Kevin Cooper v. Jeanne Woodford, Warden, San Quentin State Prison, San Quentin, California

358 F.3d 1117, 2004 U.S. App. LEXIS 2236, 2004 D.A.R. 1554

Opinions

Order; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge SILVERMAN; Dissent by Judge TALLMAN.

ORDER

A judge of this Court called for en banc review of the February 8, 2004, three-judge panel order in this case. A majority of the non-recused judges has voted in favor of en banc review of petitioner Kevin Cooper’s application to file a second or successive petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the district court. See 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(3)(A). The statute does not allow a petition for rehearing of a denial of authorization to file a second or successive application, but we have sua sponte power to rehear such a denial en banc. Thompson v. Calderon, 151 F.3d 918, 922 (9th Cir.1998) (en banc), cert. denied, 524 U.S. 965, 119 S.Ct. 3, 141 L.Ed.2d 765 (1998); In re Byrd, 269 F.3d 585(6th Cir.2001), cert. denied sub nom. Bagley v. Byrd, 534 U.S. 1109, 122 S.Ct. 913, 151 L.Ed.2d 880 (2002); Triestman v. United States, 124 F.3d 361 (2d Cir.1997). Cooper is scheduled to be executed at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow morning.

The district court denied Cooper’s first federal petition in 1997, and we affirmed in Cooper v. Calderon, 255 F.3d 1104 (9th Cir.2001), cert. denied, 537 U.S. 861, 123 S.Ct. 238, 154 L.Ed.2d 100 (2002). Through newly obtained counsel, Cooper filed with this Court on February 6, 2004, an application to file a second or successive application in the district court. Cooper also filed a motion for a stay of execution. A majority of the three-judge panel voted to deny the application and the stay yesterday, February 8, 2004.

Cooper has made a claim of actual innocence, accompanied by a claim that the State violated Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). Because Cooper makes a claim of actual innocence accompanied by a claim of a constitutional violation, he is making a “gateway” claim under Schlup v. Delo, 513 U.S. 298, 115 S.Ct. 851, 130 L.Ed.2d 808 (1995). To make a successful claim under Schlup, “a petitioner must show that in light of all the evidence, including new evidence, ‘it is more likely than not that no reasonable juror would have'found petitioner guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.’ ” Carriger v. Stewart, 132 F.3d 463, 478(9th Cir.1997) (en banc) (quoting Schlup, 513 U.S. at 327, 115 S.Ct. 851). The Supreme Court in Schlup “emphasized that in considering all the available evidence, the court is not bound by the rules of admissibility, but must consider ‘all the evidence, including that alleged to have been illegally admitted (but with due regard to any unreliability of it) and evidence tenably claimed to have been wrongly excluded or to have become available only after the trial.’ ” Id.

Under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), enacted in-1996, a petitioner seeking authorization to file a second or successive application for habeas corpus must satisfy two statutorily imposed conditions. He must show that

(B)(i) the factual predicate for the claim could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence; and

(ii) the facts underlying the claim, if proven: and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that, but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense.

28 U.S.C. §§ 2244(b)(2)(B)® and (ii).

The AEDPA requirements for a second or successive application are stricter than the Schlup standard in two ways. First, § 2244(b)(2)(B)® requires that “the factual predicate for the claim could not have been discovered previously through the exercise of due diligence.” There is'no requirement under Schlup that the factual claim was not discoverable through the exercise of due diligence. ' Second, § 2244(b)(2)(B)(ii) requires that “the facts underlying the claim, if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence thatj but for constitutional error, no reasonable factfinder would have' found the applicant guilty of the underlying offense.” (Emphasis added.) Schlup requires only that an applicant show that it is “more likely than' not” that no reasonable fact-finder would have found him guilty.

We should grant authorization to Cooper to file a second or successive application for habeas corpus if we find that he has made a prima facie case of success on the merits of such an application. “By ‘prima facie showing’ we understand simply a sufficient showing of possible merit to warrant a fuller 2075 exploration by the district court.” Woratzeck v. Stewart, 118 F.3d 648, 650 (9th Cir.1997) (quoting Bennett v. United States, 119 F.3d 468, 469 (7th Cir.1997)) (emphasis added).

We do not for purposes of this order decide whether the Schhvp standard or the standard of 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b)(2)(B) applies. Under either standard, we hold that Cooper is entitled to file a second or successive application.

