Joe Marusak was not accustomed to handling stipulated-fact trials, with no witnesses to cross-examine. This was his chance to perform. “There is a factual theme in this case and it is this,” he began. “This defendant, James Charles Kopp, twisted the meaning of the sign of the cross so he could justify to himself his own deadly use of the sign of the crosshairs.”
A peaceful man? Devout Catholic? Just a cover to stalk and kill. “If anything, the Catholic Church stands for peace. The two greatest commandments according to Jesus Christ: love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. He loved Dr. Slepian. Another phrase from Christ: ‘Judge ye not, lest ye be judged.’ Kopp took the role of police, prosecutor, grand jury, judge, trial jury and executioner all in one. Took it on himself.” As for intent, “the natural consequences of his act were, a very bloody, gory death, a bullet that bore a hole literally right through him, I mean sliced him in half practically where all of the major blood vessels, capillaries to the lungs, the aorta, the heart, I mean everything vital about us in our blood circulation system is built in our upper body. And that’s where the defendant aimed. And that’s where he fired. And that’s how Dr. Slepian died… You don’t need to be a forensic pathologist to understand that. You know where the heart is. Blood vessels. Lungs. This defendant surely did, a master’s biology graduate.”
The meek, mild-mannered facade was Kopp’s way of evading detection. He manipulated and deceived and lied to the relatively young, like Jennifer Rock, and the old, like James Gannon. “Do you think they knew they were helping someone who murdered?”
Marusak quoted from the confession Kopp had made to the Buffalo News reporters. “The defendant said, ‘I made every effort possible to make sure Dr. Slepian would not die. It’s the easiest thing in the world to kill somebody with a rifle. It’s very difficult to injure them if that’s your goal. Any idiot can see that it wasn’t meant to be fatal.’ Any idiot? Have you ever heard such brazen, unadulterated arrogance? Is it just because he’s got a 3.87 out of 4.0 and we are just not at the level of his intellectual prowess? Is that why the rest of us are idiots? Is there some sophistication going on in Jersey City that we just don’t know about, us backward hicks from Buffalo?”
Marusak was on a roll. Kopp was a zealot. Religious terrorist. Self-serving. Arrogant. “Say grace and pass the ammunition.” Kopp was frustrated that the law of the land permitted abortions. Dedicated his whole life to stopping it. Lived a celibate life. “And the frustration is chewing him up inside, he can’t get rid of abortion. In our democratic republic, he can’t get rid of it.”
Marusak shifted the scene back into the woods behind Bart Slepian’s house, pointing to a photo, Exhibit 12, of the darkened backyard the night of the shooting, and the shattered window with the blind half-closed. It’s almost eerie looking out of that darkness. The man is at home, his back and his side are turned to the outside, and he thinks he’s in the comfort and security of his own home, with his wife and children. And the high-powered bullet rips out of that darkness, puts the darkness into the lives of the Slepian family forever.”
The window shade may have been pulled halfway, said Marusak, but finding Kopp not guilty would be like pulling the shade down the rest of the way, and failing to “see the defendant’s implausible, self-serving admissions for what they are. I know you won’t do that, Judge. I know you will look at all the evidence with the calmness, with the fairness, but with the critical analysis, that every trier of fact needs to do. And I submit to you, if you do that, you will find him guilty as charged, intentional murder in the second degree. Thank you.”
“All right,” said D’Amico. “I anticipate a decision by tomorrow afternoon, if you don’t have a problem with that, say, between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. Make plans accordingly. “Any questions, gentlemen?”
“No, Your Honor,” said Marusak.
“No, Judge, thank you,” said Barket.
“See you tomorrow.”
That night, D’Amico mulled over the facts. It was not going to take him much time to make his decision. But there had been a defense presented and he had to take it seriously—that Kopp, like others in the pro-life movement, was not the murdering kind. Kopp’s confession that he shot Slepian was big, of course, but not definitive in the case. There have been people who have confessed to crimes they didn’t commit. D’Amico didn’t weigh the confession in a vacuum. Indeed, he felt the prosecution didn’t need it to convict Kopp. It’s just one piece of evidence, and the pool of evidence was deep. Barket hadn’t mounted a defense like Paul Cambria would have, had not tried to make hay with the delay in police finding the rifle. But D’Amico wouldn’t have found that very persuasive anyway, he thought. What, the police planted the gun? What’s more plausible, he reflected, that they simply couldn’t find it during the winter initially, or that the police planted it? What makes sense? Are you kidding me? Does anyone really believe that the police decided seven months after the murder to bury a weapon that turns out to be the one that fired the shot?
