He Came Prepared to Deal, but It Wasn’t in the Cards

Career criminal Richard Cooper came to Municipal Court in Fullerton Friday with one last deal in mind. When you’re facing 783 years to life, dealing is all you’ve got left.

To Cooper, his plan made perfect sense: a 44-year-old welder who likes armed robbery better, he would plead guilty at his preliminary hearing to the 29 felonies against him. His plea would spare the county the expense of trying him and free up police or his victims from having to testify. Instead of the indeterminate 783 years to life, he would accept a determinate sentence of 123 years. The way Cooper saw it, unless he turned into Methuselah, there’s not a whole lot of difference between serving 123 years or 783.

In exchange for saving court time, Cooper wanted the district attorney to drop several prior “strikes” against him--convictions dating to 1979 that, along with his current 29-count package, built his sentence to the 783 years.

Cooper’s motivation was that “lifers” with indeterminate sentences aren’t allowed conjugal visits. Cooper says his wife, Sandra, is terminally ill with cancer. Having a determinate sentence of 123 years, he believed, might qualify him for conjugal visits in her final years, he said.

In a phone conversation the day before his appearance, he explained the deal to me. “I don’t believe I’m asking for too much, because I’m sacrificing everything and saving people a lot of money. What the hell’s the difference, as long as I go to prison and die there?”

Cooper acknowledged that his attorney, deputy public defender Dennis Sakai, opposed the blanket guilty plea. “He’s doing his best to persuade me not to do this,” Cooper told me. “I told him, ‘Look, you’re not Perry Mason or Matlock.’ There’s an astronomical amount of evidence against me. I accept that.”

Accordingly, Sakai announced in court Friday that he wouldn’t subscribe to his client’s plea. However, Sakai said he thought Cooper’s offer to the D.A. was reasonable. Even under Cooper’s proposal, Sakai argued, he wouldn’t be eligible for parole until he was 104.

“He’s not saying he deserves this privilege, this gift . . .” Sakai told Judge Carla Singer. “But I think it’s reasonable. The small benefit it offers he and his wife is peanuts compared to what he is offering the court and prosecution.”

Earlier in the day, outside the courthouse, Cooper’s wife Sandra talked about the man she met about a year ago. “I was downhill, too, when we met,” she said. “So we kind of needed each other. My first impression was that there was something he wasn’t telling me, but I felt a hurt, like my own, a need. Maybe it was love at first sight, which we both didn’t want to admit.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. John Lett told me in the hallway outside the courtroom that his office always considers the offer when someone wants to plead to life and avoid trial costs. He made it clear, though, that Cooper wasn’t going to get a deal. “Other than the early pleading,” Lett said, ‘there’s nothing to recommend this particular individual.”

In chambers, Judge Singer agreed. She told the attorneys Cooper wasn’t going to get a thing.

In court, she told Cooper she was sympathetic to his wife’s health problems, but went on to say: “Many people had to look down the barrel of your gun and wonder if their lives would last another minute.”

The best she could do, she said, was lop 18 years off the 783.

As the hour approached 5 in the courtroom, it was almost over for Cooper.

He had come to court that day thinking he could bargain. Save the court some money, he thought, and they might give him a break.

In the end, he had nothing they wanted.

There was Judge Singer, asking Cooper one last time if he was sure he knew what he was doing and telling him that Sakai was an “outstanding attorney” who would ably represent him if he went to trial. “Is this really what you want to do?” she asked.

There was Lett, saying afterward without malice in his voice that Cooper had probably traumatized numerous victims over the years and deserved no break. Besides, he said, Cooper’s status as a violent, repeat felon meant he wouldn’t qualify for conjugal visits, anyway.

There was Sakai, downcast and still shaking his head over the inherent silliness of quibbling between 123 years and 783 years as defining a life sentence and wondering why a man in prison sharing time with his wife was too much to ask.

And, finally, there was Cooper, a balding man with whitish hair, mustache and looking a bit like G. Gordon Liddy, standing in the cage and assuring the judge he still wanted to plead guilty. “At this point in my life, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t.”

He didn’t even seem angry that the court had rejected his deal. Instead, he had a plaintive query before heading off for state prison.

“I just wish somebody would tell me why I do what I do,” he said. “I haven’t a clue why I do the crimes I go out and commit. . . . I had multiple roads I could have chosen, but something took me to the gutter. . . . I’ll take the punishment, but I wish someone would probe my mind and maybe give me some answers.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.