year-old Jessica Ryen, 11-year-old Chris Hughes, and the attempted murder of 8-year-old Josh Ryen in their Chino Hills home.

Cooper’s conviction has gone all the way to the California Supreme Court.

Cooper, now 60, requests that "Touch DNA" testing be performed on one of the murder weapons, the hatchet, the hatchet sheath, the t-shirt and the prison button. Results of earlier testing proved Cooper was in the Ryen home at the time of the murders, that he smoked cigarettes in their station wagon after he stole it, and that his blood and the blood of at least one victim was on a t-shirt found by the side of a road leading away from the murders.

San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos argues that delaying Cooper’s execution “only mocks the criminal justice system and the victims and their families in their long-lasting grief, as well as the will of the voters who enacted Proposition 66.”

Story Date: May 23, 2018