New Delco D.A.: A lifetime pursuit of justice
Katayoun Copeland’s views shaped by her childhood experience in revolutionary Iran
Katayoun “Kat” Copeland knew she wanted to be a lawyer since she was a child. Copeland, 50, was appointed as the Delaware County district attorney in January by the Board of Judges after the former D.A., Jack Whelan, was elected to a seat on the bench.
“I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer,” said Copeland, a Radnor resident. “My mom (Shahin Maleki Copeland) was a linguist. She graduated from the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. And she’s from Iran. She met my father here in the United States and the two of them got married. They had my brother and I and decided they were going to go to Iran. My dad enjoyed living in faroff lands, even though he was a young man from Oklahoma.”
Copeland lived in Iran from age 6 to 12.
“During the time I was living in Iran, we lived there in the most beautiful times, when it was considered a vacation spot of Europe,” she said. “And then we lived during the transition time, during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. And at some point in time my father was arrested and accused of being a CIA spy. So nobody, despite many requests, was crazy enough to represent an American. So my mom did the unthinkable, if you will. Despite not being a lawyer and having no legal training, she represented my father as the first woman in the Islamic Republic of Iran (to argue a court case, citing verses from the Koran). So when you have a mom like that who, against all odds, is able to do the unthinkable and unimaginable, it kind of sets the standard and sets the bar.” The Islamic court finally released her father, the late Max Copeland.
Becoming a lawyer was natural for Copeland.
“So my vantage point, living through an experience like that gave me the perspective of the value of a fair and just process in the criminal justice system…I value peace, I value things that matter in the community, right and wrong, and there’s a way to do things. And of course my parents always said, I was interested in arguing,” she said. After her father, who was working for Westinghouse in Iran, was arrested, “My mom flew my brother and I out of the country and dropped us off here in the United States,” she said. The siblings lived with family friends in Newtown Square until the family was reunited. Her brother, Cyrus Copeland, eventually wrote a book about what happened to his dad, “Off the Radar.”
Copeland attended The Baldwin School, which was also a major influence on her life, she said.
“I can’t say enough good things about that school,” said Copeland. “She literally dropped me and my brother off…Day in and day out the teachers there, the staff there, were incredibly supportive. You know you go from a complete change in circumstances. You go from living in Iran, where for the last six months I had been home-schooled because I couldn’t go to a school at that time. Girls were segregated from classes for boys. My mom didn’t feel comfortable placing me in a school at that time.”
At Baldwin, “they taught us how to study, how to interact, how to become ourselves, how to grow into what you are good at and have a value for community. And that value for the community was also partly why I decided to become an assistant district attorney,” Copeland said.
“And, of course, having traveled a lot throughout my childhood getting away wasn’t something I needed to do so I literally walked across the street to Bryn Mawr College.”
At Bryn Mawr, Copeland majored in economics and minored in French and Middle Eastern history. She can still speak Farsi. She enjoyed meeting many international students at Bryn Mawr and learning about their perspectives, she said.
“I enjoyed being exposed to different thought processes,” she said. She then studied law at Temple University.
Before he died her father “saw me graduate law school and knew I was working here at the D.A.’s office. So it was nice he got to see that I got to fulfill my dreams,” she said.
Copeland worked as an assistant district attorney in Delaware County for just over 19 years, rising to become chief of the Narcotics, Intelligence and Forfeitures unit.
“While I was here I prosecuted cases at the U.S. Attorney’s Office as a ‘special,’” Copeland said. “They have a program which allows different D.A.’s offices to select attorneys to prosecute the more violent individuals, the larger drug traffickers, the people who despite numerous arrests and convictions and having gone to jail, just get out and jail becomes a revolving door for them. And they come back into the system and they just start right over again. So we choose at the D.A.’s office to take those individuals, and hand-in-hand with the Assistant Attorney’s Office, prosecute them at the federal level. Despite numerous opportunities, these people still haven’t learned a lesson. I was a ‘special’ for many years, and in 2011 they hired me full time as an assistant U.S. Attorney in the Narcotics and Organized Crime Unit.”
