Kevin Cooper (born Richard Goodman; January 8, 1958)[1] is an American convicted of murder at San Quentin State Prison's death row in California.

There have also been practical questions raised, such as how Cooper, at 155 pounds, and allegedly acting alone, overpowered a 6-foot, 2-inch ex-military policeman and his athletic wife, both of whom had loaded firearms close at hand.

"[6] Fletcher wrote that the police may have tampered with the evidence and that the Ninth Circuit Court should have reheard the case en banc and should have "ordered the district judge to give Cooper the fair hearing he has never had."

Five federal circuit court judges joined in Fletcher's dissent and five more stated that Cooper has never had a fair hearing to determine his innocence.

He began serving a four-year sentence under the alias David Trautman[11] at the California Institution for Men (CIM) in Chino on April 29, 1983, where he was assigned to the minimum security section.

[13][14] On the morning of June 5, 1983, Bill Hughes arrived at a semi-rural home in Chino Hills, California, where his 11-year-old son Christopher had spent the night.

[10] The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department deputies who responded to the call identified Kevin Cooper as the likely killer.

[15] While visiting the sheriff's office to report the crime, the rape victim saw a wanted poster with Cooper's photograph and identified him as the rapist.

[19] The second clemency petition also cited the conclusions and observations of twelve appellate judges of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, including the fact that blood taken from Cooper after he was arrested was contaminated with the DNA of another person,[20] that a sheriff's deputy had lied at Cooper's trial about destruction of key evidence,[21] and that three witnesses, never interviewed by the prosecution, had come forward with strong evidence of other possible perpetrators.

"[23] The letter further stated that since the Governor had only two weeks left in office, he had decided to leave the matter for Governor-elect Jerry Brown's determination.

On December 4, 2007, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied Cooper's third federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus.

"[5] While Judge McKeown concurred, she expressed doubts about the certainty of Cooper's guilt, saying that critical evidence had been lost due to mishandling by the investigators.

The IACHR concluded that the United States had violated Articles I, II, XVIII and XXVI of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man.

"[24] On Saturday, March 19, 2016, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Paulette Brown, submitted a letter to Governor of California Jerry Brown, suggesting that Cooper be granted clemency due to claims of racial bias, police misconduct, evidence tampering and poor-quality defense counsel.

"We recommend that this investigation include testing of forensic evidence still available to be analyzed to put to rest the questions that continue to plague his death sentence.

This is the only course of action that can ensure that Mr. Cooper receives due process and the protection of his rights under the Constitution," Ms. Brown wrote.

[25] In May 2018, Nicholas Kristof wrote an article in The New York Times highlighting the case, arguing that the truth could be determined by doing advanced testing on the bloodstained t-shirt, the hatchet handle and the hand towel used by the murderer and including diagrams showing both that Lee Furrow's stepmother lived close to where the victim's car was recovered and that Officer Steven Moran most likely planted evidence to frame Cooper.

Soon afterward, the Attorney General of California Kamala Harris and Dianne Feinstein both publicly called for advanced DNA testing.

On July 3, California Governor Jerry Brown hinted that he might be willing to approve DNA testing, sending Cooper's attorneys a list of questions.

The investigation also acknowledged that it had not evaluated claims that Cooper's trial and the verdict had been influenced by racial prejudice, and also failed to examine previously undisclosed documents.

They also argued that Alan Keel (the DNA expert used by Morrison Foerster to assess the evidence) was unreliable due to having professional ties with both Daniel Gregonis (who Cooper's attorneys accused of both incompetence and actively forging evidence) and Ed Blake (who had been involved in the 2002 DNA testing and rejected the idea that tampering had occurred), alleged misconduct in the Jane Dorotik case (Dorotik was exonerated in 2022 and would later sue both Keel and Blake in June 2023), and perceived scientific errors in made in his assessment (Keel tried to guess a sample's age based on how degraded it was even though the rate of degradation depends on environmental factors like heat, light and moisture, was unaware that when blood dried it created an easily transferrable powder, and also claimed that EDTA would automatically stop any degradation in blood.).

[31] On December 14, 2023, ABA President Mary Smith would write a letter to the Governor urging further investigation, arguing that the failure to examine the undisclosed documents in the state's possession made it impossible to have confidence in the accuracy of the verdict.