Convicted Bomber Receives Life Sentence : Civil rights: The Georgia man was found guilty in the deaths of a federal judge and a lawyer. The judgment disallows any chance for parole.

A man convicted of killing a federal appeals judge and a civil rights lawyer with mail bombs was sentenced Tuesday to seven life terms plus 400 years in prison, with no possibility of parole.

Walter Leroy Moody Jr. “struck viciously” at the principles of judicial independence and minority rights, U.S. District Judge Edward Devitt said as he imposed the toughest sentence allowed.

Moody stood quietly during the 15-minute sentencing hearing, deferring to defense attorney Edward Tolley when the judge asked if he wished to comment.

“This case reflects a great tragedy to a great number of people,” Tolley told the judge.

Tolley said a notice of appeal was filed immediately after sentencing.

Moody, 58, of Rex, Ga., was convicted June 28 by a jury. He was charged in a 71-count indictment with mailing pipe bombs in December, 1989, that killed U.S. 11th Circuit Judge Robert S. Vance at his home in Mountain Brook, Ala., and lawyer Robert E. Robinson at his office in Savannah, Ga.

The trial was moved to St. Paul partly because of extensive publicity in the Southeast.

Prosecutors said Moody had a vendetta against the court system because of a 1972 conviction on charges of possessing a pipe bomb--a conviction that was upheld on appeal by the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals--and because he thought blacks got preferential treatment in the courts.

The pipe bomb involved in the 1972 case was of the same unusual design used in the 1989 bombings, prosecutors said.

“There’s no doubt in my mind he’s a very dangerous man,” the slain jurist’s son, Robert Vance Jr., said from his law office in Birmingham, Ala., after Moody was sentenced. “We wanted him behind bars for life.”

Acting U.S. Atty. Gen. William Barr called the sentence “a just, successful conclusion to the investigation and prosecution of heinous crimes that shocked the nation.”

Prosecutors in Alabama and Georgia have indicated they might pursue murder charges that could carry death sentences for Moody, but Tolley said “the only reason to do it would be pure retribution.”

“I felt . . . given Moody’s background, education and obviously high level of intelligence, that if he indeed is guilty of these crimes as the jury has now said, that it was a great waste of a human being,” Tolley told reporters.

Moody was the only defense witness. In several days of testimony, which was given against the advice of his lawyers, Moody blamed the bombings on the Ku Klux Klan and said he was unwittingly used by his former lawyer to get parts of the bombs.

Moody also was accused of mailing a bomb intercepted at the federal court building in Atlanta; mailing a bomb intercepted at the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People office in Jacksonville, Fla., and mailing a tear-gas bomb that went off in the NAACP’s Atlanta office.

In addition to the prison terms, Devitt ordered Moody to pay restitution of $4,254 to Vance’s estate and $6,916 to Robinson’s estate, with smaller amounts to the two NAACP branches. He also assessed Moody $3,550 that will go to a crime victims fund.

However, the judge declined the prosecutors’ request to order Moody to turn over to the federal government any money he might make from selling his story.