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James
Charles Kopp (born in Pasadena, California on August 2,
1954) is an American citizen who was convicted in 2003 for the
1998 sniper-style slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an Amherst,
New York physician who performed abortions.
Prior to
his capture, Kopp was on the FBI's list of Ten Most Wanted
Fugitives. On June 7, 1999 he had become the 455th fugitive
placed on the list by the FBI. He was affiliated with
anti-abortion activist group "The Lambs of Christ." He has been
referred to as a terrorist by the National Memorial Institute
for the Prevention of Terrorism.
Early Life
James Kopp was raised
Lutheran, but later converted to Roman Catholicism.
The Murder
On October 23, 1998, at
approximately 10:00 p.m., Dr. Barnett Slepian was standing in
the kitchen of his home in Amherst, New York. Kopp fired a
single rifleshot from a nearby wooded area, which entered the
Slepian home through a rear window. Dr. Slepian was a well-known
obstetrician-gynecologist who performed abortions at a women's
clinic in Buffalo, New York. He also maintained a private
medical practice in an office in Amherst, New York.
Fugitive
Kopp fled to Mexico under an
assumed name and later to Ireland. While staying in Ireland,
Kopp began practicing Traditionalist Catholicism. After his
arrest, his fellow parishioners at the Society of Saint Pius X's
Chapel in Dún Laoghaire were shocked to learn his real identity.
He eventually went on to live in France.
On March 29, 2001, Kopp was
arrested by French law enforcement in the French town of Dinan,
Brittany.
The United
States requested his extradition and Attorney General John
Ashcroft promised that the death penalty would not be sought,
handed down or applied, a prerequisite according to the
extradition treaty between France and the US, despite the fact
that the murder charge Kopp faced was a state charge over which
Ashcroft had no jurisdiction and that he did so over the
objections of New York State attorney general Eliot Spitzer and
Erie County district attorney Frank Clark, both of whom sought
the death penalty. The instruction chamber of the Rennes court
of appeals ruled in favor of extradition; however, Kopp appealed
the ruling.
Extradition
In May 2002, Kopp waived all
possible appeals in France and agreed to return to the US, which
he did in June.
Trial and Conviction
On March 11, 2003, Kopp
surprised observers by waiving his right to a jury trial. Based
upon an agreement between the defense and prosecution, (Erie
County Assistant District Attorney, Joseph Maruszak and defense
attorney, Bruce Barkett) Erie County Judge Michael D'Amico would
be required to find Kopp guilty or innocent based on a single
document of facts.
In
addition, the judge could not consider lesser charges; he would
have to find Kopp guilty or not guilty of second-degree murder.
Since Kopp had confessed his role in the shooting to police
(claiming that he only meant to wound Slepian) Judge D'Amico
found him guilty and sentenced him to the maximum, 25 years to
life, on May 9, 2003, telling Kopp "It's clear the act is
premeditated; there is no doubt about it. You made an attempt to
avoid responsibility for the act. What may appear righteous to
you is immoral to someone else".
The Appellate Division, Fourth
Department, upheld the conviction on July 7, 2006 (Shawn P.
Hennessy, attorney for respondent and Timothy Murphy, attorney
for appellant).
Appeal to Federal Court
Kopp has appealed to Federal
court. Thes trial is now underway and Judge Richard Arcara was
selected to preside. Arcara has limited what Kopp can say on the
stand and also has prohibited Kopp from showing pictures of
aborted fetuses. As in any case, there is also a limitation to
witness' accounts. If found guilty in Federal court, Kopp faces
a mandatory life sentence.
Kopp is accused of violating
the Clinic Entrances Act and using a weapon in the murder of Dr.
Barnett Slepian. Kopp has chosen to act as his own attorney. On
day two of Kopp's federal trial during cross examination, Kopp
attempted to have the court reporter of his previous state trial
read back statements pertaining to abortion.
