State Rests Its Case in Cooperman Death : No Motive Suggested; Slain Professor’s Friends Criticize Prosecution

Without even hinting at a motive after four days of testimony, the prosecution closed its case Thursday against the Vietnamese student charged with murder in the death of Cal State Fullerton physicist Edward Lee Cooperman.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mel Jensen’s final witness Thursday morning was Klaaske Cooperman, the professor’s widow, who said her husband had been worried he might be the victim of a political assassination.

But none of Jensen’s witness gave any evidence to link the assassination theory to Minh Van Lam, 21, who claims he killed Cooperman by accident.

Some of Cooperman’s friends who have attended the trial this week before Orange County Superior Court Judge Richard J. Beacom were irate because Jensen did not pursue the assassination theory.

Assassination Theory

Lam was arrested several hours after he led police to Cooperman’s body in the professor’s sixth-floor Science Building office on Oct. 13, 1984. He had been shot once through the left side of the neck with a .25-caliber handgun. Lam claims the gun went off when Cooperman grabbed his right arm to show him how to aim it.

Cooperman was widely known for his scientific and humanitarian aid to the Communist regime in Vietnam. His death has been controversial because Cooperman’s friends believe he was assassinated for his political beliefs and Lam’s attorneys have claimed that Cooperman provided illegal aid to Vietnam.

Under California law, the prosecution doesn’t have to prove a motive to gain a murder conviction. But the state penal code allows juries to consider the absence of motive in the defense’s favor.

Jensen is expected to call rebuttal witnesses following defense attorney Alan May’s presentation of his case. But if Jensen plans to offer any theories as to motive during rebuttal, he isn’t saying.

Anthony Russo, a co-defendant in the Pentagon Papers case and a close Cooperman friend, Thursday described Jensen as “lackluster” and accused the prosecutor of failing to call “key witnesses” who could lend credence to the assassination theory.

Other Cooperman friends said they were so upset they planned to meet to decide whether to make some kind of formal protest.

Colleague Takes Stand

Dr. Jack Kent, a Santa Ana physician and a member of Cooperman’s U.S. Committee for Scientific Cooperation with Vietnam, conceded that the friends had no legal proof that the professor had been assassinated.

“Political murders are tough (to prove). They depend on the prosecution going after it,” Kent said.

Jensen, apprised of these criticisms, only smiled and said, “No comment.”

Klaaske Cooperman said she would reserve judgment until the end of the trial.

The assassination theory did make its way before the jury after Jensen rested his case, however.

Cal State Fullerton professor Roger Dittman, Cooperman’s closest colleague, was called to the stand by May to talk about some of Cooperman’s Vietnam projects.

In answer to one question, Dittman made a reference to a date in November, stating that it was “after the assassination.”

May stared at Dittman and asked him if he was referring to Cooperman’s death as “the assassination.” Dittman said, “Yes.”

“You assume it was an assassination?” May asked him.

“Yes,” Dittman replied.

Dittman later testified that he called it that because assassination “was the expected risk he (Cooperman) felt he was running” by working with the Vietnamese.

Outside the courtroom, acquaintances of Dittman congratulated him for raising the matter.

Once Dittman raised the issue, May devoted several questions to the assassination theory.

May contends that Cooperman’s fears could have included assassination from some source--not necessarily from right-wing Vietnamese--and that he practiced self-defense with a handgun because of his concerns. According to May, that concern led to Cooperman’s practicing self-defense on the day he died.

Police Testify

The defense lawyer opened his presentation Thursday with a stream of Fullerton police and Sheriff’s Department officials who testified about finding two other handguns in Cooperman’s office in a search following his death, plus several pictures of young Asian men in black leather jackets.

May also called two campus employees who each said they had seen Cooperman wrestle with young Asian men on two occasions. (Lam claims he and Cooperman had a friendly wrestling session before Cooperman brought the gun out.)

His other witnesses included Frank Mellott, a friend of Cooperman who said the professor had told him about sending computer equipment to Vietnam.

May contends that Cooperman may have feared that his shipment of “illegal” goods to Vietnam, such as computers, was about to be “unmasked” and that in some way led to the “accident” in which he died.

The trial is scheduled to continue Monday.