A federal appeals court granted a stay that may block Tuesday's scheduled execution of condemned killer Kevin Cooper, who was convicted of hacking four people to death after escaping from prison in 1983.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether DNA evidence linking Cooper to the slayings should be retested amid repeated claims that Cooper is innocent and was framed by law enforcement two decades ago.
The court's action Monday came hours after a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit, ruling 2-1, declined to stop the lethal injection, California's first in two years. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to grant clemency, saying evidence of Cooper's guilt was overwhelming.
The San Francisco-based appeals court is deciding again whether the law authorizes renewed DNA testing of blood evidence linking Cooper to the crime, and whether he can seek testing of hair found in one of the victims' hands, which has not undergone forensic testing.
The court is hearing the case with 11 judges at the request of Cooper's attorneys and of a dissenting judge who wrote Sunday that "there should be no hurry" to execute Cooper.
Five of the jurors who convicted Cooper also called for a stay of execution so the hair and blood evidence can be tested.
The appellate court did not announce when it would rehear the latest challenge, said the circuit's clerk, Cathy Catterson. She said the court still could decide the issue in time for the execution to proceed as scheduled at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday.
Nathan Barankin, a spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, said the state was weighing its options, including asking the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.
The appellate panel's decision was met with applause by Cooper's legal team and celebrity supporters such as Denzel Washington and the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
But prosecutors and family members of the victims were outraged.
Mary Ann and Bill Hughes, the parents of 11-year-old victim Christopher Hughes, learned of the stay Monday while traveling from their Chino Hills home to fly to San Francisco, a short drive from San Quentin State Prison.
"This is just another tactic," said Robert Olin, Mary Ann Hughes' brother.
Cooper's claims were turned aside Sunday by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit. But Judge James R. Browning, in dissent, urged a stay.
"If he is truly guilty, these simple tests will resolve the matter. If he is truly innocent, those same tests will tell us that," Browning wrote. "When the stakes are so high, when the evidence against Cooper is so weak, and when the newly discovered evidence of the state's malfeasance and misfeasance is so compelling, there is no reason to hurry and every reason to find out the truth."
The last execution in California was that of Stephen Anderson in 2002.
Cooper, 46, was convicted of the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes, her friend. They were stabbed and hacked repeatedly with a hatchet and buck knife. Joshua Ryen, then 8, survived a slit throat.
Cooper claims the DNA evidence was planted, but the courts have balked at new tests, saying there was no evidence of tampering in the face of overwhelming evidence of Cooper's guilt.
Cooper's attorneys also want hair found in one of the victim's hands scientifically tested to help support their claims that a trio of murderers committed the savage attacks.
John Kochis, the San Bernardino prosecutor who tried Cooper, said the defense theory that hair in Jessica Ryen's clenched hand proves there was another killer is wrong. The hair, he said, was from her own head. However, DNA testing was not available in 1984, when authorities came to that conclusion.
Cooper's attorneys also insist they have new evidence in the case, producing a woman Sunday who said that on the night of the murders, she saw two men covered in blood at a bar near the scene.
Hundreds are expected to protest outside the prison gates if the execution does proceed. "This could be one of our biggest protests ever," said Lance Lindsay, executive director of Death Penalty Focus, which lobbies against the death penalty.
About 100 death penalty opponents gathered Sunday near Schwarzenegger's home in Southern California, and hundreds planned a candlelight vigil outside the prison gates.
"This could be one of our biggest protests ever," said Lance Lindsay, executive director of Death Penalty Focus, a group that lobbies against the death penalty.
On Saturday, three of Cooper's jurors called for a stay of execution. They said blond hair found in the hands of one of the victims should be tested. The hair had not undergone DNA testing before the 1985 trial. Prosecutors believe the hair was that of the victim, sheared off as she was being hacked to death.
The mother of one of Cooper's victims, Mary Ann Hughes, dismissed the jurors' request.
"This is nothing new," she said. "It's stuff that has been looked at millions of times. This is just an example of the defense playing on the jurors emotions at the last minute."
Cooper, 46, was sentenced to death for the murders of Douglas and Peggy Ryen, both 41, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica, and Christopher Hughes, her 11-year-old friend.
Hughes and her husband planned to be at Cooper's execution.
The San Bernardino County victims were stabbed and hacked repeatedly with a hatchet and buck knife. The Ryens' 8-year-old son, Joshua, had his throat slit, but survived.
Joshua Ryen, now a construction worker, was awakened the night of the murder by screaming and was left unconscious with a slashed throat, two hatchet wounds and two stab wounds, his lawyer, Milt Silverman, told the Los Angeles Times for a story in Monday editions.
"Josh wakes up from the attack in the deathly still bedroom, where the stench of blood was nauseating," Silverman told the newspaper. "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."
Ryen hired Silverman after he and his grandmother expressed doubts that Cooper acted alone, but Silverman said his investigation left the survivor convinced that Cooper was the lone killer.
When the murders were committed, Cooper was on the run after escaping from prison, where he had been serving a four-year sentence for burglary. Authorities speculated his motive was to steal the family's station wagon.
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