Judge
Arcara precluded this, holding that under the Federal Rules of
Evidence Kopp is barred from stating anti-abortion, religious or
moral reasoning for his actions. Kopp had attempted to tell the
jury why he did what he did because he claims it pertains to the
issue of intent.
Kopp was also charged in U.S.
District Court in Buffalo on a count of violating the Freedom of
Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Kopp has dismissed his
court-assigned attorney, an assistant federal public defender,
and represented himself. On June 20th, 2007 he was sentenced to
life-imprisonment plus ten years for illegal use of a firearm.
Additionally, the court ordered his belongings auctioned off in
order to pay $2.6 million to Slepian's family. U.S. District
Judge Richard Arcara told Kopp as the end of the trial:
“You served as prosecutor,
judge, jury and executioner. You decided that you know better
than any law.”
In opening statement to the
jury, Kopp said that although Slepian's death was "a full-bore,
100 percent tragedy" it wasn't murder because it was not
malicious or premeditated. He did acknowledge he planned the
shooting for a year and fired a high-powered rifle with
telescopic sights, but he only meant to wound the doctor (to
keep him from performing abortions). Pre-meditation, according
to Kopp means that you:
"Shoot them in the head, blow
up a car, riddle their body with bullets like they do in the
movies. That's how you kill someone"
Other crimes?
It is possible that the
killing of Slepian was not Kopp's only crime. The FBI notes "(t)he
shooting was similar to shootings in Rochester, New York, and
three Canadian cities during the fall of 1997, in which abortion
doctors were shot in their homes." Kopp has been charged by
Canadian authorities in the 1995 shooting of Ontario doctor Hugh
Short, one of a string of Remembrance Day shootings.
Allies on the Lamm
Kopp had not been evading
justice on his own. He received help from sympathetic
anti-abortion activists Loretta Marra and Dennis Malvasi, who
pled guilty to one count of conspiracy in helping Kopp avoid
capture. On August 21, 2003, they were sentenced to time served,
and released.
Abortion Doctor's Murderer Convicted Again
Jury Finds James Kopp Guilty On Federal Murder Charges Stemming
From 1998 Sniper Attack
CBSnews.com
Buffalo, N.Y., Jan. 25, 2007
(AP) - A man already serving time in
a state prison for the sniper-shooting death of a doctor was
convicted Thursday on a federal charge of targeting and killing
the man because he provided abortions.
The jury deliberated about four hours over two days before
deciding James Kopp violated the federal Freedom of Access to
Clinic Entrances Act in the 1998 slaying of Dr. Barnett Slepian.
Kopp, who represented himself during the two-week trial, tried
to convince jurors during his closing arguments that he didn't
mean to kill Slepian when he fired from woods into the doctor's
Amherst home. Kopp said he intended only to wound him to prevent
him from performing abortions the next day.
"If it happened the way I wanted it to, he would have his arm in
a sling," said Kopp, who is serving a 25-year-to-life state
sentence. He faces life in prison without parole for the federal
conviction.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen Mehltretter argued Kopp's long
and careful planning of the shooting and his choice of weapon —
a Russian military assault rifle — proved his deadly intent.
"If you want to injure a person, you don't shoot them with a
high-powered rifle," Mehltretter said.
Kopp fled to Mexico, Ireland and France, where he was captured
in March 2001. He had been added to the FBI's list of the 10
Most Wanted fugitives in June 1999.
Abortion Doc's Killer Gets 25 To Life
James Kopp Sentenced For Shooting Abortion Provider In His Home
CBSnews.com
Buffalo, N.Y., May 9, 2003
The anti-abortion activist
who shot Dr. Barnett Slepian through the window of his suburban
Buffalo home in 1998 was given the maximum sentence allowed, 25
years to life, Friday. James Kopp still faces a federal trial.
Convicted in March of second-degree murder, Kopp, 48, could have
received a minimum of 15 years in prison.
"It's clear the act is premeditated, there is no doubt about it,"
Erie County Court Judge Michael D'Amico told Kopp. "You made an
attempt to avoid responsibility for the act. What may appear
righteous to you is immoral to someone else."
