Press & News

All in the Family

The Recorder, Jahna Berry, December 2, 2002

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Famed criminal defense attorney Penelope “Penny” Cooper’s nephews are keeping the legal practice in the family.

Emeryville’s Cooper, Arguedas & Cassman had been home to name partner Penny Cooper for two decades before she retired in 2001.  It had also played host to two other attorneys from the Cooper clan:  Colin Cooper, a criminal defense attorney who had been with Cooper, Arguedas since 1989, and Kellin Cooper, a former Solano County public defender who joined the firm in 2000.

This year, Colin and Kellin struck off to do their “own thing” in Berkeley, said Colin.  Penny Cooper’s former law partners, Ted Cassman and Cristina Arguedas, primarily do white-collar crime, whereas he and his relatives did garden-variety criminal work, Colin explained.

Aunt Penny, who says she is “semi-retired” -- she did a murder trial with Kellin this year and is a consultant -- is an of counsel at the firm.  She is thrilled about the office that the lawyers have at 800 Jones Street in Berkeley, which is decorated with  pieces from her art collection.

A little name recognition, the legendary trial attorney says, won’t hurt the firm either.

“It is always difficult to leave a career that has been so fantastic,” said Cooper of her semi-retirement.  But, she says, the departure is a little easier knowing a new generation has taken up the torch. “I am totally dedicated to them,” she said.  “I am just really happy to see it go on.”

Meanwhile, Cooper’s former law partneres, Arguedas and Cassman, have added a new name to their letterhead -- partner Laurel Headley, a complex white-collar crime specialist who has been with the firm for 10 years.  The new firm name is Arguedas, Cassman & Headley, Cassman said.

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Jury Acquits Ex-Officer of Sexual Abuse Charge

Daily Republic (Fairfield-Suisun City, California), Jess Sullivan, August 14, 2004

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Fairfield, CA -- Why would she lie?  That question loomed large during closing arguments by Deputy District Attorney Terry Ray as she tried to convince a jury that a fired California Highway Patrol officer was guilty of heinous acts of child sexual abuse.

Jurors likely will never know the accuser’s motives.  After four hours of deliberation, they rejected her claims -- acquitting Brent K. Adams of two dozen felony charges Friday afternoon.

Adams was a 13-year veteran CHP officer, married with three children and living in Vacaville when the accusations of a three-and-a-half year sexual relationship were made against him and led to his arrest in January 2002.

The woman claimed the relationship began when she was 13.  Adams allegedly seduced her at his Sussex Circle home.  The accusations cost him his job.  He was fired from the CHP and faced a two-and-a-half year legal battle that included pleading no contest last year to one count of committing lewd acts on a child and to four counts of unlawful sexual intercourse.  That plea deal was cancelled after Adams refused to discuss the accusations with a psychiatrist.

When Judge William C. Harrison announced the jury’s verdicts, Adams burst into tears.  His lawyer, Kellin Cooper, also cried and hugged Adams while Adams’ wife, son, and youngest daughter cried and hugged each other a few feet away in the courtroom gallery.

The accuser, now 21, married two months ago, enlisted in the Army, and is soon to be deployed to Iraq.  She was not in the courtroom when the verdicts were announced.

Jurors, looking as solemn as they had throughout the two-week trial, quickly filed past Adams and left the courthouse.  They had spent days listening to intimate, sordid and lurid claims of sexual activity raised by the accuser and detailed descriptions of Adams’ anatomy raised by Cooper trying to prove the accuser’s detailed descriptions were lies.

“She flat-out lied when she made up this story,” cooper told jurors during his closing argument earlier in the day.

Reach Jess Sullivan at 427-6919 or JessSullivan_CA@Yahoo.com.

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Marshalling Defenses

The Register, Marsha Dorgan (Staff Writer), September 20, 2006

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For more than a year, brothers Colin and Kellin Cooper have pored over mounds of transcripts, interviews and other documents collected in the past decade involving the death of Elizabeth Posey.

This week, the Berkeley lawyers will appear before a Napa County Superior Court jury to defend Dr. Michael Posey of charges that he murdered his estranged wife in his north Napa home.  Michael Posey’s arrest came nine years after the incident.

“We have been thinking and working on the case since the first time my brother and I met with Mike (Posey).  We knew from the beginning he is innocent,” said Kellin Cooper.

Kellin Cooper said he and his brother have reviewed more than 9,000 pages of documents.  “And a lot of it more than once.”

The trial is expected to last about six weeks.  “We think it will be quicker,” Cooper said.  At the same time, the defense attorneys have said they will call as many as 200 witnesses.

Cooper said the defense will not request the trial be moved outside of Napa County.

“There are two reasons for that.  First, we, including Dr. Posey, are completely confident Napa County jurors will take their job seriously and give our client a fair trial.  Secondly, we believe that we do not have a legal basis to make that request.”

Cooper declined to comment on whether the defense team will put Posey on the stand.

The Cooper brothers, three years apart in age, grew up in Southern California.

Colin Cooper graduated from UC Berkeley in 1984 and continued his education at the university’s Boalt Hall School of Law, graduating in 1989.