I. Background

On June 2, 1983, Cooper escaped from the minimum security area of the California Institute for Men (CIM) where he was incarcerated. He broke into and hid in an empty house in Chino Hills, about two miles away, in San Bernardino County, southeast of Los Angeles. Cooper made telephone calls from this house to his girlfriend asking for money, but she refused to help him. Cooper’s last call from the house was at about 8:00 p.m. on June 4.

The Ryens lived next door, about 125 yards away from the house in which Cooper was hiding. During the night of June 4, 1983, the members of the Ryen household were viciously attacked. Doug and Peggy Ryen, the father and mother, were killed, as were their ten-year-old daughter, Jessica, and an eleven-year-old house-guest, Chris Hughes. Doug and Peggy’s eight-year-old son, Josh, was left for dead but survived. The bodies of Doug, Peggy, Jessica, and Chris, as well as the still-living Josh, were discovered the next day by Chris’s father. All of the murder victims were killed by multiple chopping, cutting, and puncture wounds. Josh suffered the same type of wounds. Jessica was found clutching a substantial amount of fairly long blond or light brown hair in her hand.

Cooper was apprehended at the end of July 1983, and he was tried for capital murder in late 1984 and early 1985. Cooper took the stand and testified that he was innocent. He has consistently maintained his innocence since that time. Cooper testified at trial that he never went to the Ryen house. He testified that he left the house in which he had been staying after that last phone call at 8:00 pm on June 4 and hitchhiked to Mexico. Uncon-tradicted evidence at trial indicated th'at Cooper checked into a hotel in Tijuana at about 4:30 p.m. the next day, June 5. After seven days of deliberation, the jury found Cooper guilty of death-eligible first degree murder. After four additional days of deliberation, the jury sentenced Cooper to death.

II. Brady Violation

Cooper attaches two new sworn declarations to his application, both signed in January 2004. These declarations, if believed, appear to indicate that a Brady violation has taken place and that crucial evidence introduced at trial was not reliable. Only two pieces of evidence at trial connected Cooper to the Ryen house. One was a bloody tennis shoe print found on a sheet in Doug and Peggy’s bedroom. The other was a single spot of blood found on a wall in the hallway.

There was testimony at trial about the print of a “Pro-Ked Dude” tennis shoe found on a sheet in the Ryens’ bedroom, as to which the testimony of two witnesses, William Baird and James Taylor, was particularly important. The California Supreme Court specifically discussed and relied on the testimony of these two men in sustaining Cooper’s conviction on direct appeal. People v. Cooper, 53 Cal.3d 771, 797-98, 281 Cal.Rptr. 90, 809 P.2d 865 (1991).

" A company representative testified at trial that “Pro-Ked Dude” tennis shoes are manufactured by Stride Rite solely for distribution in prisons and other institutions. They are not distributed to the general public. The sheet from the Ryens’ bedroom was initially not thought to have any footprints. However, a bloody footprint was discovered on the sheet after it was taken to the lab and refolded in the manner it had been folded when the footprint was made. William Baird, the Crime Laboratory Manager, testified that the shoe print on the sheet matched two prints found in the other house, and that all of the prints had been made by a close-to-new “Pro-Ked Dude” shoe. Baird further testified that he had a close-to-new “Pro-Ked Dude” shoe of approximately the same size in his lab, previously obtained from another prison. He testified that this shoe allowed him to analyze the print on the sheet and determine that it had come from a prison-issued “Pro-Ked Dude” shoe.

James Taylor, an inmate at CIM during the time Cooper was incarcerated, was a recreation attendant. Taylor testified at trial that he initially gave Cooper a pair of “P.F. Flyer” tennis shoes. He testified that Cooper, then imprisoned under the false name of David Trautman, exchanged his “P.F. Flyers” for a pair of black “Pro-Ked Dudes” a few days before he was transferred to the minimum security area. Cooper escaped from the prison soon after he was transferred 'to the minimum security area.

Cooper attaches to his application a sworn declaration of Midge Carroll, who was Warden of CIM at Chino while Cooper was incarcerated there. Warden Carroll’s declaration, dated January 30, 2004, states:

1. I was the Superintendent, or Warden, of the California Institution for Men at Chino, California, from 1982 through 1985. As Warden of this state penal facility, I had extensive contact with members of the San Bernardino Sheriff s Department who were responsible for the investigation of Kevin Cooper as a suspect in what became known as the Chino Hills Murders.