When the opening for Delaware County D.A. came she jumped at it.
“Having worked here as a deputy D.A. for so long, I have value for what this office does,” said Copeland. “What it does for Delaware County residents is unmatched. One of the things that I did before I left this office, was help create (drug) treatment courts and Veterans’ Court, which gave me an appreciation not only for the prosecution end of it but the rehabilitative end of it. And I see a lot of room for us to grow in that area. So often we look as our roles as prosecutors and I can see our roles, especially as the district attorney, you have an opportunity to prosecute but it’s prosecute and help, and do all those things hand-inhand, if you will.”
Asked about the possibility of more new programs, she said, “We are constantly looking to expand those programs and finding new voids.” She looks for areas where “our citizens need some assistance, be that be with the Heroin Task Force, in my capacity as chair of the Heroin Task Force, working handin-hand with different community members, whether that be Crozer as a treatment provider (or) MVP Recovery (which provides help with recovery from drug abuse). We’re always seeking new ways to provide our community with help.”
She also said that she does “the right thing in the D.A.’s office. For example, on April 6 they “indicted, along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, an individual who is responsible for the death of one of our citizen’s here, charging him with drug delivery resulting in death,” she said.
Chester resident Robert Atkins, 28, was charged with distribution of fentanyl resulting in death, as well as five counts of distributing fentanyl, and one count of distributing fentanyl within 1,000 feet of a school, in the 2017 death of a Folcroft man, authorities said.
Atkins “who even after selling fentanyl which led to the death of one of his community members, he keeps selling drugs. How do you justify that? How do you explain that? How do you have a conscience...He’s certainly not someone who cared about anything except lining his pockets with money,” said Copeland.
So her office fights the opioid epidemic in “multi-faceted” ways, she said.
“It’s caused devastation in its wake,” she said. “It can’t be a one-pronged approach. It has to be a multi-pronged approach to make sure we serve our citizens well.”
Copeland oversees an office with more than 50 attorneys and also the county Criminal Investigation Division with “a host of detectives” and “various units, including crimes against seniors, drug investigation, white collar crime, crime scene, bomb squad, insurance fraud, narcotics unit, homicide unit, computer forensic unit, special investigations that focuses on political corruption and special victims unit. “Police officers from all the districts in Delaware County are part of our task force,” she said.
“She’s always been very supportive of law enforcement and a very fair individual,” said Radnor Police Superintendent William Colarulo, when asked about Copeland. “And I’m looking forward to working with her in new capacity as district attorney.”
James Pierce, a criminal defense lawyer with the Wayne firm Pierce, Caniglia & Taylor, has known Copeland since she was chief of the narcotics unit.
“She is a good lawyer, efficient and well prepared,” said Pierce. “And she was fair.”
Copeland said that she spends so much time working that she doesn’t have time for many hobbies but she does like to spend time with her mother and brother. She also enjoys movies, especially at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute and likes different genres of films.
She also relishes the arboretums in the area, including Chanticleer, Tyler and Jenkins.
“They offer you peace and tranquility and beauty,” Copeland said.
Copeland, a Republican, said that she will have to run for her job as D.A. next year.
“I came up through this office earning my way to the position of supervisor, rising to the point of becoming a deputy,” she said. She noted that she has the experience to lead the office.
“I’ve been there,” Copeland said. “I’ve done it. I know how to do it well. I hope to prove to the ladies and gentlemen of our communities that I do this well...I have done it for a quarter of a century.”
Asked if she misses arguing cases in the courtroom, Copeland said, “For the right case, I will go into the courtroom again…It’s something I’ve done for years and years and enjoy doing…We stand for people whose voices can’t be heard.”
That day two homicide trials were underway, she said.
“We speak out for the victims of our community and we speak out for our community,” said Copeland. “Having lived here and having represented that voice, I know what needs to be said and so do my prosecutors in this office. We take pride every single day in what we do. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t love it to my very core.”