Hazel Dukes, president of New York State’s NAACP, and a collection of her fellow members had been shivering outside the Queens Supreme Court for an hour and a half when court officers emerged at 8:15 a.m. Monday morning. The court personnel told people sporting NAACP caps and jackets that Justice Arthur Cooperman had declared that no one would be allowed to wear such gear in the courtroom.

Dukes nodded and bellowed the order down the line, then returned to her place at its front. “We know about this judge,” she said.

Cooperman’s reputation for running a tight ship precedes him. And the judge’s skills on that front will likely be put to the test in the coming days, as he presides over the bench trial of the three New York City Police Officers charged in the November 2006 shooting death of Sean Bell.

Justice Cooperman’s reputation includes more than anecdotes of strict courtroom management. His decisions on criminal sentencing have been overturned for their severity more than any of his Criminal Term colleagues in the city during the recent past, with five such reversals since September 2006. His reversal rate on criminal cases for the years 2000 to 2007 was 15.8 percent — compared with a Second Department criminal reversal rate averaging 11.9 percent between 2000 and 2005.

A 1997 ruling came back to bite him in May when the Second Department ordered a new trial in People v. Bennett, saying that Cooperman’s decision to allow the prosecution to call a surprise witness over defense protests deprived the defendant of his right to a fair trial.

In 2005’s People v. Truesdale, he gave the defendant 15-years-to-life for pickpocketing $22, only to be reversed in October 2007 for sentencing the man as a persistent felony offender despite his prior offenses involving only misdemeanors or low-level felonies.

His other four 2007 reversals, discussed in this Reversal Report also stemmed from sentences deemed excessive and rulings found to be too prosecution-friendly.

Worse, from the current defendants’ point of view, he has put cops away before. In 1986, after a jury found former Sgt. Richard Pike and former Officer Jeffrey Gilbert guilty of torturing a teenaged suspect with a stun gun to force him to confess to selling a dime bag of marijuana to an undercover officer, Cooperman sentenced them to just under the maximum.


So should the officers who shot Sean Bell be quaking in their boots?

Jimmy Breslin thought so the day after Cooperman was selected to oversee the case. “No defendant being represented by a lawyer with his senses,” he wrote, “would take the case nonjury with Cooperman as the judge. Cooperman is a cannon so loose that Caribbean pirates wouldn't use him.”

But not everyone agrees with that assessment.

The cops certainly face a jurist with an independent streak, according to four prominent defense lawyers — including a pair who specialize in defending cops. Two of those four, citing concerns about putting future clients at a disadvantage in Cooperman’s courtroom, spoke only on the condition of anonymity.

Marvyn Kornberg has defended both police and their victims over the course of his career. In 1999, he represented former officer Justin Volpe, who eventually pleaded guilty to torturing Abner Louima in a Brooklyn restroom. In 1986, he represented the teenaged victim in Cooperman’s stun gun case.

Kornberg says that Cooperman’s decision to put away two cops in the stun gun case doesn’t mean he’s itching to imprison other members of New York’s Finest.

“He runs the same tight courtroom with respect to the prosecution as he does to the defense,” Kornberg said. “I’d much prefer to go non-jury before him than I would before a lot of other judges in Queens, because he’s got the guts to stand up for what he believes in, and he’s not a rubber stamp for the DA, which a lot of Queens judges are.”

The other police defender said he was “amazed” to hear that Bell’s killers made the choice they did — but not because Cooperman is biased.

“Based on my own experience in serious murder cases, I’d be uncomfortable waiving a jury. You’re putting a tremendous amount of pressure on this judge,” he said. “You’d have a very diversified jury in Queens.” In waiving it, he added, the cops “are giving up a very precious right.”

But even some of Cooperman’s detractors understand why Bell’s shooters, who say that they believed they were in mortal danger when they fired their weapons, would rather be judged by him than by a jury.

One defense lawyer with more than 40 years’ experience in Queens courtrooms minced no words in enunciating his distaste for the judge: “I think he’s acerbic; I think he’s sarcastic; I don’t think he’s a very nice man.”

But, he added, “There is a point of view that says Cooperman, being pro-law enforcement, might be able to live with the bad press of saying publicly, ‘I doubt they [shot Bell] for criminal purpose.’ ”

If so, he added, the judge could find the defendants guilty of lesser charges: “So I understand why they chose Cooperman [over a jury trial] — because the nuances would be lost to the man on the street, to whom [Bell’s death] looks like a cold-blooded murder.”

That sounds almost like a compliment.

Appellate lawyer Richard Mischel, who butted heads with Cooperman as the defense lawyers’ special counsel in 2003’s People v. Romano, and who in 2007 convinced the Appellate Division to vacate the conviction in People v. Bennett because of the allowance of the surprise witness (as detailed in this Reversal Report), professed respect for the judge.

“It would be easy for me to say that he’s pro-prosecution because [in Romano] he ruled against me [almost] every time. But I’m not going to say that, because I think he called it as he saw it,” Mischel said. “I can’t quarrel with him as a judge. He gave me my day in court, and we disagreed.”

Nor does Mischel contend, as others have, that Cooperman is pro-prosecution. “To me, he’s a straight shooter, and there’s no mystery to it. He understands the law to be a certain way, and that’s how he applies it.,”

In fact, despite his frequent rulings against the defense throughout Romano, Cooperman ultimately granted Mischel’s presentencing motion to set aside the verdict on grounds of jury misconduct. Mischel described that move as “courageous.”

More than one of the lawyers who said they could see why the defense chose a bench trial also noted that Cooperman is on the last leg of his certification and slated for retirement soon. Hence, they said, the elderly judge is unencumbered by the kinds of reelection concerns that might create greater pressure for a severe verdict.


While their opinions of his personality and ability to be impartial differed, the four lawyers all stressed that Cooperman knows the law inside and out — and expects those who appear before him to be equally well versed. “I think if you know your law and you know your rules of evidence, he’s probably one of the best judges to appear before,” said Kornberg.

The 40-year veteran who demanded anonymity agreed, to a point. “He has all the [intellectual] capacity you could want — it’s just how he chooses to carry it forward. If you go before him and you have a case where he doesn’t have a grudge against you or your client, you can get an extremely fair ruling because he’s not afraid to chastise a District Attorney if they’re not acting the way he thinks they should.”

For all his gravitas, however, the judge apparently does have a bit of an impish streak: According to the veteran, Cooperman has a habit of drawing caricatures of the people before him and showing them to lawyers when they approach the bench.

But generally, the lawyer continued, the judge “makes no room for joviality.” And in a case as high profile as the one at hand, he predicts that Cooperman will act a model of judicial decorum — and require those before him to do the same.

Perhaps the judge sees it as Mischel does: “A trial before Judge Cooperman is a very serious matter. There’s no levity in his courtroom.”