PONTIAC, Mich. - The judge who presided over the murder trial of Jack Kevorkian implored the retired pathologist to allow representation by legal counsel rather than defend himself, a transcript shows.

Oakland Circuit Judge Jessica Cooper listened to an impassioned statement by Kevorkian during an in-chambers conversation she had with him, his two legal advisors and the prosecution on March 23, the day he was to present his own defense to a first-degree murder charge.

A transcript of the hour-long on-the-record meeting was made public Wednesday (7-6-99).

Ms. Cooper asked Kevorkian to get an attorney as she had done several times before. "The only way that I know to help you is to seek counsel to help you,'' Ms. Cooper said in the transcript.

"Maybe I'd better say it plainly," Kevorkian replied. "Please don't help me."

Kevorkian, through attorney Mayer Morganroth, now wants Ms. Cooper to grant him a new trial, claiming that he received bad legal advice.

"He wanted the attorneys to be consultants," Morganroth told The Oakland Press of Pontiac for a report Thursday. "He tried the case, but they were his legal advisors and they didn't advise him appropriately."

Ms. Cooper had already ruled that Kevorkian could not say in his defense that his intention was to relieve pain and suffering when he administered a fatal injection to Thomas Youk, a Lou Gehrig's patient, on Sept. 17, 1998.

She later ruled that testimony from Youk's brother and wife who had planned to talk about Kevorkian's intent was irrelevant. The judge told Kevorkian she was attempting to get him to present a defense that was admissible under the law.

"You mentioned two constitutional rights," Kevorkian said, according to the transcript obtained by the Press. "There's a third. The two you mentioned are protected. The third, which I'm invoking, is not protected. I have a right to perform euthanasia on a patient who had a right to ask for it."

Assistant Prosecutor Dan Lemisch, who prosecuted the case with John Skrzynski, described Kevorkian's demeanor as polite but intense.

"He was very focused and goal-oriented," Lemisch said Wednesday. "He didn't want anyone to tell him how to try his case. That's what he did and there was no stopping him."

At one point in the transcript, the judge reminded Kevorkian that he would be sentenced to mandatory life in prison, should he be convicted of first-degree murder.

He replied: "When you've got someone starving to death in prison who you know is not a criminal and you know what he's doing is not a crime, maybe they'll look at it maybe. But if not, who cares? In 15, 20 years they'll say, 'Well, he was right. He's dead now, but he was right.' I've got to do what I know is right and I can't let the law, which is often immoral, block me..."

Kevorkian presented no defense and no witnesses.

He was found guilty March 26, 1999 of second-degree murder and delivery of a controlled substance in the injection death of Youk. He was sentenced to 10-25 years in prison and is not eligible for parole until May 2007.