According to federal circuit Judge W. Fletcher in his 100+ page dissent in Kevin Cooper’s case, he states the following on page six (6):
“The district court placed two photographs of the murder victims at the end of its 159 page order denying relief to Cooper. One is a photograph of the photogenic Ryen family – two beautiful children, ten year old brown-haired Jessica and eight year old blond-haired Josh, and their attractive parents. The other is a photograph of eleven year old Chris Hughes, a handsome blond haired boy. The district court had no analytical reason to include these photographs at the end of its order.”
Judge Huff may not have had an analytical reason, or a legal reason to include those photographs, but she showed her personal reasons to do so. She showed her bias, demonstrated throughout the proceedings, that her intent is to see Kevin Cooper executed. The photographs were intended to keep the judges’ minds off of the law, off of the constitution, off of the evidence.
This is “Old School Justice” from way back in history. When black people, especially black men, were hung from trees just because they were accused of doing something to a white person. Or in some cases for evening ‘thinking’ about doing something.
Judge Huff knows what to do in order to deny Cooper relief, and to get her fellow judges, mostly republican but some democrats, to go along with her wishes, even when she is wrong! All she has to do, and in fact did do, is what judges like her have historically done in cases where they want to kill the defendant/inmate.
In order to continue to deny Cooper relief based upon his rights being violated, Huff has decided to take the focus off Cooper and his constitutional rights, and put the focus on the victims. She and Rymer and the other judges have either ignored those violations, procedurally barred them, or outright lied about them not existing.
If this had been a different time in the history of this country, Cooper would have been hung from a tree by now. Especially when certain judges go out of their way to lie, cheat, ignore, deceive, misstate, misuse, and turn a blind eye to not only justice and the constitution, but to the truth just so they can kill someone. This is the real reason why judge Huff does what she does, and why she placed those photographs in her order!