The next afternoon, D’Amico took his seat just before 2:30 p.m. He looked at Kopp, who as usual wore a blue blazer and tan pants. The judge wasted little time. “I have concluded, Mr. Kopp, that you are guilty as charged.”
Kopp turned to Bruce Barket and smiled. Was it a nervous smile? Sheepish smile? Sarcastic smile? Journalists in court tried to decide. It was, like everything about him, hard to tell. Court was adjourned, Kopp led from the room by police. In the gallery, a group of friends gathered around Lynne Slepian. She said little. There were no tears, or cheers. Sentencing was set for May 9. At that time, Kopp would have his chance to make a detailed statement, explain himself.
After the verdict, journalists, searching for answers, called his stepmother, Lynn Kopp, in Texas, for a reaction. She, too, wondered why it had it taken Jim so long to confess to the crime. “He said he didn’t mean to kill but that he meant to protect unborn children,” Lynn said. “Isn’t that a contradiction? If you did it, if you had such intense feelings, why hide from them after you’ve done the deed?” Kopp already held his stepmother in low regard. Did he read her comments? He read everything. The liberal media, the pro-death media, had gone to his stepmother for comment on his case. He burned. And smiled. He expected nothing less.
Among his friends in the pro-life movement, both in the mainstream and on the fringe, there were many opinions about him once he admitted shooting Slepian. There were those who supported what he had done, who said it didn’t matter if he intended to kill the doctor or just wound him, who argued that the violence was entirely justified. Others did not openly approve of shooting abortion doctors, and could not believe that Jim would ever shoot anybody. They believed the FBI was framing him. But once he confessed, they had to concede that Jim had lied and, apparently, was capable of violence. Friends were saddened by what Kopp had done, and criticized his actions. Then there was Joan Andrews, one of his earliest inspirations in the movement, and others who remained torn over whether or not he was guilty. They had thought of him as such a low-key man, so gentle. Could he be covering for someone else? That kind of sacrifice would be so like him. But then, he had confessed. He was a truthful man. She had to believe what he said.
Susan Brindle never could figure it out. Either Jim confessed because he did it, or he was so messed up that he felt confessing was what God wanted him to do. Either way, she prayed for him every day. And, God bless him, if he did it, or conspired to help someone else pull the trigger, he should pay the price.
James Gannon was as shocked as everyone else by the whole thing. But if Jim said he did it, it must be so. Gannon followed the official church line. He opposed abortion, and capital punishment, and murder. If abortion is the same thing as killing, then how is killing one more person, a doctor, going to help society? Gannon was among those friends who visited Kopp regularly at the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility, where he was being held. They wrote letters, and when they spoke on the phone, Jim’s voice sounded so clear, like he was right around the corner. “So you mind if I stop by for a couple of days?” Jim joked. Gannon laughed.
But there were times when it wasn’t easy having a friend like Kopp. He used to tell people, “One day you’ll get a letter from me and it will seem completely out of character, and you’ll be like, ‘Jim, what the hell is this?’” Gannon wouldn’t hear from him for weeks without explanation. Sometimes Gannon’s letters to Kopp at the prison were returned unopened. He could not understand why.
Jim’s sister, Anne, spoke to the media. She could never believe her youngest brother would shoot anyone. Jim was a wonderful person. But obviously he had taken his cause to a level she could never imagine, or condone. In fact, she even wondered if Jim had left evidence at the murder scene on purpose. Perhaps he wanted God to decide his fate. It would be God’s will if he was caught—or got away.
“Jim might have thought, ‘God, I don’t know if what I’m doing is entirely the right thing to do, so I’m going to leave it up to you,’” Anne said. “‘And if you want them to catch me, I’m going to put my hat out here so that they’ll have no problem catching me. I’m willing to face the consequences.’ He left it open so that God could bring all the force down on him if necessary.”
When the calls from reporters did not cease, Anne decided to issue a special kind of statement. She hung a sign in front of her home. It read, “All we’ve known about Jim is that he works after the model of Martin Luther King.”
Sentencing Hearing Erie County Hall
Buffalo, N.Y.
