Posted on 11/01/2002 6:25:31 PM PST by Marianne
The accused killer of Dr. Barnett A. Slepian could wind up with two separate attorneys defending him in his upcoming trials in state and federal courts.
A federal judge Thursday refused - for now, at least - to allow James C. Kopp to sever his relationship with defense lawyer Paul J. Cambria Jr. and replace him with a new attorney, Bruce A. Barket.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh B. Scott said he will not decide until at least Nov. 12 whether Kopp and his friend, anti-abortion activist Loretta C. Marra, can be represented on federal charges by the same attorney. That attorney is Barket, a Long Island lawyer who supports Kopp's anti-abortion views and already represents him in state court on murder charges.
During an hourlong court proceeding, Scott told both Kopp and Marra that they must understand all the possible legal conflicts that could arise if Barket represents them both.
Both defendants told Scott they understand the pitfalls but still want Barket to represent them.
"I have to be assured that you are going into this with your eyes wide open," Scott told Kopp.
"I've thought about it quite a bit," Kopp said. "I don't see myself coming to any different conclusion."
"I plan to give the defendants more time," Scott said. "I have to be satisfied they are acting as two reasonable people."
Kopp, 47, a California native with a history of arrests in abortion protests in several different countries, is accused of the sniper murder of Slepian, an abortion provider who was slain in his Amherst home in October 1998.
Kopp faces state murder charges in Erie County Court, where his trial is expected to begin in February. In that case, Barket already has been approved as Cambria's replacement by County Judge Michael L. D'Amico.
Sources close to the case said Kopp wants Barket to represent him because Barket shares his anti-abortion views and - unlike Cambria - would build Kopp's defense around the ethical debate over abortion.
Marra, 38, faces federal charges that she used e-mails, phone calls and cash to help Kopp remain a fugitive while the FBI was hunting him as a suspect in the Slepian murder. Barket has represented her in that case for well over a year.
Last week, after Kopp requested permission to replace Cambria with Barket, Scott assigned two Buffalo attorneys - David G. Jay and Joseph J. Terranova - as independent counsels in the case. Jay met with Kopp, and Terranova met with Marra, to explain any possible conflicts that could arise from one defense lawyer representing two clients in related cases.
Both Jay and Terranova told Scott on Thursday that they believe serious conflict-of-interest problems could result if Barket represented both Kopp and Marra.
For example, Jay said, if Marra were called as a witness in Kopp's case, Barket might have divided loyalties and be reluctant to ask some questions of Marra if he had to examine her in court.
"There will be no conflicts," Barket said. "(Marra) has no information to help Mr. Kopp, and he has no information to help her. She has no intention of cooperating with the government."
Scott said he will meet again with all the parties in the case at 10 a.m. Nov. 12. The judge said he is not sure if he will decide the issue on that date.
Challenge the evidence? What possible motivation would the defendant have to do that.
The defendant in this case has considered from day one that he would likely get caught. He also considered that he is guilty as charged. He is not interested in trying to beat the rap. He is interested in trying to justify what he has done.
How smart do you have to be to figure out this guys motivation. This is not about winning a case. It is about winning followers.. even at the cost of a murder rap.
which suggests he is more likely to be really guilty.
When I learned that Paul Cambria traveled to France to interview James Kopp before deciding to represent him, I believed that there was a very good possibility that James Kopp was being framed.
This murder happened in a neighboring suburb and, of course, received a great amount of publicity.
However, if what The Buffalo News reports is true -- that the defense will now concentrate on the ethics of abortion for his defense -- my certainty regarding his innocence has been shaken.
I do not believe for one moment that Kopp is guilty. I do believe that the evidence in this case has been "cooked" by Janet Waco's Injustice Department. However justified Kopp's skepticism as to the capacity of the federal courts to give him a fair trial, the smart move and the best move, regardless of guilt or innocence, is to go with the attornet most professionally qualified rather than the attorney most religiously or politically qualified.
OJ's DNA lawyer, Barry Schacht(?), the best in that area of forensics, was once champing at the bit to handle that aspect of Kopp's case without charge. He should try to resurrect that offer as well since Schacht is apparently convinced that the DNA claims of the government are quite subject to demolition.
Before the law, Kopp is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Based on knowing some of his friends and having heard much about him long before the death of Dr. Slepian, I regard Kopp as objectively innocent in fact as well as not guilty in the contemplation of our law.
BTW, if he is going to testify (and don't be surprised if he does) he is bound to tell the jury his views. This is less dangerous than you may imagine. Jurors who will disagree with him on the abortion issue will admire him as a man. I admired the late Senator Wellstone while I probably disagreed with him 98% of the time. He was not a phony or a faker like Trent Lott or Tom Daschle and so many others. I can admire a principled man with whom I disagree strongly. So can jurors.
That having been said, the killing of Dr. Slepian by whomever and for whatever reason is not justifiable. Hateful though Slepian's abuse of his medical talents may have been, he was also a man, a husband, a father, a friend and a soul who might have been saved if he had lived longer. His judgment was always in God's hands and ought never to have been in the hands his ambusher. If Kopp is guilty of killing Dr. Slepian, he desrves conviction and punishment. If Kopp did not kill Slepian, then the person or persons who did kill him deserve to be convicted and punished. Ambush is no valid method of dispute resolution in our society. Being pro-life, even as admirably as Jim Kopp, is not an adequate excuse for ambush. I believe on the basis of everything I have been told about him that he knows that and would have refrained accordingly.
