Buffalo, N.Y.
Summer 2001
Buffalo lawyer Paul Cambria Jr. had a national reputation. He had defended the right to free speech for clients such as porn king Larry Flynt and shock rocker Marilyn Manson. At 54, he had practiced law for nearly 30 years. He contributed regularly to a website devoted to legal questions regarding pornography and free speech. He rode a Harley, was once featured on the cover of Rolling Stone. The press loved him. He once admitted that he wanted to be on O. J. Simpson’s legal Dream Team “in the worst way,” and quipped he was relieved he wasn’t hired to defend Timothy McVeigh because his skills might have got the Oklahoma City bomber acquitted.
Once Cambria took the case of James C. Kopp, the buzz began. He was very good, but some of Jim’s friends felt he needed a committed pro-life attorney, someone to make the philosophical points. Others, like Susan Brindle, thought Cambria, who was not known as a pro-lifer, was perfect. Morality, abortion, religion—that was not Cambria’s game, and that was not at issue in Jim Kopp’s case, or at least shouldn’t be. Cambria would have credibility with a jury. He could stand up there and say: “I am pro-choice, I lament the death of Dr. Slepian. But Mr. Kopp did not pull the trigger.” In addition, Cambria would be expensive, very expensive. But donations from pro-life supporters were coming in. Susan told Jim, whatever it costs, they would raise the money, because that’s how much they believed in his innocence.
Meanwhile, controversy over Jim’s case raged online. His supporters charged that the FBI had fabricated evidence to deliver a pro-life scapegoat for pro-choice forces in Washington.
“Regardless of whether Jim Kopp actually committed this crime or not,” wrote one commentator, “the Clinton-Reno Department of Justice was going to have a pro-life scalp and
his was as good as any. In a nation governed by amoral people who see the judicial system as an instrument of politics rather than justice, that’s just the way the game is played.”
It didn’t add up, did it? Jim had friends all over the country, and no one had ever seen any sign he was capable of shooting anyone. He never talked about it. If anything he seemed destined to be a priest. That FBI mug shot, it didn’t even look like Jim. Physical evidence? The police can’t find the rifle used to shoot Slepian, yet finger Kopp for the murder anyway. Then, more than five months later—presto—they find not only the rifle but hair fibers supposedly linked to Kopp all over the place. It was all there: planted evidence; unlikely killer; biased law enforcement. It all had echoes of the O. J. Simpson case. A lawyer of Cambria’s caliber would make hay with the inconsistencies.
The charge against Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi was upgraded from conspiracy to harbor a known fugitive to a more serious charge of obstruction of justice. In the summer of 2001 they applied to be released on bail. Their trial had been moved from Brooklyn, in the Eastern District of the State of New York, to Buffalo, in the Western District. Malvasi had a Buffalo courtappointed lawyer named Thomas Eoannou representing him. Marra retained a Long Island lawyer named Bruce Barket, who had defended pro-life clients in the past.
Barket was a stocky 42-year-old devout Catholic with dark hair and an olive complexion that reflected his LebaneseItalian heritage. He had once stopped practicing law to study for the priesthood, but returned to his job and made a considerable reputation defending the underdog. He won the New York State Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Gideon Award, for representing people who could not afford to pay. Barket disdained the description “pro-life lawyer,” but he made no secret of his beliefs, or of the fact that he wanted to add the notion of protection of the fetus to the quilt of American civil rights.
Barket had fought some controversial cases. He continued to represent Amy Fisher, who had made headlines in 1992 as a 17-year-old high school student who had an affair with a married man and wound up shooting his wife in the head, nearly killing her. Dubbed the Long Island Lolita by the tabloids, Fisher pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison. In 1998, she claimed she had had a steamy affair with her first lawyer—prior to Barket taking over her defense—and that he had forced her into copping the plea to avoid the tryst being revealed. “What took place,” Barket said after becoming her lawyer, “is sad and despicable.” In 1999, Fisher launched a $220-million lawsuit against five corrections officers who she alleged had raped her. She later dropped the suit. The judge said that her lawsuit “read more like a cheap dime-store novel or a script for a tabloid television show than a pleading in a federal lawsuit.” Barket had earlier requested a new criminal trial for Fisher, claiming that the district attorney handling the case had made plea-bargain promises that were not kept. It would not be the last time that Bruce Barket argued that he had been misled by a prosecutor in a plea bargain.
Loretta Marra wrote a letter to the presiding judge, Richard Arcara, arguing for her release on bail. She said she was no flight risk. All of her friends were known to the FBI in any case, she had nowhere to go even if she wanted to, and two little boys she needed to care for, one of which she was still nursing at the time of her arrest.
