Judge Finds Antiabortion Activist Guilty of Murder

A judge found a militant antiabortion activist guilty Tuesday of second-degree murder in the sniper shooting of a Buffalo-area obstetrician in 1998.

Erie County Judge Michael L. D’Amico ruled that James C. Kopp, 48, had intentionally killed Dr. Barnett A. Slepian, 52, who was struck by a single shot from a high-powered, Russian-made assault rifle in the kitchen of his suburban home, with his wife, Lynne, and two of his three children nearby.

Kopp claimed that he only intended to wound the doctor.

Kopp smiled slightly and shook the hand of his lawyer as the Slepian’s widow sat quietly with family members in a front row of the crowded courtroom. Afterward, she spoke briefly with Deputy Dist. Atty. Joseph J. Marusak, who tried the case.

“She is reliving a nightmare right now,” Marusak said.

The verdict came one day after an unusual single-day court session held without a jury. Kopp could receive up to 25 years in prison at his sentencing, which is scheduled for May 9.

He faces another trial in U.S. District Court in Buffalo on federal charges of restricting access to an abortion clinic. A conviction in that case could mean life in prison. He is also a suspect in four nonfatal shootings of abortion providers in Canada and Rochester, N.Y., between 1994 and 1997.

The Slepian shooting sparked outrage across the country, and was denounced by most antiabortion groups.

The gunman, standing 31 yards away, fired through a window at the abortion provider on Oct. 23, 1998, while standing at the edge of a wooded area.

The trail that eventually led to Kopp, who was captured in Dinan, France, on March 29, 2001, began almost immediately when Joan Dorn, a University of Buffalo professor, told investigators that she noticed something unusual in the neighborhood.

Dorn said that while out jogging at 5:30 a.m., she saw a car pull up and a man also start jogging. Suspicious, she jotted down the vehicle’s license plate. It turned out the car, a Chevrolet, which was later found abandoned in a parking lot at Newark International Airport, belonged to Kopp -- a veteran of about 100 antiabortion protests.

In his closing arguments, Marusak paid tribute to Dorn’s alertness.

“The luck of this case is Joan Dorn, God bless her ... getting up at 5:30 a.m. and writing down his license plate number,” Marusak said.

The case took a surprising turn last week when Kopp and his principal lawyer, Bruce A. Barket, asked to waive a jury trial after hundreds of potential jurors had filled out detailed questionnaires. Two members of the defense team resigned in protest.

The decision was reluctantly approved by D’Amico, who even told Kopp he thought it was inadvisable.

The unusual legal tactic meant that Kopp could not testify on his own behalf, no witnesses would be called and the judge would rely on a summary of the evidence agreed upon by both the prosecution and defense, plus closing arguments.

In a corridor outside the courtroom, Barket defended the controversial strategy.

“If he testified, he would have been able to say things completely,” the defense lawyer said Tuesday. “But that gets balanced against cross-examination.”

As he discussed the verdict, Barket conceded: “I think we would have been having the same conversation six weeks from now.”

More than 60 witnesses were prepared to testify for the prosecution.

Before the trial, Kopp told reporters from the Buffalo News that he shot Slepian but did not mean to kill him.

“Jim wanted to save the lives of the unborn,” said Barket, the principal defense attorney, adding that Slepian “was going to kill the next day.”

Barket said in his closing arguments Monday that Kopp wanted to shoot the physician in the shoulder, arguing that the rifle’s telescopic sight was misaligned.

“Jim Kopp’s belief system is he wanted to use force to defend children,” the lawyer added. “He wanted to use nonlethal force.”

That argument brought an angry rejoinder from Marusak. He told the judge that Kopp’s choice of weapons, his statements that he practiced on firing ranges and was an excellent shot, his use of aliases, and his choice of military ammunition all nullified the defense claim.

After the verdict, Elizabeth McDonald, a friend of Kopp, said his decision to shoot Slepian was “justified” because the doctor had planned to perform abortions the next day.

Kopp “should have been welcomed back to Buffalo with a ticker-tape parade and the keys to the city,” she said.

A few steps away in the same courthouse hallway, Marilynn Buckhan, executive director of Buffalo Gyn Womenservices, an abortion clinic, called Kopp “a liar.”

“It makes you very angry to think that anyone is that twisted,” she said. “My biggest fear is who are they going to train to be the next assassin.”