The anti-abortion extremist, who did not testify at his murder
trial, addressed the court before he was sentenced, saying he
had only meant to wound Slepian. Lynne Slepian and three of the
couple's four sons were in the courtroom.
"Why should the safety of Dr. Slepian be put over the safety of
unborn children?" Kopp said.
"I was innocent of murder then. I am innocent of murder now," he
said.
"I have separated murderers from their weapons of mass
destruction. I wish I could do 10 life sentences or 10 death
penalties to save them," he said, referring to unborn children.
Prosecutor Joseph Marusak said Lynne Slepian, along with other
family members, submitted letters to the judge in advance of the
sentencing.
The prosecutor said the law prevented him from revealing the
contents of pre-sentencing letters.
Kopp had admitted to firing the fatal shot from a rifle equipped
with a scope.
Kopp still faces a federal trial for interfering with the right
to an abortion. He's also a suspect in the nonfatal shootings of
four other abortion providers in Canada and western New York
between 1994 and 1997.
The National Abortion Federation, an abortion rights group, also
submitted a letter, urging Judge Michael D'Amico to impose the
maximum sentence as a deterrent to similar crimes.
"A strong message must be sent to anti-choice extremists that
murdering an abortion provider is never justifiable," said Vicki
Saporta, the organization's president and chief executive.
Kopp was convicted following an unusual one-day non-jury trial.
At Kopp's request, instead of hearing witness testimony, D'Amico
was presented with a 35-page list of facts agreed to by both
sides — including an admission by Kopp that he fired the shot
that struck Slepian.
Barket had argued that Kopp, who believed in the use of force to
prevent abortions, meant only to wound the 52-year-old
obstetrician/gynecologist.
Marusak countered that Kopp's actions, including his choice of
weapon — a Russian-made, scope-equipped assault rifle — and the
use of aliases in buying it, pointed to an intention to kill.
Kopp was lying in wait behind Slepian's suburban Amherst home
Oct. 23, 1998, and fired once through a rear kitchen window
after the doctor returned from a memorial service for his father.
Slepian's wife and four sons were home at the time.
A suspect soon after the shooting, Kopp fled to Mexico and then
Ireland and was one of the FBI's most-wanted fugitives until his
capture in France in 2001.
He is a suspect in the nonfatal shootings of four other abortion
providers in Canada and Rochester between 1994 and 1997.
Doctor’s Killer Tries to Make Abortion the
Issue
By David Staba - The New York Times
BUFFALO, Jan. 12 — There is no dispute over how Dr. Barnett
Slepian died. Yet eight years later his confessed killer — who
is already serving 25 years to life in prison for murder — is on
trial for a second time.
Dr. Slepian’s killer,
James C. Kopp, 52, has freely admitted that on a Friday evening
in the autumn of 1998, he leaned against a tree behind the
suburban home of the doctor, who performed abortions as part of
his practice, and followed his prey through the scope of a high-powered
rifle.
Dr. Slepian, the married father of four young sons, entered the
kitchen after returning home from a memorial service for his
father, put a bowl of soup in a microwave oven and walked to a
desk in the corner of the kitchen where he routinely put his
keys, wallet and pager.
With that, Mr. Kopp, a longtime opponent of
abortion whose beliefs earned him the nickname Atomic Dog among
like-minded people, squeezed the trigger and fired.
The single shot broke the kitchen window and
struck Dr. Slepian under his left shoulder blade, tore through
his chest and exited from his right shoulder, then ricocheted
past his wife and two of their sons, finally lodging in the
fireplace of the living room, where a third son was watching
television.
About an hour later, the 52-year-old doctor
was declared dead.
Mr. Kopp, who traveled from his home in
Jersey City to the Buffalo area weeks before the shooting to
track Dr. Slepian and make meticulous preparations, including
burying the rifle in a plastic sleeve behind the house so he
could easily get to it, fled to Mexico, then France. He was
captured there in March 2001.