“I don’t mind being incarcerated,” she wrote. “It has a lot in common with the monastic lifestyle, a lifestyle which holds tremendous appeal for me… If you set bail, I will never give you cause to regret it, I will not flee. I swear this to you on my salvation. As a completely convinced Catholic there is no more binding oath I could possibly conceive. I have hesitated for days to write this, so much does the oath terrify me to take it. I will die rather than break it. Thank you and God Bless You.”
The judge denied her bail.
In Buffalo Paul Cambria spoke to the media about his client’s continued fight against extradition from France to the United States for trial. “Ultimately,” Cambria said, “I want him back here, and he wants to come back here to fight these charges. But his French attorney has been telling him to keep fighting extradition.” Early in October, the French court rejected Kopp’s appeal. There was still one other appeal he could make, this time to the Superior Administrative Court in France. He filed that appeal, too. And then, several months later, he decided to abandon the fight.
In May 2002, Hervé Rouzaud–Le Boeuf spoke at a news conference in Rennes, saying that his client intended to prove his innocence upon his return to the United States, and viewed the trial as a chance to clear his name. Why did Jim Kopp give up the extradition fight? There may have been reasons only he understood, but he was perhaps motivated by what was happening to Loretta. Could he use his extradition as a bargaining chip to free her? It ate him up thinking of Loretta in jail, denied bail, two young boys at home who needed their mother. At one point in the extradition delay, he floated an idea to U.S. Justice Department officials. Kopp said he would agree to return to the United States while secretly giving his consent to leave the death penalty on the table—putting his own life at risk—if the Americans would in turn let Loretta walk free. Surely the feds would jump at the opportunity. Loretta was small potatoes, he thought, it’s Kopp they wanted on a gurney.
Was the suggestion genuine or was he playing another game?
Loretta, through Bruce Barket, urged Jim not to take such a drastic step. Was he that confident he would be acquitted of Bart Slepian’s murder? Or was he putting on an act to impress Loretta? Friends of Jim’s thought there was something else that may have prompted him to give up his extradition fight. An obituary had appeared in the St. Albans Messenger newspaper in February:
ST. ALBANS/FAIRFAX—Amy Lynn Boissonneault, 35, of St. Albans, formerly of Fairfax, died peacefully of breast cancer on Monday evening, Feb. 18, 2002, at her home in St. Albans in the presence of her family and friends. Amy was an avid traveler and made many trips and pilgrimages across North America and Europe to include Italy, France and Ireland. She also enjoyed art, poetry, writing letters, summer sunsets at the lake, snowstorms, gardening, Jane Austen movies and New York City. Amy will be remembered for the things she treasured most. Her strong faith in Jesus Christ, her love of the church and its saints and her family and friends. She enriched the lives of so many with her inner beauty and contagious smile. Her love of life and dedication to others were an inspiration to all who knew and loved her. Memorial contributions, in lieu of flowers, may be made in Amy’s memory to Good Counsel, Hoboken, N.J., or to the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal.
Buffalo, N.Y.
Wednesday, June 5, 2002
The U.S. Department of Justice jet arrived from Paris and touched down at the Niagara Falls air force base. On board were several U.S. marshals, the Amherst chief of police, and James Charles Kopp. He returned facing two trials. The State of New York had charged him with murder in the second degree, reckless endangerment in the first degree, and criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree. The federal government charged him with using deadly force to interfere with the right to reproductive health services.
First he was taken to the federal courthouse in downtown Buffalo, escorted into the room by federal marshals and police. He was arraigned before magistrate Judge Hugh Scott on the federal charge. If found guilty, he faced a sentence of life in prison without parole. Paul Cambria filed a not-guilty plea on Kopp’s behalf. Jim Kopp wore wire-rimmed glasses, a rumpled dress shirt, green work pants and navy canvas slip-on shoes. He had a rolled-up Magnificat magazine, the Catholic periodical, in his back pocket.
“Are you James Charles Kopp?” asked Scott.
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you understand your right at this time to remain silent?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kopp didn’t say anything else, but he had instantly made an
impression with the media. How could this man be the infamous sniper? His was not the fierce face that had glared from the FBI most wanted poster. Reporters described his thick glasses and boyish face. A slight, meek, wisp of a man with a loopy grin. The public had a new picture of James C. Kopp. Perhaps he wanted it that way. Few could see the wiry forearms, large hands, the blue-gray eyes that seemed to grow darker when he was angry, or the six-foot frame that never looked quite that tall because of his hunched gait. And no one could see the intensity that burned within him.
Judge Scott remanded Kopp into custody. As the marshals escorted him out of the court, he noticed a friend in the gallery, a pro-lifer. “Joe! Hi, Joe!” Kopp said, grinning, before being led into an elevator and down to where more armed marshals waited in vans and jeeps and sedans.