May 9, 2003
Jim Kopp’s only hope was that he and Bruce Barket could convince Judge D’Amico to choose a lighter sentence, perhaps 15 years instead of the maximum 25 to life. D’Amico received letters from Kopp’s brother and sister asking for leniency. They told the judge they all enjoyed a normal family life growing up, and Jim was once a regular guy. Somewhere along the line he had gone off track, but he had come from a good family, he is a human being. Please have mercy. It wasn’t the first time they had written him.Earlier, they had urged D’Amico to ensure their brother got a fair hearing at trial. In court, D’Amico first had to deal with a motion raised by
Barket. He had proposed, just two days earlier, to delay sentencing until after Kopp’s trial on the federal charge of using deadly force to interfere with the right to reproductive services. That way, Kopp would not run the risk of incriminating himself by anything he might say at the sentencing. D’Amico rejected the request. “With all due respect to the federal authorities,” he said, “I can’t operate on their timetable and I have no idea what their timetable is. We are going to proceed. Go ahead, Mr. Marusak.”
Joe Marusak presented an even darker, more detailed profile of Kopp than he had in his closing remarks in March. He took the court back to Kopp’s early days in California, his middle-class life, the Eagle Scout, honors student at UC Santa Cruz, how he followed his girlfriend to Texas, got his master’s degree in biology. “But he never used that scientific talent,” Marusak observed. “We don’t know of any steady employment that he undertook in the field of science.” He cataloged the arrests, more than a hundred of them, Kopp’s dual identity as peaceful man of faith and sniper, his manipulation of friends. “He developed, basically, fraudulently and deceitfully a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality, consciously. He convinced everybody—every FBI interview[ee], every acquaintance of his, to a person, is effusive that this man wouldn’t even hurt a fly. He lived a lie for 20 years.”
Kopp belonged in the company of the radical Army of God— “the army of lunatics”—and Marusak likened him to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. “He is nothing more than a dangerous sociopath, plain and simple.” He countered Barket’s argument at trial that Kopp had confessed to shooting Bart Slepian simply out of a desire to tell the truth. No: Kopp merely saw the mounting evidence against him and tried to cut his losses. “That’s why he confessed, not out of any sense of duty or honesty or a Christian ethic.” Kopp believed himself to be “somehow morally, intellectually, religiously superior to all of us. In his own eyes, Judge, this defendant has cast himself—and I emphasize, in his own eyes—as God’s avenging protector of the unborn. From the Spanish Inquisition to the Twin Towers disaster, religious zealots have rained terror on their victims. He’s no different. He will never be open to rehabilitation. He’s manipulated and lied his entire life.”
Marusak quoted from conversations between Kopp and Loretta Marra that the FBI had recorded—“and we know how close Ms. Marra and the defendant are,” he added. Marra had told Kopp about the love of his supporters back in the United States. “Let them love me with cash,” Kopp had said. “Let them love me with cash,” Marusak repeated. “That’s part of the Catholic religion, isn’t it? Part of Christianity? Love your neighbor. Give me money. Let them love me with cash.”
Jim Kopp sat in his chair, his blood boiling. Marusak, a Catholic, was attacking him personally, but worse than that was attacking his faith, his Catholicism. That, to Kopp, was beyond the pale. Marusak next appealed for a stiff sentence on behalf of Bart Slepian’s widow, who was seated in the gallery. He spoke of Lynne’s courage, the impact the murder had on her sons. And he spoke of Bart, read testimonials about his work ethic as a physician and as a father.
He quoted from a letter by Dr. Carole Lieberman, who had gone to school with Bart in Belgium. “His faith and his religion did not counsel him against abortion. And although, personally, I don’t think he would have wished that in his own family, he recognized and respected the law that allowed a woman to make that choice… And I understand very well the moral opposition to abortion. But this is not about abortion. This is about murder. A man who would murder such a man as Bart deserves the harshest sentence allowable by law.”
Marusak returned once more to Lynne. Mother’s Day, he said, was in two days. “By God, this woman, Mrs. Slepian, if there ever was a good mother, she’s it.” He read a letter to the judge from Lynne:
I’m speaking on behalf of our four children: Andrew, age 20; Brian, age 18; Michael, age 15; Philip, age 12. Overnight they went from average everyday boys to the objects of every media source in the country. Philip was only seven when his dad died. I think he’s probably been affected the most, because there is just so much that he can’t remember about his dad. My sons are angry, and so am I. But there is no way to bring my husband and their father back to us. He was such a proud man, and a very private person. All this attention would have made him so uncomfortable. The only thing that would make things a bit better would be to ensure that Mr. Kopp never sees the light of day again. He is an evil man and does not deserve to have his life back again.
