Cooperman Friends Assail Verdict, Vow to Press Assassination Theory

Friends of slain Cal State Fullerton physics professor Edward Lee Cooperman met on campus Friday to denounce the involuntary manslaughter verdict for the 21-year-old Vietnamese student who shot him, and vowed to carry on their fight to expose what they contend was a political assassination.

After participating in the noon news conference, Klaaske Cooperman, the professor’s widow, filed a civil lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court against the student, Minh Van Lam, “and others” on the grounds that he either killed her husband intentionally as part of a conspiracy or was criminally negligent.

The lawsuit seeks $4 million in general damages for each of her two teen-age daughters and herself, plus unspecified punitive damages.

Convicted Thursday

Lam was convicted Thursday by Superior Court Judge Richard J. Beacom in a non-jury trial. Nine jurors at Lam’s first trial last month wanted the same verdict, but three jurors held out for acquittal on all charges.

Lam admitted that he shot the 48-year-old professor in his sixth-floor Science Building office on Oct. 13, 1984, but said it was an accident. He had gone to the office that day, a Saturday, with a .25-caliber pistol the professor had given him, he told police. Lam’s version is that the gun went off when Cooperman grabbed his right arm to show him how to aim it.

Lam’s attorneys considered the involuntary manslaughter verdict a victory.

Involuntary manslaughter is defined in California as committing an act without due caution or when the defendant knows the act could lead to death. Lam faces a sentence of no more than six years in prison when he returns to Beacom’s court on May 17.

The prosecution tried to get a first-degree murder conviction at the first trial, but none of the jurors would accept it. Beacom limited the prosecutors to seeking only a second-degree murder conviction at the second trial, where no new evidence was presented.

No Motive Offered

At neither trial did the prosecutors offer any motive for the shooting. And that is partly why Cooperman’s family and friends are furious.

They claim that Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James Enright and his investigators only half-heartedly pursued suspicions by Cooperman’s associates that the professor was assassinated by right-wing Vietnamese extremists because of his ties to the Communist government in Vietnam.

Cooperman started a foundation six years ago to provide scientific and humanitarian aid to Vietnam.

“Lam isn’t really that important,” Klaaske Cooperman said. “I want to find the ones who ordered him to kill my husband.”

Cooperman’s friends, who have banded together in recent months in a loosely knit group called the “Committee for Justice for Professor Ed Cooperman,” bitterly insisted to members of the news media that Enright’s office did a poor job of prosecuting Lam.

Frank Verges, a Cal State Fullerton philosophy professor, called the second trial “a charade” and suggested that Enright and others in his office could benefit by taking a course he teaches in logic. Verges warned “assassins” that “the spirit of Ed Cooperman lives on” and that other professors would not be intimidated.

Exiled Some Parts

But attorney Larry Teeter, also part of the committee, said Verges went too far in his criticism of the prosecution and the judge. Teeter said he edited Verges’ prepared remarks, excising parts that Teeter considered possibly libelous.

Asked by one reporter why he hadn’t presented facts to back up his claims of political assassination, Verges shot back, “I don’t think you know what facts are.”

Other members of the committee criticized reporters for not paying more attention to the political assassination claims.

Dr. Jack Kent, who was a member of Cooperman’s U.S. Committee for Scientific Cooperation with Vietnam, shouted repeatedly that Vietnamese death squads were operating in California.

Sheldon Maram, a Cal State Fullerton history professor, said the committee would stay together to try to educate the public about the political assassination theory and would take some actions in the next few weeks. He said the committee was not ready yet to specify what actions it might take.