Judge says he didn't try to 'hide' his arrest

Documents reveal Charles Cope's rationale for not immediately telling the judicial board about his prowling arrest.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published May 16, 2002

The call came one night a week after Circuit Judge Charles W. Cope was arrested in California for trying to enter the hotel room of two women.

"What is the chief judge doing calling you at home?" asked Linda Cope, the judge's wife of 24 years.

Cope took the phone and then-Chief Pinellas-Pasco Judge Susan Schaeffer asked, "Charlie, did you get in trouble in California?"

With his wife listening, Cope disclosed news of an arrest he hadn't revealed to anyone. Later, Cope testified, he and Schaeffer agreed to keep his secret from the state group regulating judges until his case was resolved or the press found out.

New details about Cope's arrest are found in 1,500 pages of testimony released this week by the Judicial Qualifications Commission, the watchdog group that handles judicial discipline, after a public records request by the St. Petersburg Times.

For the first time, those documents reveal Cope's rationale for failing to immediately disclose his April 2001 arrest to the JQC.

"It wasn't as if we were trying to hide anything," Cope testified to the JQC in March. "That wasn't the issue. The issue was just, just to manage it."

Cope has denied trying to enter the women's hotel room in the early morning hours of April 5, 2001, while in Carmel to attend a judicial conference.

Documents show that Cope told Schaeffer that he may have suffered an alcohol-related blackout the night of his arrest, leading JQC attorneys to question how he can be sure of his denials.

And to police who asked him the night of his arrest if he entered hotel property, Cope said, "I can't deny that."

Cope later said he meant he had walked near the hotel earlier in the evening.

Cope's attorney, Robert Merkle, in response to questions about Cope's testimony, released results of a polygraph test Cope took on Oct. 8 at Merkle's request. A certified polygraph examiner said Cope showed no deception when, asked if he tried to enter the hotel room, he answered, "No."

Cope and Schaeffer did not return calls for comment, and a JQC special counsel handling the case declined to comment.

But Merkle said Cope now acknowledges he should have told the JQC.

"In retrospect, he wishes he had reported it immediately," Merkle said Wednesday. "That's a nonstarter in terms of controversy. What he denies is ever trying to enter that hotel room."

Cope said he planned to tell Schaeffer about his arrest but hadn't gotten to it yet before she called.

Asked why he hadn't told her after a week, Cope said, "Quite frankly, I was in shock . . . I just didn't understand why this just wouldn't go away . . . I thought that this, this event would be a nonevent . . . because I didn't do anything wrong."

Cope said he and Schaeffer developed a "plan" for dealing with the arrest. He planned to keep Schaeffer advised of the progress of the case. Once the case was disposed of or the press found out, he would tell the JQC, Cope testified.

"Did you tell (Schaeffer) at any point that if this were reported to the JQC you might as well jump off the Sunshine Skyway?" JQC counsel John Mills asked Cope.

"Those words were said anecdotally in a joke," Cope said.

Then Cope said the joke was not about the JQC but about a newspaper publicizing the arrest.

Cope, 53, faces a JQC trial on June 24, accused of several violations of judicial canons. If a JQC panel finds him guilty, it could recommend to the Florida Supreme Court that he be disciplined or even removed from office.

Cope also faces a criminal trial on July 29 in Carmel on five misdemeanor charges, including prowling, theft and offensive touching.

Cope told the JQC that he first met Dr. Nina Vann Jeanes, 64, and her daughter, Lisa Vann Jeanes, 31, the night before his arrest when, while intoxicated, he found the pair arguing on their hotel balcony.

The two women acknowledged to authorities that they also were intoxicated when Cope approached.

The women said they soon noticed their hotel room key missing.

Cope said he offered the use of his phone at a nearby hotel so they could call their hotel manager. Failing that, he suggested, they could sleep on his couch.

Police intercepted Cope and the two women as they walked down the middle of a Carmel street around 1 a.m. and returned Cope to his hotel and the Jeaneses to theirs.

Cope immediately returned to ask Lisa Jeanes for a beach walk. She said she agreed to go just to talk.

Jeanes testified to the JQC that Cope tried to kiss her three times on the beach. She said she turned her head away.

Jeanes, who could not be reached for comment, said she ran back to her room. There, she told her mother what Cope did.

"I was upset," she told the JQC. "I think I called him psycho, to be honest . . . I said if he had a chance or if I would have let him, he would have raped me."

Cope denied that Jeanes ran away. He said the pair shared a passionate kiss on the beach and he wanted to have sex with her. He said Jeanes returned to his room, undressed and engaged in consensual foreplay before leaving quickly, suddenly uninterested.

Cope said Jeanes' denials showed that "she's a pathological liar."

The next night, the mother and daughter told police that Cope used a key he stole from them to try to enter their room, waking them. He fled when the door's chain prevented him from entering, police said.

Police arrested an intoxicated Cope within a block of the room. They never found the room key.

Cope said he returned to Carmel after his arrest to help lawyers research his case. This time, he brought a family member with him.

"I did a lot of explaining to my wife," he said.

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