Witness in Carson case admits using meth

A prosecution witness on Tuesday testified that he was using methamphetamine when he saw Modesto attorney Frank Carson confront his neighbors about repeated thefts on his Turlock property.

Ronald Cooper Jr. has already testified that Carson threatened to shoot thieves, and made statements including: “You can’t steal from people like me. ... I’m Frank Carson. You don’t mess with me.”

During cross-examination Tuesday, Cooper said he was using meth at Michael Cooley’s home when Carson arrived to confront his neighbors. He testified that he would leave each time before police arrived because he had been using meth. Cooper said his drug use did not affect his memory of those confrontations.

Cooley’s home on Lander Avenue and Carson’s property on Ninth Street were separated by a fence. Carson believed Cooley, along with his siblings and friends, was stealing antiques and scrap metal the attorney stored on his 5-acre property.

A preliminary hearing resumed Tuesday morning for Carson and five others charged in the slaying of Korey Kauffman. Testimony in the hearing has indicated that Kauffman wanted to steal irrigation pipes from Carson’s property before he left Cooley’s home the night of March 30, 2012. Kauffman was not seen alive again; in August 2013 a hunter spotted his remains in a rural area of Mariposa County.

Cooper testified that he had stashed away some items that could have been stolen from Carson’s property, but said he didn’t steal them.

“I sell methamphetamine on the streets, and it comes to me in trades,” he said in court Tuesday.

Cooper said he believes a cabinet and other furniture he received in exchange for meth might have been stolen from Carson, but that he wasn’t certain and didn’t know who had given him the items. He said he sold meth to Cooley about five times but did not receive any items from Cooley that he suspected were stolen.

Defense attorney Robert Forkner asked Cooper about his drug dealing.

“Who’s on your list of customers?” Cooper immediately answered “Turlock.” The courtroom exchange made attorneys and several audience members chuckle for a bit.

Cooper testified that he always asked his meth customers whether the items they were trading were stolen.

“You don’t want to accept something you’d get busted for,” he said.

Forkner also asked Cooper about a conversation he had with Chief Deputy District Attorney Marlisa Ferreira, who is prosecuting the case. Cooper said the prosecutor told him that she hoped he would do the right thing when the time came.

Cooper explained that his felony drug charge had just been reduced to a misdemeanor in accordance with state law, and the prosecution could no longer use a felony conviction as leverage to compel him to comply with investigators in the Kauffman case.

Cooper is serving a prison sentence in a domestic violence case. Forkner asked him whether he believed his cooperation with authorities in the Kauffman case would get him released sooner.

“That’s already been determined; it’s not going to happen,” Cooper said.

The witness had provided a few hours of testimony before the hearing Tuesday afternoon descended into attorneys accusing each other of wrongdoing, stopping Cooper’s testimony for about 45 minutes while they argued.

The heated argument began when Ferreira told the judge that Cooper had been a cooperative witness until he showed up in court one day refusing to testify in the Kauffman case.

“Something happened to Mr. Cooper,” the prosecutor said.

Ferreira told the judge that defense attorney Martha Carlton-Magaña was legally representing Cooper’s current cellmate, and Carlton-Magaña took that as the prosecutor accusing her of conspiring to dissuade Cooper. Carlton-Magaña called the prosecutor’s assertions “an outrage.”

The prosecutor then told the judge it was not her intention to accuse Carlton-Magaña of wrongdoing, just that someone had spoken to Cooper and tainted his testimony.

The defense asked the judge to sanction the prosecutor for her conduct in court Tuesday, but the judge denied that request, saying everyone involved in the case had misspoken in court before. But the judge cautioned the prosecutor about her line of questioning.

“We went down a bad road,” Judge Barbara Zuniga told the prosecutor. “This offer of proof, you really went off the reservation on that.”

This story was originally published December 15, 2015 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Witness in Carson case admits using meth."