California's capital punishment opponents have a problem.  Despite about a thousand capital judgments in the post-Gregg era (beginning with the passage of the Deukmejian bill in 1977), they don't have a single substantiated case of an actually innocent person receiving that sentence.  So they have to make some up.

SF Chrontrarian Debra Saunders has this column on the CNN series Death Row Stories and its episode on Kevin Cooper.  First, she notes a prior episode of the series.

Last year, CNN's "Death Row Stories" ran an episode about a California woman convicted of first-degree murder, then freed when a federal judge overturned the verdict because prosecutors withheld evidence. I had a few issues with the episode, in part because Gloria Killian was not tried for capital murder and never spent a minute on Death Row. I wrote at the time, CNN should rename the series, narrated by capital-punishment opponent Susan Sarandon, "Death Row Propaganda."

On to Cooper:

When the tests finally were done, DNA nailed Cooper to the crime scene, where he claimed never to have been. In 2004, [defense investigator Paul] Ingels told me, "It proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Kevin Cooper was involved in the murders."

When Cooper's lawyers devised this elaborate story about officials framing Cooper by manipulating DNA, forensics expert Dr. Edward T. Blake objected because he relies on those tests to exonerate innocent convicts. When I asked Blake if Cooper is guilty, Blake answered, "Yeah, he's guilty, as determined by the trial and the failure of a very extensive post-conviction investigation to prove otherwise." Blake also had worked for Cooper's defense team.

I've covered a lot of crime stories. I've never had two people who worked for the defense tell me an inmate is guilty.

Saunders has more on the case in a blog post.