Stay of execution granted on death row prisoner

A convicted killer who was due to become the first death row inmate to be executed in California under Arnold Schwarzenegger’s rule has been granted a stay.

Kevin Cooper, aged 46, was due to die by lethal injection early today, but an appeals court granted a request for an 11-judge re-hearing of the case.

Schwarzenegger had refused a plea for clemency saying the evidence against the quadruple killer was “overwhelming”.

But Cooper’s supporters – including civil rights activist Rev Jesse Jackson and movie star Denzel Washington – said there was new evidence casting doubt on the 1985 conviction.

Cooper was convicted of hacking to death two adults and two children with a knife and hatchet after escaping from a prison in Chino, Southern California, in 1983.

His execution would have been the fourth in California in as many years, but the first one under Schwarzenegger, who was elected last year.

Judge James Browning, in California, said there “should be no hurry to execute Cooper”.

Cooper’s supporters want DNA evidence which was recovered from the crime scene to be re-tested.

Rev Jackson said: “This is not a case of seeking mercy on the philosophy of opposition to the death penalty.”

“The outstanding information deserves a hearing.” He said Cooper was at a disadvantage because he is black and poor.

Cooper’s lawyers have released excerpts of statements made by a police informant.

The informant suggested that the quadruple murder was the result of “a hit gone sour” and that Cooper was made a “scapegoat”.

Cooper’s lawyers have also released evidence from a former news reporter.

She said she met the informant by chance in 1997. He told her that evidence was planted and said the murders were a “hit on the wrong family”.

On Saturday three of the jurors who convicted Cooper called for a postponement of the execution, urging new tests on hair and blood evidence.

The sole survivor of the killing spree, Josh Ryen, who was eight-years-old at the time, suggested that there might have been more than one attacker and that they were not black.

But Mr Ryen, who survived despite having his throat slit, has reportedly told Schwarzenegger that he favours Cooper’s execution.

Protesters had gathered outside the prison in San Francisco, where the execution was supposed to happen at 5.01am Irish time this morning.

Meanwhile, in Schwarzenegger’s home town of Graz, Austria, about 50 people demonstrated, calling on the governor to stop the execution.

Some protesters wore black arm bands as a sign of mourning.

A leaflet they handed out said: “We condemn Schwarzenegger’s actions.

“One wrong can never be corrected by a second wrong, not even when it’s an ’action prescribed by the state’.”

On his campaign website, www.savekevincooper.org , Cooper writes that he is going to “murdered by the state”.

He said his execution would be “a continuation of the historic system of capital punishment that all poor people all over this world have been and are subjected to”.

But the mother of one of Cooper’s victims, Mary Ann Hughes, dismissed the last minute appeals.

“This is nothing new. It’s stuff that has been looked at millions of times,” she said.

Describing the appeal by the three jurors, she added: “This is just an example of the defence playing on the jurors emotions at the last minute.”