RS: Hello?
KC: Yeah, I'm here.
RS: Well, let's just pick up. I quoted all these people attesting to your innocence, others demanding that you have a hearing, and so forth. But it hasn't happened. Kamala Harris, who's now the senator from California, she was the attorney general, and now she said that, you know, she's all for your having an innocence hearing and a DNA testing. The other senator from California, Dianne Feinstein, says the same thing. And yet it's not happened. How does it register on you that these people, you know, are actually seeming to come out for some measure of justice here, and then yet you sit there, trapped in your cell in this extreme dehumanizing situation.
KC: First, I'd like to correct you about something, because this is not my cell. This is more your cell than it is mine, because you're a taxpayer. And the people of the state of California own this cell, not me. I am forced to live here against my will. Concerning Senator Harris and Feinstein and everybody else who is now supposedly on my side, or endorsing what we want, or are seeking as far as DNA testing and an innocence hearing, I find it hypocritical that when she was the attorney general of the state, she wouldn't give me no DNA testing or no hearing. She wouldn't give me the time of day. But now all of a sudden, she wants this governor to do something that she wouldn't do. Dianne Feinstein, I believe that she just flipped her script and became a progressive democrat because of Bernie Sanders and all those other progressive democrats that are now in Washington, D.C. Because before, she was for the death penalty. Now she comes out against it. And I like, I like to believe that in time, people evolve and can change their positions like that, but her position changed because of other people, not because she had some type of enlightenment about the death penalty. So, you know, I find these democrats hypocrites, myself. I mean, it may come back to haunt me to say these things, but I must speak truth. If they were in action what they claim to be in words, I would have already had an innocence hearing; I would have already had an innocence investigation; I would have already had the DNA testing that we seek.
RS: You know, how do you get through the day? That's what I'm trying to figure out here. You know, I've been in there, in that, one of those cages with you for five hours talking about this case. And you're remarkably clear about what's going on, and what the evidence is, and the injustice it is. How do you get through it?
KC: I choose to fight on because my human spirit will not allow me to quit. I mean, it's just something about me as an individual. And I don't mean nothing special or nothin'. I mean, I have the same will within me to survive that slaves had on the plantation to survive, or Jewish people had during the Holocaust who survived, or Native Americans had during the Trail of Tears to survive. I mean, there's just something in some of us who won't let us stop. We must continue on, we must fight back. And so that's what I do. I mean, I live in this four-and-a-half-foot wide by eleven-foot cage. I do a lot of reading and a lot of writing. I keep my mind occupied. I do my artwork, do my exercise and my body. And I just keep going, I keep pushing forward. I have no choice but [not] to stop, because if I do stop, that means they're going to kill me. And I'm not going to let that happen if I can help it.
RS: Well, tell us about your routine, though. I mean, we're going to be broadcasting this pretty close to Christmas. The pope has called for your having an innocence hearing, and he's certainly against the death penalty. Just tell us what this reality -- I can't, most of us can't even imagine 33 days in a place like San Quentin's Death Row. Tell us what 33 years have been about.
[Recorded voice on telephone] This call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded.
RS: OK, so monitor. I'm asking this prisoner on the birth of Christ, I'm asking about his life, so don't cut off the phone call. People have a right to know. What does it mean to be unjustly held on Death Row for 33 years? Just take us through, day after day, what is it?
KC: It's not just that easy. I mean, in order to understand what I'm going through, you'd have to go through it yourself, on a personal experience basis. People have bathrooms in their homes that are larger than this cage that I'm in right now. And everything I do, I do within this cage. I'm talking to you right now on a telephone that is brought to me, and they open the tray slot, you know, where they pass the food in on a tray, and I have to reach out and push the buttons on the phone to talk to you. But I'm in this cage right now--everything I do, from doing a painting or writing a letter or anything else, I do from within this cage. So I had to turn this cage into something other than a cage. I had to turn it into a classroom, I had to turn it into a church -- when I want to go to church, I turn this cage into a church. I turn this cage into what I want it to be --
[Recorded voice on telephone] You have 60 seconds remaining.
KC: -- or whatever I need it to be to survive. Now, this is abnormal. There is nothing about living in this place and doing what I'm doing that is normal. This is what makes it so hard for me to describe to you what it's like to live in here. Because it is the complete opposite of your world and your life. It's the complete opposite. I can't go nowhere.
[Recorded voice on telephone] You have 30 seconds remaining.
KC: Let me hang up and call back...But this is how I have to live. You know, I'm lucky enough to have a TV, and I can watch a lot of different channels. And because I can watch a lot of different channels, I'm able to hear people speak in their own native tongues about their own experiences in the countries that they're from, because I can get TV stations from around the world. Not because I have cable, because I don't -- you know, it's digital TV, it's free, over-the-air TV. So I watch a lot of different stations like that, and it helps educate me on the plight of poor people. And a lot of poor people, no matter where they are, they're still fighting for the same things that I'm fighting for from within this prison. Their lives, their freedom, their form of justice. And we all, no matter what language we speak, what tongue we speak, what religion we are, or are not, we're all speaking the same language. We're telling the oppressor to get his foot out of our asses [20:13], to get his handcuffs off our wrists, to get his needles or his bullets out of our backs and our arms, to get his hands out of our pockets, to leave us alone. To let us be who we are.
RS: Well, I want to go -- let me go into that. I mean, people listening to this, you know, people can be cynical, they can be whatever they want. But I want to remind them, we're talking about somebody who came a few hours from his death on Death Row. We're not talking about an abstraction; we're talking about somebody who's going to be the first or second person killed in California, now that they voters went for speeding up the killing. And I just want to remind people, this is a case in which one of the top judges in the state, judge William Fletcher -- and he was supported by 11 appellate judges, and half the jurors who were in this case, and others -- Fletcher said the evidence for keeping Kevin Cooper in jail all this time, and to kill him, was, quote, "manipulated and planted by the sheriff's department." The sheriff's department down in, basically, white, rural, San Bernardino County. And, quote, "It was manipulated and planted in order to convict Cooper, while it" -- and, again, quoting the words of Judge Fletcher. "It" -- that's the sheriff's office -- quote, "discounted, disregarded, and discarded evidence pointing to other killers." Including throwing away bloody coveralls belonging to the main suspect, whose girlfriend turned them over to the sheriff and implicated her boyfriend in the murders.
That last part I'm reading from the description of it. But that's the evidence that, according to Judge Fletcher, was, quote, discounted and disregarded evidence pointing to other killers, et cetera, et cetera. We're talking about a guy, Kevin Cooper -- this guy is asking for a DNA test. Now we have more sensitive DNA testing, and his attorney, who has been doing this pro bono for a decade now, pushing this case. And you got the two senators from California, one of whom was the attorney general of the state of California -- could have done this herself. But now she's a senator, Kamala Harris, and Dianne Feinstein -- they're both saying, give this guy the test. Jerry Brown has got a matter of weeks left in his tenure; he's had eight years, recently, as governor to deal with this. And what is he going to do, walk away from it? Not make a decision?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
4
3