In March 2003 Mr. Kopp was convicted of
murder by an Erie County judge after an unusual proceeding in
which he did not dispute the prosecution’s version of events.
Yet he insisted he was not guilty of murder because he did not
mean to kill the doctor but only to wound him to prevent him
from performing abortions.
Nonetheless, he is back in court because of
the same crime.
The difference is that this time Mr. Kopp is
not charged with the murder of Dr. Slepian, but with violating a
1994 law forbidding the use of force to prevent access to
reproductive health care. The federal law was enacted in
reaction to violent attacks on abortion clinics and health care
workers, as well as escalating protests, like the 1993
demonstrations in Buffalo known as “The Spring of Life,” which
attracted thousands of demonstrators on both sides of the issue
and led to hundreds of arrests.
In this instance, Dr. Slepian’s family and
supporters of abortion rights pushed for this case to go
forward, in part because unlike the state’s murder conviction,
the federal law carries a potential sentence of life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
“Under New York State law, it’s conceivable
that someday a parole board could release him,” said Charles
Ewing, a professor at the University at Buffalo’s law school.
“As a practical matter, I don’t think that would ever happen.”
Professor Ewing said that although the filing
of both state and federal charges is common in cases involving
such crimes as bank robbery and child pornography, a conviction
in one jurisdiction usually leads to a dismissal in the other.
“It seems in this case they’re clearly trying
to make an example by prosecuting him in both state and federal
courts,” Professor Ewing said.
The trial in Federal District Court has also
provided Mr. Kopp, a former construction worker who is acting as
his own attorney, the chance to try to discuss his views on
abortion, even though Judge Richard J. Arcara has repeatedly
ordered him not to.
The judge’s pretrial rulings that the defense
could not make the issue the centerpiece of its case, including
his refusal to allow Mr. Kopp to show the anti-abortion movie
“The Silent Scream” to the jury, have not stopped the defendant
from trying.
“If I’m guilty, weakness is guilty,” Mr.
Kopp, a slight man in an oversize dark blue suit coat and
glasses, said in his opening statement on Tuesday. “If I’m
guilty, innocence is guilty. Those who can’t protect themselves
——”
Judge Arcara cut him off, the sixth time Mr.
Kopp’s opening was interrupted, either from the bench or by a
sustained objection from the prosecution.
The judge ruled that references to Mr. Kopp’s
views on abortion he made in a rambling 90-minute presentencing
statement in 2003 were “irrelevant” to this case. The decision
prompted one man seated two rows behind Lynne Slepian, Dr.
Slepian’s widow, to shout, “Judge, what are they irrelevant to?”
before he was escorted from the courtroom.
When Dan Herbeck, a reporter for The Buffalo
News to whom Mr. Kopp gave a jailhouse confession in an article
published in November 2002, testified about the article, Mr.
Kopp made numerous attempts to bring up quotations related to
his beliefs. Each time, the prosecution objected successfully,
on several occasions before he even finished his question.
Professor Ewing said Mr. Kopp’s best chance
to air his views could come in his closing statement, when
lawyers are generally given more leeway than during testimony.
The trial is expected to last about two more weeks.
“I don’t think that this defendant feels
there’s a lot at stake in terms of winning or losing,” he said.
Murder of New York
abortion doctor denounced as 'terrorism'
Reno vows to do 'whatever
it takes' to track down killer
October 24,
1998 - CNN.com
AMHERST, New York (CNN) -- A doctor who
performed abortions was shot to death by a sniper in his western
New York home Friday night in an attack denounced as "terrorism"
by the state's governor.
"It's beyond a tragedy. It's really an act of
terrorism and, in my mind, a cold-blooded assassination," Gov.
George Pataki said of the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian.
In Washington, Attorney General Janet Reno
issued a statement saying federal law enforcement officials "will
do whatever it takes to track down and prosecute whoever is
responsible for this murder."
