Ever think about how if that one thing never happened, that one mistake, your entire life would be different? Well, that happened to Kevin Cooper back in 1983, when he was accused for a crime he did not commit. He is still suffering from it to this day and is now on his death sentence again despite the fact that five judges saying he is innocent.

Thirty-one years ago, Kevin Cooper was accused for the slayings of Douglas and Peggy Ryan and their ten-year-old daughter. Their eight-year-old son Josh’s throat was also slit but he survived. Another ten-year-old boy, Chris Hughes, was also killed.

After thirty-one years in prison and fighting for his innocence, Cooper, fifty-seven, said he is exhausted from all of this. He told NBC that he is the only person in the history of the state to have five federal circuit judges say that the state of California may be about to execute an innocent man. Cooper added that he wasn’t asking America as a whole, or any one person in particular, to believe him. He is just asking people to believe those judges.

There is major evidence pointing to the real murderers. First off, the boy who survived, Josh’s initial reaction to the police asking him if Cooper was the man who assaulted was a no. He, instead, said there were three white or Latino men had killed his family. But, when Josh grew older he changed his testimony to say that he’d seen Cooper kill his family. Cooper said to NBC news that the police seemed to have brainwashed Josh otherwise he would not have changed his testimony.

Also, the only reason Cooper was seen as a suspect was because he had escaped from prison and was staying nearby. It was said by the police that there were shoeprints at the scene belonged to prison-issue shoes and Cooper had recently escaped a small prison. But, when the judges in 2004 looked more into it, they found the warden of the small prison where Cooper served. The warden said that the prison did not give out prison-issued shoes and the court ruled that the prosecutors broke the law by withholding evidence. It is still not known whose footprints they were. Not only that, but  NBC also reported that two other witnesses said they saw three white men driving in a station wagon down the road away from the family’s house on the same day that the family’s station wagon was stolen.

There was major bad police work which led it to be a harder case to solve. A woman named Diana Roper, said to NBC news that she believed her ex-husband, Lee Furrow, was involved in the murders. She said that that a hatchet that belonged to Furrow had gone missing and that his coverall pants, which were splattered with blood, were left at her home on the night of the murder. According to WNCN, another woman and her sister supported Roper saying that they had seen several people on the night of the murder wearing blood-spattered overalls and driving a station wagon similar to the one stolen from the murdered family. The women gave the bloody overalls to the police for testing but the police discarded them, despite the fact that it is illegal to throw evidence away. The Ninth Circuit court later on gave a ruling on this.  There was even a jailhouse confession from an associate of Furrow saying that Furrow committed the crime as revenge, but he hit the wrong house.

Judge William A. Fletcher was one of the judges that believed the Cooper was innocent. He wrote that the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man adding that police might have tampered with evidence, and the Ninth Circuit should have reheard the case and should have given Cooper a fair hearing. Five other judges joined in Fletcher’s dissent, saying that Cooper never had a fair hearing to determine his innocence. Back in 2004, the state lab reported that there was also some messed up forensic work. Before, it was said only Cooper’s blood was found on the evidence. But then, a forensic scientist found that a sample from the test tube of Mr. Cooper’s blood held by police actually contained blood from more than one person. That led Mr. Cooper’s defense team and Judge Fletcher to believe that someone removed blood and then filled the tube back to the top with someone else’s blood. Back in 2004 when Cooper was first facing the death sentence, the government stepped in to re-check the case. But, even after finding a lot of evidence proving that Cooper was innocent nothing was proclaimed and his death sentence was just moved to February of this year. Many people are protesting for Cooper’s innocence and freedom. They say they are about to murder an innocent man by hanging him. This is definitely not the first time it has happened. Hundreds of innocent men have wrongfully been accused and suffered punishments because of that. Kevin Cooper only has a little time left, and maybe just maybe if the public speaks up, an innocent man can be saved.