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Couple who aided abortion doctor's killer freed
From Phil Hirschkorn
NEW YORK (CNN) –- A husband and wife who conspired to help the man who gunned down an abortion doctor in 1998 were freed Thursday after serving more than two years in prison. Loretta Marra, 39, and Dennis Malvasi, 53, who have been incarcerated since March 2001, pleaded guilty in April to the federal charge of conspiracy to harbor a known fugitive. James Kopp was wanted for the shooting of obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Barnett Slepian five years ago. U.S. District Judge Carol Bagley Amon handed down the sentence Thursday and ordered the couple to be released from her court. Marra and Malvasi were reunited with their two children, ages 4 and 7. "I am very, very happy about that," said defense attorney Bruce Barket. "They'll raise their children, get jobs, work, and get on with their lives." Prosecutors had asked the court to impose a four- to five-year sentence; the maximum sentence was five years. Defense attorneys sought a more lenient sentence in consideration for the couple having persuaded Kopp, after he was caught, not to fight extradition and to later admit that he shot Slepian. The couple's light sentence had less to do with the cooperation than the limited nature of their crime, Barket said. "They did nothing more than offer Jim Kopp a place to stay and send him some money," the attorney said. "They had nothing to do with the shooting or certain knowledge that Jim committed the crime." After Kopp had fled the country to live incognito in Mexico, Ireland and France, Marra and Malvasi sent him money and e-mail messages, and planned his secret return to the United States. But in doing so, they led authorities to Kopp's whereabouts. By electronic eavesdropping on the couple's correspondence, the FBI discovered they were sending Kopp money in France. Agents tipped off French police, who arrested Kopp exiting the post office in the northwestern French town of Dinan with $300. France detained Kopp for 14 months, turning him over to the United States only after receiving assurances that he would not face the death penalty. Kopp, 48, is now serving a prison sentence of 18 years to life. In March, New York state Judge Michael D'Amico found him guilty of murder in the second degree. Kopp confessed to the court that he shot Slepian, but he claimed he did not intend for him to die. Slepian, a 52-year-old father of four, delivered thousands of babies in his private practice and worked up to eight hours a week at the Buffalo area's only clinic offering abortions. Long a target of anti-abortion demonstrators at his office and home, Slepian became the seventh abortion provider gunned down in the United States between 1993 and 1998. Kopp still faces federal charges of using violent force against an abortion provider in violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, but no trial date has been set. Marra and Malvasi are not expected to testify. There is also a Canadian warrant for Kopp's arrest for a non-fatal shooting of an abortion provider. Kopp, Marra, and Malvasi are long-time antiabortion activists with long arrest records. Kopp was arrested more than 20 times between 1984 and 1997 for civil disobedience outside abortion clinics. He and Marra were arrested in 1991 for locking their feet together in a steel, doughnut-shape device in front of a Long Island clinic. Malvasi, an ex-Marine with explosives training, previously served time for attempting to bomb New York-area clinics where abortions were performed.
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