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.