Kopp's worst hurdle is why he left for Europe at about the time of the killing and why he lived underground over there. We have not heard the entire story and we may not hear it. I dare hope for Kopp's acquittal. If he beats the first prosecution badly enough, the second may well be dropped. Prosecutors do not like to lose.
Cambria should try the case for Kopp who should trust that a lawyer who may disagree with him on abortion is not therefore untrustworthy. Cambria might make special effort under the circumstances. That has often occurred with pro-abortion judges who nonetheless believe in civil liberties and also, grudgingly admire people like Kopp when they get to witness them in court. This is NOT the case with federal judge Arcara in Buffalo but it has been true of many others holding his views.
The conflict of interest in the other lawyer representing both Loretta Marra and Jim Kopp can be real too even if both are utterly innocent. This is not a criminal trespass trial or a criminal mischief trial. Kopp is at jeopardy for very long-term incarceration. It is one thing to be willing to be a prisoner of conscience (not an apt descrition in a homicide) but another to dive into that status head first without forcing the government to jump through every hoop.
Kopp doesn't have to be executed or get life to turn his trial into a stage for his politics.
If he gets acquitted, he could spend the rest of his life on a speaking tour - or writing books.
SLEPIAN'S ASSASSIN WAS KILLER, NOT MARTYR
I am sick of the self-serving name calling! Who is really "pro-life"? Who is really "pro-abortion"? Those people who want to make all abortions illegal claim the name pro-life. But whose life? Certainly not the lives of women that were lost to back-alley butchers or self-induced illegal abortions prior to Roe vs. Wade.
And who is pro-abortion? No one I know. But I do believe in my right and my daughter's right to decide whether and when to have a child. This is because I so cherish the right of each child to be wanted and loved.
Barnett Slepian was a doctor and a man who helped women control their bodies and their lives. He provided women with safe health care. He was not an "abortion doctor."
His assassin was a murderer, plain and simple. If James Kopp is guilty, he is a "plain vanilla" murderer. If anyone wishes to invoke martyrdom and causes, the only cause Slepian died for was safe health care choices for women.
MARILYN CANTOR FEUERSTEIN
East Amherst
MURDER IS NOT A MEANS TO EXPRESS FREE SPEECH
The author of the letter, "Abortion is relevant to Kopp murder trial," seems to view the assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian as on a par with newspaper editors (John Peter Zenger) criticizing government policies, and citizens demonstrating against laws (abolitionists and draft protesters) they don't like.
He ignores a very salient fact: Assassination is not an expression of free speech. The murderer of Slepian is no better than the men charged with the recent sniper killings.
LINDA DIDOMIZIO
Jamestown
ONE'S RELIGIOUS BELIEFS DON'T JUSTIFY MURDER
The Buffalo News/Everybody's Column
11/11/2002
I am compelled to respond to the letter, "Abortion is relevant to Kopp murder trial," in which the writer used Alexander Hamilton's good name in defending the position that murder is justified by one's religious and/or political beliefs.
Hamilton was a defender of liberty and of the ideal of a "marketplace of ideas" as the most rational way of developing public policy. He would never sanction the killing of another because of a person's beliefs, no matter what reason and no matter how strong.
Hamilton felt so strongly about ratifying the Constitution that he spent a whole summer writing editorial after editorial - part of the "Federalist Papers" - supporting his position, not shooting people to get their attention.
He defended his ideals and principles with the pen and not the sword because that was the most effective way to initiate social change. Other people use boycotts, perhaps leaflets at election time - but nobody goes around shooting people to change their minds except terrorists.
DONNA J. LAUT Orchard Park
(NOTE: Alexander Hamilton was not the lawyer who defended John Peter Zenger. It was Andrew Hamilton.)
JOHN PETER ZENGER LINK
If he did nothing else, Andrew Hamilton deserves fame for two remarkable accomplishments. The first, of course, was his brilliant, eloquent, and successful defense of John Peter Zenger on the charge of seditious libel brought against him by Governor Cosby. The second was an outgrowth of Hamilton's other interest, architecture. Hamilton designed the building in Philadelphia that would come to be known as Independence Hall, the site of the 1787 Convention that led to the drafting of the United States Constitution. Independence Hall still stands as perhaps America's most important historic landmark, drawing millions of tourists annually.
Hamilton was a native of Scotland who emigrated to Pennsylvania, where he became attorney general (1717-1724), speaker of the colonial assembly, and the most famous trial lawyer in the colonies. According to one historian of the time, Hamilton had "art, eloquence, vivacity, and humor, was ambitious of fame, negligent of nothing to ensure success, and possessed a confidence which no terrors could awe."
Hamilton was almost 60 when he accepted the request to take up Zenger's following the disbarrment, for criticism of the court, of Zenger's first two attorneys. Hamilton won the Zenger case the only way that it could have been won, by convincing the jury to judge the law of the case, not just the facts. Legally, there is no question that Zenger committed seditious libel as it was defined in the law of the time, but the law itself was unpopular and Hamilton gave the jury the push it needed to decide Zenger's case in a way consistent with their own sympathies.
Andrew Hamilton died in 1741.
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