News
Law Practice
Feb. 27, 2002
Mother, Son Team Up For Criminal Defense
LOS ANGELES - Defense lawyer Michael S. Kopple was describing how he once tried to persuade a client with a fistful of prior convictions to forgo a no-jail plea offer and try to beat the rap for stealing a piece of pie. His mother Madelynn, sitting next to him at a conference table, cut her big brown eyes around at him as if to say, "Oh, you silly boy."
Madelynn G. Kopple has been a defense lawyer nearly as long as her 31-year-old son has been alive. She worked six years as a deputy public defender in Los Angeles County before beginning her own practice and has defended more clients than she can count.
Her son, who began practicing law five years ago, is no trial novice.
He worked as a public defender in Riverside and Los Angeles counties until December, when he left to start his own practice. His cases are a mix of civil and criminal.
"He's getting good experience, and that's what it takes to be successful at this," his mother said.
Today Michael Kopple may get the experience of a lifetime when he and his mom defend a client together for the first time.
On Tuesday, the pair sat down in Madelynn Kopple's Bel Air office to discuss the excitement and fears of such an effort - and what a mother might do if her ambitious young son gets out of line while sitting next to her at the defense counsel table.
"I may have to find a new provision when I object. I'm going to say 'Your Honor, I have to smack my kid around,'" she joked.
Their client, 25-year-old Damon Wynn, is accused of participating in a Feb. 23, 2000, armed robbery of a convenience store in Van Nuys. He says he's innocent, and, so far, two juries have failed to convict him.
When he goes on trial for a third time today, the stakes are high. Wynn has prior convictions and faces an especially stiff sentence if convicted under California's three-strikes law.
But if Madelynn Kopple thinks her son was silly for suggesting a client fight a pie-stealing charge, she thinks it's crazy for the district attorney to try Wynn a third time when, as she sees it, the evidence against him is shaky, at best.
Referring to the single piece of physical evidence that police say links Wynn to the robbery, a popular Nike tennis shoe found in his home and also worn by one of the masked robbers, Kopple scoffs, "It is one of Nike's most popular brands! This is the same shoe that was worn by Forrest Gump when he ran across America!"
The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Jim Falco, could not be reached for comment.
When Madelynn Kopple graduated from University of LaVerne College of Law in 1970, few opportunities existed for female lawyers. Her first job, as in-house counsel for an insurance company, was offered after the boss looked at her and said, "You're a girl, you're good-looking, you're hired."
A few months later, the Los Angeles County public defender's office offered her a job. In those days, seeking a law job with the county meant jointly applying to a deputy district attorney, public defender and county counsel. Kopple wanted to be a prosecutor, but a civil service test she took showed that she should be a defense lawyer.
"It's a decision I never regretted. I love being a defense lawyer," she said.
Michael Kopple was born a year before his mother graduated law school and literally grew up in the law. He attended his first lineup when he was 4.
"I didn't think [that,] because she did it, I would do it," he said.
After graduating from St. John's College in Santa Fe, N.M., he worked on the set of "Cheers" and aspired to have a career in the entertainment industry. Even when he entered law school at the University of California, Davis, he still thought he'd return to work in Hollywood.
After law school, he worked at Castle Rock Entertainment for a few months but found himself drawn to criminal defense work. So he followed in his mother's footsteps and got a job at the public defender's office in Riverside, where he stayed 22 months.
Michael Kopple is the only one of his mother's four children to become a lawyer, so far. Although the pair have not tried a case together before, they have been helping each other out for some time. Madelynn Kopple said she often runs the facts of her cases by him to get a different perspective.
"He'll call up and say, 'What about this?' or 'Have you looked at this?'" she said.
In January, Michael Kopple's mother watched as her son successfully tried his first civil case, representing an immigrant mechanic involved in a Sunset Boulevard car accident with a music industry executive. Kopple, who works as of-counsel for Carpenter & Zuckerman, won $45,000 for his client - $5,000 more than he asked for.
Judge Thomas N. Douglass Jr. of Indio Superior Court has presided over cases of both mother and son.
"I think she's wonderful as an attorney. She's a very vigorous advocate for her position. She was always prepared, always a delight to listen to in argument," Douglass said. "Mike got his start out here. And he showed a lot of potential."
Kopple decided to bring her son onto the Wynn case because, frankly, she has grown weary of it.
"I see this case on the inside of my eyeballs when I sleep," she said.
It's not the first time she's enlisted a family member to help on a case. She once enlisted her husband, Joel, the chief of nephrology and hypertension at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, to be an expert witness when she couldn't afford to hire one.
She hopes her son will bring "fresh insight" to the case.
"He sees things I don't see," she says.
In the case in which Wynn is charged, the robbers were masked, and two of them were caught by police within minutes of the crime. Wynn was arrested after the fact, after he was implicated by of the robbers in exchange for a plea deal.
The victim was not subpoenaed to testify this time and is now on vacation in India. Judge Frank Johnson of Van Nuys Superior Court ruled late yesterday that the prosecutor may read the victim's prior testimony to jurors but must tell the panel he failed to subpoena him.
The other two witnesses, the grandmother and girlfriend of one of two other men already convicted of the robbery, came forth after the first trial to say that Wynn had been among the robbers that night.
"I don't want my entrance in this case to get a different, [worse] result," Michael Kopple fretted.
But his mother wasn't worried.
"The prosecutor on this case said, "Madelynn, you're tough.' I said [to prosecutor Falco], 'You think I'm tough. I'm a pussycat. I'm bringing in the Rottweiler!'"
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David Houston
Daily Journal Staff Writer
davidhouston@runbox.com
davidhouston@runbox.com
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