2. I was employed by the California Department of Corrections from 1966 until I permanently retired in 1999....

3. As the Warden of the California Institute for Men at Chino, my contact with San Bernardino County deputy sheriffs about aspects of the investigation in the Kevin Cooper case included conversations with one of the lead detectives about shoeprint evidence found at the crime scene. I communicated to one of the lead investigators that the notion that the shoeprints in question likely came only from a prison-issue tennis shoe was inaccurate. I came to this conclusion after conducting a personal inquiry of the appropriate staff, including the deputy warden, the business manager responsible for procurement, and the personnel responsible for warehousing. I learned that the shoes we carried were not prison-manufactured or specially designed prison-issue shoes. I learned that the shoes were common tennis shoes available to the general public through Sears and Roebuck and other such retail stores. I passed this information along to the detective. Had I been contacted, I would have testified to this on behalf of either the prosecution or defense, and I would have provided supporting documentation.

Cooper also attaches a sworn declaration of his present counsel • stating that Cooper’s investigators became aware of the information contained in Warden Carroll’s declaration on January 30, 2004, the date the declaration was signed.

The declaration of Warden Carroll makes out a prima facie case of a Brady violation. The date of the Carroll declaration, and counsel’s declaration that Cooper first became aware of the information in the Carroll declaration on that same date, together make out a prima facie case that the information could not have been previously discovered through the exercise of due diligence.

Under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), the prosecution has a constitutional obligation to turn material exculpatory evidence over to the defendant. This obligation is independent of any specific request by the defendant for such information. United States v. Agurs, 427 U.S. 97, 107, 96 S.Ct. 2392, 49 L.Ed.2d 342 (1976). Evidence is material “if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different.” United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682, 105 S.Ct. 3375, 87 L.Ed.2d 481 (1985); see also Strickler v. Greene, 527 U.S. 263, 280, 119 S.Ct. 1936, 144 L.Ed.2d 286 (1999); Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 433-34, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995).

The significance of Warden Carroll’s communication would have been clear to San Bernardino Sheriffs Department investigators. Because of the testimony of Baird and Taylor, the State was able to tell a damaging story about the presence of a bloody “Pro-Ked Dude” footprint in the bedroom of the murder victims, a footprint only Cooper, an escaped prisoner, could have left. But if Warden Carroll had been put on the stand and had been believed by the jury, the jury would have known that Cooper was almost certainly not wearing “Pro-Ked Dude” shoes.

Cooper also attaches to his declaration a hand-written sworn declaration of James Taylor, dated January 8, 2004, which states:

1. I was an inmate at the Reception Center West (RC-W) at the California Institute for Men in Chino California in May and June of 1983.

2. During that period of time, I met David Trautman, whose real name I understand to be Kevin Cooper. I met Kevin when he tried out for the basketball team. My job at the prison was recreation attendant. I was responsible for issuing basketball shoes to men in our unit who played on the team.

3.I issued only one pair of shoes to Kevin Cooper. I issued him a pair of P.F. Flyers. This brand was the best brand of shoe for basketball that the prison stocked. Kevin did not trade these shoes in to me for a pair of Keds, nor did he trade these shoes in to me for any other pair.

The new Taylor declaration is, of course, consistent with the Carroll declaration. If the information in Warden Carroll’s declaration is true, it is necessarily true that Taylor could not have handed out “Pro-Ked Dude” shoes to Cooper. Taylor’s new declaration states that he did not, in fact, hand out such shoes.

III. Other Evidence

Once a Brady violation has been established, a federal habeas court is required to evaluate all information in the ease, not just information relevant to the Brady violation. Other evidence in the case suggests that about three Caucasian or Mexican men, rather than Cooper, might have committed the murders. Such evidence includes initial statements of Josh Ryen in the hospital, who stated that three or four men committed the murders, and that the men did not have black or brown skin. While still in the hospital, Josh Ryen saw a picture of Cooper on television and stated that he was not one of the men. Josh Ryen identified Cooper at trial as the murderer, but his earlier statements are inconsistent with this identification. Jessica Ryen was found with numerous strands of blond or light brown hair clutched in her hand. Cooper, an African-American, could not be the source of the hair. That hair has not been tested, despite a request by Cooper.