While local police have not discussed a
motive, Reno said the Justice Department is "actively
investigating the possibility that Dr. Slepian was murdered
because of his work providing abortion service."
"The federal government will continue its
vigilant defense of constitutionally protected rights to provide
and to obtain reproductive health service," Reno said.
Slepian, 51, who has been the target of anti-abortion
protesters since the 1980s, was killed by a single bullet fired
through his kitchen window at about 10 p.m. EDT, as he and his
family returned from synagogue to their home in Amherst, a
suburb of Buffalo. His wife and four sons were not injured.
Slepian's killer fired from behind a backyard
fence. A helicopter search for the suspect was fruitless, and
the shooter remained at large Saturday.
The slaying came just days after authorities
warned abortion providers in the area to be on guard for
possible violence. Since 1994, there have been four other sniper
attacks -- one in Rochester and three across the border in
Canada -- that all took place in early autumn.
None of the previous attacks killed anyone.
All occurred within weeks of November 11, Veterans Day.
"There's some type of connection on the date.
We don't know what it is," said Inspector David Bowen of the
Hamilton-Wentworth police department in Ontario.
Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials have
said they believe the same people were responsible for all of
the earlier attacks. On Tuesday, Canadian and American
authorities issued safety tips to abortion providers throughout
the region.
"They were told to stay away from windows
that weren't covered with curtains or blinds and to be aware of
their surroundings and anything suspicious at their clinics,"
said Frank Olesko, Amherst's assistant police chief.
On Saturday, security was stepped up at
Buffalo GYN Women's Services, the clinic where Slepian worked
and the only clinic providing abortions in Buffalo.
Slepian "was one of the few physicians with
the integrity to stand up for what he believed in," said clinic
spokeswoman Susan Ward. "He was a strong supporter of women's
right to choose. He had some fearfulness, I'm sure, but he was
determined to continue the work he was doing and was not going
to let extremists interfere."
Outraged by Slepian's death, abortion rights
advocates called on law enforcement officials to step up their
protection of doctors and clinics who provide abortions to women.
"We are very upset. We are seeing extremists
using bullets and bombs to get their way in our democracy," said
Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation.
"We believe the authorities must consider this political
terrorism and act as if it is."
"No matter where we stand on the issue of
abortion, all Americans must stand together in condemning this
tragic and brutal act," President Clinton, an abortion-rights
supporter, said in a statement from the White House.
"For anyone to take it upon himself to be
judge, jury and executioner is nothing but sheer evil," said
Karen Swallow Prior, who is running for lieutenant governor of
New York on the ticket of the anti-abortion Right-to-Life Party.
The Rev. Flip Benham, national director of
Operation Rescue, another anti-abortion group, said his
organization did not support Slepian's killing, even though the
doctor "murdered countless thousands of innocent children."
"He has been a killer for a long time .... (but)
I am sad to learn of his death," Benham said.
Slepian has been the target of anti-abortion
protesters since the 1980s. In 1988, as his family opened gifts
during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, protesters in front of
his home taunted him, calling him a "murderer." An altercation
ensued in which one of the protesters claimed Slepian attacked
him with a baseball bat.
A misdemeanor assault charge against Slepian
was settled in March 1989. The doctor paid about $400 for
repairs to a van and for part of the man's medical bills.
In 1992, Slepian closed his Amherst office
during a protest by Operation Rescue in the Buffalo area. At the
time, he said he closed the office to avoid inconveniencing
other doctors in his building, but he vowed to continue
providing abortions at his Buffalo clinic.
"He said, 'They're not going to scare me.
They're not going to threaten me,'" said Harvey Rogers,
Slepian's lawyer.
As police looked for clues Saturday,
neighbors lamented the loss of a friendly guy who always built
elaborate Halloween displays.
"This is sad, to kill someone to prove a
point,' said neighbor Suby Shastry. "He has a family, too.
Killing someone doesn't solve a problem."
