Alabama Bombing of Judge Prompts Extra S.D. Security

U.S. marshals accompanied San Diego’s federal judges to a routine bar admission ceremony Monday, illustrating the stepped-up security precautions ordered for the local federal bench in light of the weekend attack on an Alabama federal judge.

At least four marshals watched the Omni Hotel ballroom in downtown San Diego while the judges swore in hundreds of new lawyers, marking the first time marshals have ever provided security at the program, Judge Gordon Thompson Jr. said.

In addition to the protection at what turned out to be an uneventful ceremony, the judges also received new orders to bring “suspicious” mail to the marshals for X-ray, said Thompson, the court’s chief judge.

The judges were urged to be “more aware of the security that’s necessary from the standpoint of packages” because of the mail bomb that killed U.S. 11th Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance on Saturday, Thompson said. Vance’s wife, Helen, was seriously hurt when the package bomb exploded at their home in suburban Birmingham, Ala.

The marshals’ advice to be more aware took on added urgency later Monday when San Diego’s federal judges learned both of the bomb threat that forced the evacuation of the 11th Circuit building in Atlanta and of another bomb that killed a Savannah, Ga., lawyer.

“We’re just praying that this is . . . not some planned terror against the judiciary in the United States,” Judge J. Lawrence Irving said. “I guess time will tell.”

San Diego judges have not actually received any recent threats, nor does there appear to be any reason to link the San Diego bench to the devices in Georgia and Alabama, Thompson said.

Still, those bombs “give us all grave concern,” Thompson said. The San Diego Federal Courthouse houses 10 trial judges, four magistrates, four bankruptcy judges and two appeals court justices.

The San Diego courthouse “has had and continues to have a rather substantial security system in place,” Thompson said. “It’s more than I’ve seen in some courthouses, in many courthouses.”

He declined to discuss complete details of the system, but mentioned the airport-style metal detector and X-ray machine at courthouse entrances as well as the “ability to have court security officers available to us should any difficulty occur in or around the courtroom.”

San Diego judges who receive a “viable” threat also can take advantage of around-the-clock security, and several judges have done so in recent years, Thompson said.

Richard Cameron, the U.S. marshal in San Diego, declined to discuss Thompson’s comments Monday on added security measures, saying it is against office policy.

Tom Taylor, a U.S. postal inspector in San Diego, said his office has received no reports of unusual packages directed to the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego.

Vance’s assassination also prompted officials at the San Diego Superior Courts to consider security at the county court facilities. Marshal Michael Sgobba said, however, that there are no immediate plans to upgrade security.

Next July, the downtown courthouse is set to receive airport-style metal detectors, Sgobba said. The detectors are now in place only at the family and juvenile courts, he said.