I MEET A MAN ON DEATH ROW-AND LEARN TO CARE
My life has been particu-larly blessed. Caring, support-ive parents gave me endless op-portunities and paid for my educa-tion. I have never been hungry or in trouble with the law. For most of my 53 years, I have lived comfortably in an upper-middle class world, working with, associating with white people almost exclusively because they happened to populate my world. Although I have felt compassion for the poor and disadvantaged-from a distance-and donated money to our local homeless shelter, I have had no personal associations with oppressed minorities or people in prison. Yet now I find myself writing and visiting a Black man on San Quentin's death row and actively working to free him. How did I make this dramatic transition?
In 1997, I read Dead Man Walking by Sister Helen Prejean. When Sister Prejean came to Santa Cruz County, California, in February to lecture, I went to hear her. She was funny, charismatic, compelling, and compassionate. After reading her book and hearing her speak, I became absolutely convinced that the death penalty was wrong, and I wanted to reach out to someone on death row. Within a few weeks, I was writing a letter to Kevin Cooper, Death Row, San Quentin State Prison, who had advertised in North Coast Xpress.
In my introductory letter I provided some basics about myself and asked Kevin if he would like to correspond. He was enthusiastic about doing so and declared his innocence in the crime for which he was convicted. I wasn't prepared for this innocence-guilt issue coming up so soon, so in the next series of letters I avoided the topic. But Kevin persisted, hoping that I would help him. Eventually, he sent me about three hundred pages of legal documents on his case. As I read through them, I felt increasing disgust for the work done by police investigating the case, and I realized, with horror, that this man, who had spent thirteen years on death row, just might be innocent.
Kevin told the attorneys who have represented him since 1997 about me, and they both called, inviting me to come to Burbank for a briefing. I agreed and met four attorneys who are working on the case. They are all convinced that Kevin is innocent. They believe that Kevin was convicted of a crime he didn't commit because of faulty handling of evidence, poor police work, and two incompetent public defenders. For example, the crime scene photographs clearly show long strands of blond hair in the victims' hands. Most likely it is the hair of the perpetrator. It isn't Kevin's hair because his is dark and kinky. No investigation was ever done to determine whose hair it is, and the jury was never shown the critical photos or even told about the hair.
Kevin Cooper was framed because he is black, uneducated, inarticulate, indigent, and because he was present in the wrong place at the wrong time. One attorney told me that if a new trial or an evidentiary hearing does not take place, Kevin will be executed in the next twelve to eighteen months.
I have been to visit Kevin several times on death row. He is now 40 years old. He told me that he was full of rage when he entered the prison in 1985. But after several years on death row, he decided to make a life for himself there. San Quentin is a minefield of assaults, knifings, shootings, suicides, lock-downs, frequent cell searches, the constant din of prisoners talking and shouting, monitored phone calls, prison gang rivalries, racial tensions and coping with mentally ill inmates. To survive, much less grow as a person in such an environment, requires remarkable inner strength and commitment to life. Kevin's personal and spiritual growth over the years is amazing. In thirteen years he has never been involved in a fight and because of his record of cooperation, he is a class A prisoner, allowed visits in which we can touch each other.
Kevin is an accomplished artist who honed his skills during the long days, months and years in his cell. He has taught himself to type. He has taught other inmates to read and write. He works with younger inmates (as young as 18) helping them deal with the harsh reality of death row. This is a man of significant value who wants to live so that he can work with at-risk young black men, join in the struggle to end the death penalty in the United States, and develop a relationship with his 15-year-old son. He also wants to live because he is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted.
I have tried to figure out how an innocent black man can come to death row. I have asked a number of attorneys this question, read articles, and watched endless TV programs about the penal system. My conclusions make me sick. Indigent, uneducated, inarticulate people without advocacy are at the bottom of the barrel, and the system works to protect itself at their expense. If an accused person has an incompetent attorney or the attorney doesn't get into the right courtroom or file an essential document by a required date, well, it's just too bad. If one of those invisible members of society is convicted of a crime, the walls of the tomb close behind him, and we say, "Case closed." It doesn't make much difference whether the person is actually guilty. We feel better. We get closure. We get to say we're "tough on crime." We get to stop spending money trying to find the real criminal. Even when the convicted person is actually innocent, he is abandoned to his fate.
Kevin Cooper has written, "I was blamed for the mistakes of others, and now I stand a scapegoat of society, a scapegoat of a country that is looking for, searching for scapegoats and making it easier for the state to kill people legally through executions. In this country you don't even have to kill someone to find yourself on death row waiting to be killed."
I know that many other people are living comfortable, middle-class lives, sealed off from the realities of the poor and oppressed. I am told that most of them don't care about ending the death penalty, don't want to believe that this country, which promises "liberty and justice for all," could fail so many. They need to take a good hard look at the criminal justice system. They need to see the suffering and injustice that abounds in our prisons. They need to recognize the role of money and race in capital punishment and the public indifference that sends innocent people to their deaths. They need to care.
Please join me in making a difference!
-Jody Cramer is executive director of the Kevin Cooper Legal Defense Fund. Donations for Cooper's defense can be sent to Robert B. Amidon, a Law Corporation, 2550 North Hollywood Way, Suite 502, Burbank, CA 91505.