Kaczynski Will Be Arraigned in New Jersey
Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski, declining to appear by video, will be brought to New Jersey next month to enter a plea to charges he murdered a New Jersey advertising executive, a federal judge said Thursday.
His public defender says he will seek to have those charges moved to California, where Kaczynski is charged in two other bomb deaths, in an effort to have a single trial.
Although he has been indicted in several states for Unabomber bombings, the former UC Berkeley math professor has been arraigned only in Sacramento.
He could face the death penalty in either the California or New Jersey cases, which resulted in three deaths.
Kaczynski rejected a video arraignment proposed by U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise, who has been assigned the murder case in Newark. Defendants must agree to such an arrangement, in which they appear on a television in the courtroom and listen to proceedings by telephone.
Debevoise set Dec. 10 for the arraignment on three charges stemming from the mailbomb death of Thomas J. Mosser at his North Caldwell, N.J., home in December 1994.
Kaczynski’s defense attorney in New Jersey said Thursday he will seek to have both potential death penalty cases tried together in California.
John F. McMahon, the federal public defender in Newark, said he expects prosecutors to strenuously object to consolidating the cases.
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