Marusak couldn’t resist taking one more swipe at Kopp’s interpretation of Catholicism: “This defendant alleges he is motivated by his Christian beliefs. I’m reminded—I don’t know if you have seen Godfather II, where Al Pacino plays the role of the Godfather. And he’s at his son’s baptism and he goes through the Catholic prayer where he’s announcing how he rejects Satan and evil. And while he’s doing all of that, his henchmen are killing the five other Mafia family guys. So out of his mouth is this profession of Catholic belief, when his actions are that of nothing more than an assassin. If that’s being a hero, well then, so be it.”
Now it was Bruce Barket’s turn. He did not invoke the intentto-wound argument. He had bigger fish to fry: morality, religion, the rule of law, and how history shall judge everyone in the long run. But first he defended Kopp’s character, tried to take some of the sting out of Marusak’s scathing attack. “You listened to Mr. Marusak paint Jim as a cowardly assassin. I have gotten to know Mr. Kopp over the last year or so and that’s simply not true. He is not a sociopath. He is calm. He is rational. He is sane. I know that Jim Kopp is intelligent. He is caring, generous. He is slow to anger, quick to forgive, very modest, deeply spiritual. He’s a prayerful man with a humble heart. He is also an honest man, scrupulously honest. Jim Kopp is a good man… If Jim wanted to continue to fool people, he had an opportunity to do that. He had the means to do that. And there is a substantial chance that we wouldn’t be here today at his sentence. He might very well have been acquitted.”
Barket turned to abortion. “Jim has a set of beliefs that are not inconsistent with a large majority of people in this country. He believes that abortion is intrinsically evil. The answer why Jim Kopp is here, I think, comes from a society that encourages mothers to bring their unborn children to doctors not for care, but to be slaughtered in horrific and unimaginable ways.”
Barket next turned to the argument that shooting Slepian was justified. The simple syllogism cannot be refuted, he said: all innocent life is worthy of protection. Unborn children are innocent life. Therefore unborn children are worthy of protection. And the Catholic Church supports force, too, even deadly force, to protect others, contrary to what Marusak had said. Barket attacked the sanctity of the rule of law. “Our Supreme Court, as honorable as it is, also once indicated that slavery was a choice. They said African-Americans are nonpersons. They have said that unborn children were not children and it’s OK to kill them.”
The law had been wrong on slavery, segregation and it was wrong once more, on abortion. “The fact the Supreme Court has declared abortion to be legal does not answer its morality. Abortion is immoral. It’s an intrinsic evil. Jim Kopp is a hero. And today I think he will become a martyr.” Barket said he was reminded of the famous abolitionist John Brown. Brown had long advocated violence to resolve the great social issue of his day and had once led a band of men in a deadly attack on neighbors who advocated slavery. He had later tried to lead a slave rebellion, and had been hanged for that. “One hundred and forty years later, we see John Brown as a hero. There is a shrine built to him for freeing slaves. The judge in his trial is a historical footnote.”
D’Amico was once again underwhelmed by the presentation. He was not hearing Barket make an argument. He was making a speech, a statement. He’s telling me how I can be a hero, the judge thought. Barket’s approach was not sitting well with him, not at all. What are you talking about, Mr. Barket—I’m supposed to have courage to impose a minimum sentence, thereby sending a message about my moral convictions? Don’t presume what my moral convictions are. Or am I supposed to base my ruling on your convictions?
Barket concluded by saying that Kopp deserved the minimum sentence, “to reflect the complexity of the issues involved” and to vindicate the other victims in this case, “the unborn who are killed by abortions every day.” Finally, he took a swipe at the FBI. At the same time as “hundreds of agents, thousands of work hours and millions of dollars were spent in hunting down, capturing and prosecuting James Kopp, and making America safe for abortionists,” real terrorists, in al-Qaeda, were plotting the 9/11 attacks. “To law enforcement, I would say, stop using your resources to protect abortionists. It is akin to protecting the slave owners. History will not judge you kindly. The fact abortion is legal is not the final word on whether or not what Jim did is moral or immoral. Thank you.”
“Thank you, Mr. Barket,” said D’Amico. “Mr. Kopp, anything you would like to say in your own behalf?”