Prosecutors Say Kaczynski Could Be Tried in N.J. First

The federal government, having failed to win an early trial for Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski in Sacramento, said Thursday he could be tried here first in the death of a New Jersey man.

The government had originally planned to try Kaczynski first in Sacramento, where a November trial date was set recently in two of the deaths attributed to the Unabomber’s 18-year string of explosions.

Kaczynski’s lawyers are asking a judge to transfer the New Jersey case to Sacramento; they ultimately seek a single trial in the capital on all the Unabomber charges, since most of the evidence is common to both cases.

Defense attorneys argue that the move would expedite resolution of the charges arising from the 1994 mail bomb death of Thomass Mosser, a New Jersey advertising executive, in the only attack for which the Unabomber claimed responsibility.

But in their reply filed Thursday, prosecutors said a trial starting in June in New Jersey would be over in time for the California trial to proceed.

The change of venue motion is to be argued Tuesday in Newark before U.S. District Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise, after Kaczynski’s arraignment by video conference on charges that he murdered Mosser.

Kaczynski, who became a recluse in Montana after working as a mathematics professor at UC Berkeley, has already pleaded innocent to a 10-count indictment covering four Unabomber attacks that killed two people in Sacramento.

Federal authorities contend that Kaczynski, 54, used bombs to kill three people and injure 23 others between 1978 and 1995. He was arrested April 3 at his cabin in Lincoln, Mont., and is being held in California without bail.

Messages left Thursday evening for Kaczynski’s lawyers in New Jersey and California were not immediately returned.