Lawyers for Kevin Cooper, who was convicted in 1985 of murdering Douglas and Peggy Ryen and two of their children in an affluent suburb of Los Angeles, had petitioned the governor for clemency in 2016.
Brown said in July that he would consider additional DNA testing in the case, and on Monday he ordered the retesting of a shirt, towel, hatchet handle and hatchet sheath.
In his order the governor said that the purpose of the testing, which will be carried out under the supervision of Daniel Pratt, a retired judge, was to see whether DNA from any another person in the FBI’s database is present on the items.
Cooper, who has been sentenced to death, has exhausted all his appeals. His case had been championed by, among others, Sen. Kamala Harris and columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times.
The request for retesting was fiercely contested by the San Bernardino County district attorney’s office, which in a 94-page filing urged the governor to “consider the overwhelming evidence of Cooper’s guilt” and to allow his “clearly deserved death sentence to remain in place.”
The filing quoted extensively from Josh Ryen, the only surviving family member, who was 8 years old at the time of the killings.
Brown granted Christmas Eve clemencies that included 143 pardons and 131 commutations. Among them was one for Sear Un, an immigrant from Cambodia who avoided deportation because of the governor’s pardon. Brown will leave office at the end of his term next month.
Given a commuted sentence was Richard Richardson, the editor-in-chief of San Quentin News. After serving more than 20 years for robbery, Richardson will be given the opportunity to appear before the Parole Board and make his case for earlier release.
The governor rejected a request by the mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, to have the sentence of her brother commuted. The mayor’s brother, Napoleon Brown, has spent 18 years in prison for involuntary manslaughter and armed robbery.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.