Lam Attorney Asks Court to Bar Handwriting Expert

The attorney for the Vietnamese refugee charged with murder in the death of Cal State Fullerton professor Edward Lee Cooperman filed a court motion Monday to try to keep a handwriting expert hired by The Times from becoming a prosecution witness.

The handwriting expert, William A. Hatch, of Santa Ana, told The Times that Cooperman’s signature was forged on a $90 check the defendant, Minh Van Lam, claimed Cooperman gave him on Oct. 13, the day the professor was killed in his campus office. The Times published an article Jan. 10 describing Hatch’s findings.

Lam’s attorney, Alan May, Santa Ana, criticized The Times in his motion, saying the newspaper is biased in the Lam case because the editor of the Orange County Edition, Narda Zacchino, is married to Robert Scheer, a “former editor of Ramparts Magazine, a well-known tabloid for leftists views.”

Associations Alleged

Scheer, now a Los Angeles-based national correspondent for The Times, was editor of the now-defunct magazine in 1969.

May contended that Scheer and Zacchino are “at least acquaintances, if not close friends of the Coopermans and/or their close friends and political group.” Zacchino said neither she nor Scheer can recall ever meeting Cooperman or his wife.

“This newspaper is not edited with regard to political views, and reporters for The Times do not reflect any so-called editorial bias,” Zacchino said.

Lam, 21, is scheduled to go on trial in Orange County Superior Court next week. He has admitted he shot the physics professor but said the gun went off by accident as Cooperman was showing him how to aim it.

Prosecution View

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen has refused to say whether the $90 check with Cooperman’s signature, found on Lam, will be an issue at the trial, but he did acknowledge Monday that he hasn’t ruled out calling Hatch as a witness.

May said he will try to have Hatch barred from testifying on constitutional grounds.

The Times, May said, has thrown the conflict between the rights of the free press and a fair trial into “new dimensions” by hiring Hatch to analyze the signature on the check.

“The prejudicial effect of using an expert, and using the prestige of the news organization that hired him to influence a jury, outweighs the probative value of his findings,” May said in his motion.