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 only been arraigned in Sacramento.

He could face the death penalty in either the California or New Jersey cases, which resulted in the three deaths attributed to an 18-year string of bombings in six states that also injured 23.

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 through a telephone.

In a letter to lawyers sent Wednesday, 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.

“That’s a tentative date, but that’s the one that’s been set,” Debevoise said Thursday.

The judge declined to say why he suggested a video arraignment. “It’s probably pretty obvious, but I can’t discuss it,” Debevoise said.

Kaczynski’s defense attorney in New Jersey said Thursday he will seek to have both potential death penalty cases tried together in California.

Prosecutors are expected to strenuously object, said John F. McMahon, the federal public defender in Newark.