Posted on 03/18/2003 6:35:47 PM PST by Marianne
Is James C. Kopp a religious zealot and coldblooded assassin who meant to kill Dr. Barnett A. Slepian? Or is he a deeply moral man who intended to only wound Slepian to stop him from performing abortions?
Kopp, 48, a longtime abortion protester, was described both ways Monday as he finally had his day in court, a very unusual day in court.
It was a trial without witnesses, without testimony, as prosecutors read aloud a 35-page summary of the evidence agreed to by both the defense and the prosecution.
Many of the events had previously been described piecemeal - either through Kopp's own admissions to The Buffalo News last November, through prosecutors' having to spell out the facts to the French government to extradite Kopp last year, or through news media accounts since the Oct. 23, 1998, slaying in Amherst.
But the sheer compression of all that evidence into a single day, complete with crime scene photographs, charts, maps and DNA evidence that tied Kopp to the shooting in a number of ways, brought a different type of courtroom drama.
On hand to watch were 50 reporters from across the country and Canada - where Kopp is charged in one shooting and suspected in two others - as well as those from national pro-choice organizations and Kopp supporters, including the Rev. Michael Bray.
When they were not arguing the evidence in their summations, Kopp attorney Bruce A. Barket and Deputy District Attorney Joseph J. Marusak traded religious arguments.
Barket, the Long Island attorney who insisted that it was Kopp's decision to forgo a traditional trial and admit that he shot Slepian but did not mean to kill him, said Kopp had acted on "his principles, his Catholic faith and the truth."
"That's an insult to Catholicism," Marusak shot back. "That is an insult of the highest magnitude."
"Where is there any evidence that the Catholic Church has ever hinted that you can shoot a doctor who provides abortion services - which in our country is legal - and that you can shoot him in the back?"
Erie County Judge Michael L. D'Amico said he expects to rule sometime today on Kopp's innocence or guilt to two counts of murder.
Kopp is accused of both intentional murder, meaning that he intended to kill Slepian, and depraved indifference, meaning that he showed such depraved indifference to human life that he caused his death.
Both charges carry the same penalty, a minimum of 15 to 25 years to life in prison, but Barket and Marusak pointed most of their arguments toward the intentional murder count.
Type of rifle tied to intent
Barket argued little about the depraved indifference count. Instead, he submitted a legal brief to D'Amico saying that the state law was very technical and that Kopp's actions did not satisfy the law.
"Did he intend to kill Dr. Slepian?" Barket asked. "Absolutely not."
"Is he guilty of depraved indifference as defined by the law?" he asked. "Absolutely not."
Marusak, who most legal observers say has the easier job proving the depraved indifference count through Kopp's own admissions to The News that he shot Slepian with a high-powered assault rifle, told the judge that he had plenty of evidence to convict Kopp on either count.
From a distance of 31 yards away, Marusak said, Kopp fired a metal-jacketed bullet from a Russian-made SKS military assault rifle. The bullet traveled 2,300 feet per second before it tore through a screen, double-paned window and hit Slepian in the upper back, the prosecutor said.
The bullet passed through his body, ricocheted off a kitchen cabinet and came to rest near a fireplace in the family room, he said. It easily could have hit Slepian's wife, Lynne, and two of their sons in the kitchen, and a third son in the family room.
"Why didn't he buy a gun for small game" if Kopp did not mean to kill Slepian? Marusak asked. "Armies use these (assault) rifles. When you go to war, you don't use this weapon to wound, you use it to kill. Obviously, this was a well-thought-out and premeditated murder."
If Kopp did not mean to kill Slepian, he could have confronted him outside his medical office, Marusak said.
"If he only meant to wound him, why doesn't he buy a handgun, walk up to him and shoot him in the leg, shoot him in the arm, shoot him in the knee?" the prosecutor asked.
Barket said Kopp advocated force to stop abortions, but he had never used violence in any of the 100 or so protests in which he had been involved, and never meant to kill Slepian.
"Jim wanted to save the lives of the unborn children Slepian was scheduled to abort the very next day," Barket said.