Paul Cambria addressed reporters. “He’s very upbeat—very much looking forward to the process.” Cambria added that the trial would not be about abortion.
A reporter asked why Kopp had fled in the first place if he was innocent.
“It wasn’t because he’s guilty. You’ll find that out as we begin to try the case. There is a very plausible and innocent explanation for his actions.”
The next day he was arraigned in state court and pleaded not guilty to the charge of second-degree murder, which carried a maximum sentence of 25 years to life. Cambria promised the media the trial would be a dogfight. One legal analyst said the resourceful Cambria would “have a field day” picking out weaknesses in the prosecution’s case, including why it took police five months to find the murder weapon, and challenge them to prove that Kopp had bought it. In effect, the defense lawyer would put the FBI and police themselves on trial. The analyst added that everyone was anxious to see Paul Cambria take on the top prosecutor in the Buffalo DA’s office.
“Life in prison would be difficult, certainly—it always is,” Joseph Marusak said, his blue eyes staring unblinkingly into those of the jurors. “But he’ll still be able to get up every day. He’ll be able to breathe every day. What about his victim?” It was a Thursday in October 1998. The 20-year-old man charged with murder watched the prosecutor work the jury, trying to convince them that the accused deserved to be strapped to a gurney and have potassium chloride pumped through his veins, stopping his heart—that he, Jonathan Parker, deserved to die. Parker was Joe Marusak’s first death penalty case. He had, weeks before, managed to get Parker convicted for murder. Now he was going for the ultimate sentence.
At that time, three years after Republican governor George Pataki had brought back capital punishment to New York State, only one other person sat on death row. Parker had shot decorated Buffalo police officer Charles (Skip) McDougald, father of four. A controversial case. The selection of an all-white jury for Parker—who was black—had drawn criticism. But then the victim had been black, too. Parker had been arrested a few times prior to the shooting on drug and weapon offenses. Before the jury Parker apologized to McDougald’s family. He was sorry, truly sorry, for the tragedy he had caused. But Marusak argued that Parker had forfeited his right to live when he aimed a loaded semiautomatic pistol at the police officer’s heart.
“If Officer McDougald had been able to steady his aim and kill the defendant, would that action have been justified?” Marusak asked. “If that action was justified, how can the death sentence not be?”
The presiding judge in the case was Michael L. D’Amico. He watched Marusak pour it on, taking the jurors back to the fatal night, putting them in the slain cop’s shoes, recounting the final hours of his life.
“He had no clue as he got out of his car that he had an invisible target on his chest. Then the explosion shreds your heart. You reach for the gun out of instinct, your lungs filling with blood and the life going out of you—can you grasp the brutality of this?”
As Marusak spoke, the cop’s widow fled the courtroom in tears. Marusak was Catholic, raised by devout parents, attended mass regularly. Through most of its history, the Roman Catholic Church had supported the death penalty. But by the end of the 20th century, Pope John Paul II opposed capital punishment as “cruel and unnecessary.” U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic, supported the death penalty. If Marusak felt any personal conflict on the issue, he could not let it affect his work in court. He kept his views to himself. But he also felt that arguing in favor of the death penalty in a court of law did not make him a bad Catholic. He hadn’t requested the Parker case. It was assigned to him.
Marusak was 44 years old but looked much younger, had thick dark hair with flecks of gray, the pale blue eyes alert, skin unwrinkled, athletic build. He spoke with the distinctive Western New York accent, so when he said his name it sounded like Maroozyak.
He was in court on Saturday, October 24, 1998, as the jury returned to render its decision on the sentence for Parker. They deliberated 17 hours over three days. There was one woman on the jury who had refused to be swayed. Parker would live, serve life in prison with no parole. Joe Marusak lost. Marusak kicked himself over it. He should never have accepted that woman on the jury. During jury selection, she had opined that she supported the death penalty only in very rare circumstances. Marusak had thought he could prove to her that the murder of Skip McDougald was one of those times. He had been wrong.
As if by way of a rematch, faces from that courtroom would meet again. It was the evening before the verdict, on October 23, when another verdict had been rendered in the woods outside Bart Slepian’s home—when the sniper had condemned Slepian with a high-powered rifle. The judge in the Jonathan Parker case, Michael D’Amico, would oversee the case that spawned from that night. And Parker’s lawyer, John Elmore, would join the legal defense team for James Charles Kopp. His opposite number would again be Joe Marusak.
When Lynne Slepian heard that Marusak was appointed to prosecute Kopp, she spoke to Glenn Murray, Bart’s former lawyer and friend. “The prosecutor’s name is Joe Marusak,” she told him. “Is he good?”
Murray smiled to himself. How many times had Joe kicked his ass in court? Every time? Yes, every time. “Lynne, this guy works 20 hours a day. He is every defense lawyer’s nightmare. He’s the best there is.”