One Down

The prosecution appeared to have just about everything going for it: a motive for the murder, the defendant's admitted access to the victim, an eyewitness to describe the killing in gruesome detail, a famous medical expert to support the accuser's testimony and, not least, a prosecutor who had an extraordinary record of 30 murder trials without an acquittal. Yet when the verdict came last week, it was Defense Attorney F. Lee Bailey--himself undefeated in 19 homicide cases (TIME, Dec. 9)--who shouted "Hooray!" After just four hours and 27 minutes of deliberation, a Freehold, N.J., jury acquitted Dr. Carl Coppolino, 34, of first-degree murder in the 1963 death of William Farber, 51, the husband of Coppolino's mistress.

Hypnosis v. Free Will. For a time, Prosecutor Vincent Keuper had his innings. His first and best witness was Marjorie Farber, still attractive at 52, who testified that she had a hypnosis-induced passion for the dark, slender anesthesiologist. After he first mesmerized her in February 1963 in order to break her cigarette habit, they saw each other "constantly." Later, she testified, Coppolino said of her husband: "That man has got to go." Then, she went on, the doctor gave her a drug with which to dispatch Farber. Her nerve failed twice, she said, and so she summoned Coppolino from his home up the street. After he administered injections to the ill and groggy Farber, Coppolino "pulled this pillow out from underneath my husband's head, and he put it over him, and he leaned his full weight down on him, and I just stood there." Why? "Because of hypnosis. I had no free will."

Dr. Milton Helpern, 64, New York City's chief medical examiner, then took the stand to pronounce Farber's death a homicide--even though the original death certificate listed the cause as coronary thrombosis. Called in last summer when New Jersey authorities had Farber's body exhumed, Helpern said that he found a fractured larynx, which led him to believe that Farber had been strangled. He said that he found the heart "normal."

Prosecutor's Nightmare. Although Bailey put on his own medical witnesses to cast doubt on Helpern's testimony and to deride the possibility of crime by hypnotism, his major strategy was to impugn Marge Farber.* Throughout he described her as a woman scorned who lived only for revenge on Coppolino. "She would sit in his lap in the electric chair," said Bailey, "just to see that he dies." When Coppolino moved to Florida, Widow Farber and her two daughters followed, settling in a house next door. Bailey developed testimony that Marge wanted to marry Coppolino after his first wife, Carmela, died in Sarasota last year. But he married a well-to-do divorcee six weeks after Carmela's death. It was only then, Bailey said, that Marge Farber turned on her erstwhile lover. Even Keuper conceded that her conduct was "disgusting"; after the verdict was in, asked if she had been a dream witness, he replied, "No, a prosecutor's nightmare."

By contrast, Coppolino turned out to be a first-rate courtroom performer. In two hours on the stand, he bolstered his case with cool, quiet testimony that Keuper could not shake. Coppolino admitted his affair with Mrs. Farber, but insisted that he was a conscientious physician to Farber on the day he died--giving him proper treatment for a sudden heart ailment, pleading in vain that he go to a hospital. Neatly dressed in a dark suit, as professional in his manner as a medical-school lecturer, Coppolino even turned to the jury to give an onomatopoetic description of how irregular William Farber's heart had sounded.

The trial over, Coppolino and his wife embraced and wept. But instead of walking to freedom, he was whisked off under guard to Florida. There he has been indicted for the murder of first wife Carmela, who died suddenly at the age of 32. The death certificate gave the cause as a heart attack, but the prosecution will try to prove that Coppolino did her in. F. Lee Bailey will be there to defend Coppolino--now free on $15,000 bail--when the trial opens Feb. 13.

*Just as Bailey candidly set out to "destroy" the late Marilyn Sheppard last month in his successful fight to win Sam Sheppard's acquittal for her murder. He portrayed Marilyn as an adulteress killed by a jealous wife. Last week, after an investigation, a Cuyahoga County, Ohio, grand jury dismissed Bailey's claim as having "no basis in truth or fact" and rebuked him for raising it. Though Bailey won a new trial for Sheppard by claiming prejudicial press coverage, the publicity in the Coppolino case clearly did not harm the defendant. Superior Court Judge Elvin Simmill, in fact, complimented reporters on their performance.

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