Diana Roper has earlier supplied a sworn declaration that her then-boyfriend, Lee Furrow, came home late on the night of the murders without a t-shirt he had been wearing earlier in the day. He wore, instead, blood-spattered coveralls, which he took off and left at the house with Roper. Five days later, Roper turned the coveralls over to police, but the police threw the coveralls away without testing them and without alerting Cooper’s counsel to their existence. Further, Kenneth Koon confessed to a fellow inmate, with whom he was smoking marijuana in prison, that he and two other men had committed the Ryen/Hughes murders. According to the inmate who reported the conversation, Koon said they had gone to the Ryen house to “collect a debt” but had “hit the wrong house.” Koon said that two of the men went afterwards to his “old lady’s house” to leave bloody coveralls. Koon had previously been romantically involved with Roper.

A bloody t-shirt and a blood-stained hatchet were found beside the road, in separate locations, after the murders. Roper states in her declaration that Furrow’s hatchet was missing, and that the murder weapon had the same distinctive handle as Furrow’s hatchet. Roper further states that she is sure the recovered bloody Fruit-of-the-Loom t-shirt is the same shirt Furrow was wearing earlier on the day of the murders.

Finally, two declarations have been filed during the last day and a half from two women who were in a bar near the Ryens’ house on the night of the murders. One of the declarations states that three men came into the bar, but that one of the three stayed in the background. The declaration states that the other two men “were very loud and obnoxious and behaved bizarrely.” It says that one of the two had longer-than average “medium brown or dirty blond hair.” The other man wore coveralls. The other declaration describes two blond men. Both declarations state that the front of the two men’s clothing and faces were splattered with blood. The men spoke in a kind of gibberish and appeared to be under the influence of drugs.

There was, of course, evidence pointing to Cooper’s guilt at trial. Salient among that evidence was a spot of blood taken from a hallway in the Ryen house, the bloody t-shirt, and a hand-rolled cigarette found in the Ryens’ abandoned car in Long Beach. Pursuant to an agreement between Cooper and the State, all three of these pieces of evidence have been subjected to DNA testing. All three tests resulted in a positive match with Cooper’s DNA. Despite this DNA evidence, Cooper continues to maintain his innocence.

Cooper requests that a further test be done on the bloody t-shirt to determine whether EDTA, a preservative agent, is in that blood. If EDTA is present, Cooper maintains, that will show that his blood was placed on the t-shirt after the fact by someone who had access to his drawn blood. The State has refused to perform a test for EDTA.

IV. Authorization to File Application

We are not in a position fully to evaluate the strength of Cooper’s Brady claim. Nor are we in a position to undertake the difficult task of evaluating the information derived from the Brady claim in light of the other evidence in the case, treating much of that evidence with the deference required for prior factfinding by the state courts. We hold only that Cooper has made out a prima facie case that entitles him to file a second or successive application. A prima facie showing on one claim in a second or successive application permits an applicant to “proceed upon his entire application in the district court.” Woratzeck, 118 F.3d at 650.

This case centers on Cooper’s claim that he is innocent. No person should be executed if there is doubt about his or her guilt and an easily available test will determine guilt or innocence. Cooper has asked specifically that two tests be done.

First, Cooper asks that the blood on the t-shirt be tested for the presence of the preservative EDTA. The presence of such a preservative would show that his blood was not on the t-shirt at the time of the killing's, but was rather placed there at some later time.

Second, Cooper asks that the blond or light brown hair in Jessica Ryen’s hand be subjected to mitochondrial DNA testing.' Such testing, if favorable to Cooper, would exclude other members of the Ryen family and Chris Hughes as sources of the hair. It could also positively identify Lee Furrow, and perhaps others, as the killer or killers, if those men can now be located.

In his brief to us, Cooper states, “Through readily available mitochondrial testing of blond hairs found in one of the victim’s hands, and testing for the presence of the preservative agent EDTA on a T-shirt[ ] the State belatedly claimed contained, Mr. Cooper’s blood, the question of Mr. Cooper’s innocence can be answered once and for all.”

The district court may be in a position to resolve this case very quickly. As soon as Cooper’s application is filed, it should promptly order that these two tests be performed in order to evaluate Cooper’s claim of innocence.

In accordance with the foregoing, we authorize Cooper to. file his second or successive application for habeas corpus in the district court. We order Cooper’s execution stayed pending the resolution of that application.

IT IS SO ORDERED;