Kopp account contradicted
Lynne Slepian would have been the first witness to testify, Marusak said. He read to the judge how the Slepian family had just returned home that night from their synagogue, after attending a memorial service for her husband's father. Their four sons were already home.
As Slepian walked to a small desk in the kitchen to empty his pockets of his wallet, pager, and keys, Marusak said, his wife talked to two of their boys near an island in the kitchen.
She said that she heard a "popping noise" and that her husband said he thought he had been shot. He fell to the floor and by the time he arrived at the hospital, he was dead. A doctor would have testified that he bled to death, the prosecutor said.
Kopp told The News that he had been in the woods behind Slepian's house twice before waiting to shoot him but that he never had a clear shot. He said he aimed near a microwave oven, knowing that Slepian would return within seconds.
"I saw my target perfectly - crystal clear," Kopp told The News. "I saw him put the soup in the microwave and set the timer. Then, he moved away. I said to myself, "He'll be returning to that exact spot in maybe 30 or 45 seconds."
But Marusak said Kopp was lying. He showed how police had set up a ballistic laser alignment through the bullet hole in the kitchen window to a tree outside where the sniper had leaned before shooting.
Marusak put a photograph on the projector showing a picture of the Kopp kitchen taken from that tree. It was nighttime, as was the time of the shooting. There was no microwave in sight.
It was a series of lies in The News article and in Kopp's life leading up to the slaying, the prosecutor said.
Kopp was living under various aliases, Marusak said, he refused to tell his own sister where he lived, he used a computer program to make 16 phony Texas driver's licenses, he used a phony Virginia license to buy the assault rifle in Tennessee and used another fake West Virginia license to escape to Mexico.
Kopp had covered his tracks so well, the prosecutor said, that it was only through the alertness of neighborhood residents who lived near the Slepians that he was caught.
Wealth of forensic evidence
Joan Dorn, a University at Buffalo professor, was the person who, while jogging at 5:30 one morning before the shooting, saw Kopp pull up in his car, Marusak said.
She noticed that the man was overdressed for the weather, started off on a slow jog she called plodding and thought the whole scene unusual, Marusak said. When she finished her run, she wrote down the number of the Vermont license plates on Kopp's car. She entered the day's run in her running journal with the notation "wacky car."
"If Joan Dorn doesn't get up at 5:30 a.m., this case doesn't get solved," Marusak said. "The luck in this case is Joan Dorn, God bless her, for whatever reason getting up at 5:30 a.m. and writing down his license plate number."
Although the rifle was found buried in one hole in the back yard and ammunition and other items in another, Marusak said, there was nothing with Kopp's name on it, nothing to tie him to the crime.
Once they had Kopp's name, FBI agents used fiber evidence, DNA samples, fingerprints and handwriting samples to tie Kopp to Slepian's shooting.
Kopp admitted shooting Slepian, Marusak said, not because he was coming clean as his lawyer suggested, but because the evidence against him was overwhelming.
After witnesses identified him in a lineup, and he saw the scientific evidence, Marusak said, Kopp realized that "his goose was cooked."
Outside the courtroom, Bray, one of five Kopp supporters in court, said he thinks that D'Amico has a difficult decision.
"I think the pressure is on the judge," Bray said.
Marilynn Buckham, director of Buffalo GYN Womenservices, where Slepian worked part time, said she is convinced that Kopp will be found guilty.
"He's a coldblooded murderer who stalked Dr. Slepian for a very long time," she said. "Some of my questions were answered; some remain unanswered. I want to know who drove the getaway car, who helped him."
Kopp, in agreeing to the stipulated facts, reserved the right to contest them at any future civil or criminal trial. He still faces trial in U.S. District Court, where, if convicted of restricting access to an abortion clinic, he could receive life in prison.
Outside the courtroom, Bray, one of five Kopp supporters in court, said he thinks that D'Amico has a difficult decision.
"I think the pressure is on the judge," Bray said.
Bray is the person noted in another post to have held a sign saying, 'Save a baby...call a Kopp'. He seems to be a very nasty sick person.
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