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Judge Charles W. Cope pleads no contest to a single misdemeanor charge in a California incident. Five other charges are dropped.
By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 30, 2002
A criminal case that imperiled the career of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Charles W. Cope came to an end Thursday when Cope pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanor charge of public intoxication.
As part of a plea deal, California prosecutors agreed to drop five misdemeanor charges filed after two women accused Cope of trying to break into their hotel room in April 2001.
Cope, who did not travel to California for the plea hearing, was ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and agreed to donate $5,000 to a Washington, D.C.-area shelter for homeless women and children selected by an alleged victim. No probation was ordered. The case carried a maximum penality of six months in jail.
A judge also ordered alcohol treatment. But Cope was given credit for treatment he received last September in a 28-day residential program. A California lawyer representing Cope immediately gave the clerk a check for the fine and the donation.
Cope, 53, said he thought the deal amounted to a complete exoneration.
"It was a plea of convenience in its truest sense," said Cope, who estimated it would have cost him $100,000 to take the case to trial. "I am extremely relieved and extremely pleased with the result knowing that finally the truth has prevailed.
"I never denied I made a mistake and consumed too much alcohol," he said. "And I addressed that problem." He quickly added, "Strike (the word) "problem.' I addressed that issue."
Monterey County, Calif., prosecutors said the plea deal was not an exoneration and said they had enough evidence to convict Cope at trial on the original charges he faced.
Those included prowling, petty theft, battery, peering into an inhabited dwelling and aggravated trespassing.
"The reasons we agreed to this didn't have anything to do with insufficient evidence," said Deputy District Attorney Lisa Poll. "It was in the best interests of justice. We have not changed our position. We still believed the victim."
She said the victim in the case, Lisa Jeanes, who accused Cope of unwanted sexual advances during a beach walk and of trying to enter her hotel room as she and her mother slept, consented to the plea.
"We choose to not put her through the hardship of a trial," Poll said, noting the woman had already faced grueling questioning by Cope's attorney at a hearing by the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission earlier this year.
Poll said her office also considered the cost of a Sept. 30 trial to California taxpayers.
Jeanes, 33, a Maryland veterinarian described by Cope as a "rattlesnake" who invented lies against him, said she is satisfied with the resolution but nonetheless unhappy Cope is still a judge.
"I think he's a sick, spineless coward," she said in an interview. "I know he did it. Cope knows he did it. He just refuses to accept responsibility. I'm tired of being called a liar. I'm the victim and I feel like I'm the one who's been put on trial.
"My life has been turned upside-down, all because I dialed 911 when a man tried to break into my room," she said.
The plea comes less than a month after a JQC hearing panel, which tried Cope on charges he violated canons of judicial behavior for his conduct, recommended that the judge receive a public reprimand.
The hearing panel found him guilty of public intoxication and improper sexual conduct, both of which he admitted during the JQC proceeding.
The Florida Supreme Court, which has the final word on what, if any, punishment to impose, has not yet announced a decision.
The JQC hearing panel had earlier dismissed more serious allegations against Cope that mirrored some of the California charges.
Cope, a married father of three, was visiting Carmel, Calif., to attend a judicial conference, partly at taxpayer expense. He acknowledged he became intoxicated late one evening.
Jeanes and her mother said Cope encountered them as they sat on their hotel balcony. The women soon noticed their hotel key missing. Prosecutors accused Cope of stealing their hotel room key while they weren't looking.
That evening, Jeanes accepted an invitation to walk with Cope on the beach. She accused the judge of trying to kiss her several times before she fled. Cope, however, said he and Jeanes returned to her hotel room for consensual sexual foreplay.
The next night, Jeanes and her mother were sleeping when they said their locked hotel room door was opened. The door's chain lock prevented entry by the intruder.
Jeanes looked outside and said she saw Cope. Within minutes, police stopped Cope as he walked back to his hotel room. No key was found on him.
One fact that may have harmed the case against Cope was that Jeanes and her mother both acknowledged being intoxicated the night they first met Cope. The next night, they said they were sober.
Cope has testified he was intoxicated both nights. He steadfastly denied stealing the key or trying to break into the room.
Cope was placed on a paid leave for a year, returning to the bench this month.
It appears unlikely that the plea will have any effect on his continuing to serve on the bench. But Cope said that was up to the JQC to decide. JQC officials could not be reached.
Cope said he plans to stay on the job as long as voters want him. He declined to specifically say if he will run again in two years.
"I fought very hard to get this job," said Cope, a circuit judge since 1992. "I fought very hard to keep this job. And I will continue to perform my duties the best I can as long as the public acknowledges they want me there. I don't intend to give up."