He joined the law firm of his aunt, well-known Bay Area criminal defense attorney Penny Cooper, in 1989.

Kellin Cooper graduated from UC Berkeley in 1989 and took two years off to race bicycles.

“I realized I couldn’t make a living racing bikes, so I enrolled in the University of San Francisco School of Law, graduating in 1994.  I worked as a public defender for Solano County until 2000 when I joined my brother at our aunt’s law firm,” Kellin said.

After their aunt retired, Colin and Kellin formed the Cooper Law Offices in 2001.

Kellin Cooper said Posey interviewed several attorneys before he chose the Coopers.

“We have a very good trial track record,” he said.  “Of all the cases we have gone to trial, this is the most high profile.  Both Colin and I believe this is a tremendous honor to represent Dr. Posey.  It’s not every day you get a chance to represent an innocent client.”

The lead prosecutor in the case is Rob Wade, Napa County deputy district attorney.  Wade has tried a murder case in Napa County before, but it was an unusual one.

He was working for the Humboldt County District Attorney’s office, and a murder trial from that county was transferred here.

That case resulted in a conviction of Dianna Mae Preston, who shot Eureka acupuncturist Kevin LaPorta six times in the parking lot of his office.  Preston killed LaPorta because she believed he had been sexually abusing her granddaughter, who was also LaPorta’s daughter.

Preston claimed to be innocent and also entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.  She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Wade later joined the Napa County prosecutors office.  In addition to handling People v. Posey, he is also the lead attorney in the case against Eric Copple, accused of killing Adriane Insogna and Leslie Mazzara in west Napa in 2004.

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Ex-CHP Officer Found Innocent of Sex Abuse

The Reporter, Brian Hamilton (Senior Staff Writer), August 14, 2004

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Following less than three hours of deliberation Friday afternoon, a Solano County Superior Court jury found a former California Highway Patrol officer innocent on all counts of a lengthy sex abuse complaint filed against him more than two years ago.

Family members hugged and cried as Superior Court Judge William C. Harrison read the verdict of the seven-man, five-woman jury, which ruled 38-year-old Brent Kyle Adams innocent of all charges in a 24-count felony complaint that alleged he had engaged in unlawful sex acts with a teenage girl between 1997 and 2000.

Adams was arrested by Vacaville police in 2001 after a San Jose State University counselor notified Solano County authorities about a student who had complained about an adult repeatedly engaging in consensual sex with her when she was roughly 13 to 17 years of age.

Adams, who initially faced 90 counts of unlawful sex in the case, maintained his innocence.

Following a four-day trial last week, defense attorney Kellin Cooper told jurors Friday morning that the young woman -- now 21 years old -- “flat out lied when she made up this story.”

Cooper described the case as a tragedy in which there were no winners.

“I am representing an innocent man and he’s being falsely accused of these charges,” Cooper told jurors.  “Brent Adams is a good and decent man.”

Cooper attacked several small discrepancies in the young woman’s testimony, particularly in dealing with specific times and places she claimed to have had sex with Adams.

During his closing arguments, Cooper also focused on the woman’s inability to accurately describe characteristics of the defendant’s sexual organs, despite her testimony that they had more than 100 encounters.

“She was wrong.  She was wrong because she doesn’t know.  She was never molested,” Cooper asserted.

The prosecution, he charged, had failed to prove its case.

“This case is replete with doubts,” Cooper said.  “The prosecution has not met the burden of proof - not even close.

Brian Hamlin can be reached at courts@thereporter.com

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Ex-CHP Officer Acquitted of Molestation Charges

Times-Herald

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After deliberating for less than three hours on Friday, a jury in Fairfield acquitted former California Highway Patrol officer Brent Kyle Adams of child molestation and exhibiting lewd material to a minor.

Adams, 38, who was a CHP motorcycle officer until his arrest in January 2002, appeared elated by the verdicts.  He could be seen sobbing and hugged his young daughter, wife and son and his attorney, Kellin Cooper.

Judge William C. Harrison, instead of reading more than 20 verdicts, declared that the jury had found Adams not guilty on all counts.

Adams was accused of having unlawful sexual intercourse and engaging in oral copulation with the woman beginning when she was 13.

Cooper argued that the accuser, who now is 21, married, and in the Army, made the whole thing up.  In his closing argument, Cooper told jurors that the alleged victim was unable to accurately describe a pertinent feature of his anatomy even to investigators.  The defense attorney added that while Adams acknowledged that he owned adult films, there was no corroboration to the woman’s claim that they sat down and viewed them together.

Cooper characterized the accuser as “obviously troubled,” noting that nowhere in her diary were references to sexual activity with Adams.  The attorney pointed out that rather than run and flee like a guilty man, Adams turned himself in to police.

Deputy District Attorney Terry Ray said the woman had no motive to lie.  Rather than going to the police, she told her best friend and then a church counselor.  She didn’t want to break up the family.  But Children’s Protective Services was notified and an investigation was launched when she told her story to a school counselor.

Ray attributed the woman’s failure to adequately describe Adam’s anatomy to the probability that she had no other experiences with sex before the defendant and, therefore, nothing to compare it to.  The woman claimed that she and Adams had more than 100 sexual encounters.

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