Kaczynski’s Plea for Prosecution Records Denied

A federal magistrate has rejected a request by Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski’s lawyers for a wide range of documents they hoped to use to challenge the prosecution’s evidence.

In a blow to the defense, U.S. Magistrate Gregory Hollows said he denied the defense team’s request to review “essentially all documents” used by federal investigators to obtain a search warrant for Kaczynski’s remote Montana cabin.

“Nothing that has transpired in this case thus far supports that present counsel, or the FBI for that matter, has actively concealed exculpatory evidence” that would help in Kaczynski’s defense, Hollows said in the order, which was filed in court in Sacramento on Wednesday night.

Prosecutors and investigators have said they found extensive evidence at Kaczynski’s Montana cabin incriminating him in a series of bombings between 1978 and 1995 that killed three people and injured 23.

The defense has asked the court to throw out all of the evidence seized by the FBI from Kaczynski’s cabin. The defense alleges that the search was illegal because the FBI’s affidavit supporting its request for a search warrant contained misleading information.

To prove their assertion, Kaczynski’s lawyers said they needed to have access to more of the prosecution’s documents because the information they contain “might contradict the information in the affidavit or reveal the incompleteness of such information.”

In his ruling, Hollows denied the bulk of the defense request, saying he was not prepared to “open up the prosecutor’s files without limitation.”

Among his decisions, Hollows said the government does not have to provide the defense with reports by experts and scholars who were consulted by investigators during their search for the Unabomber.

Hollows said he would privately review certain other documents not yet turned over to the defense, including reports and files about 12 people that the defense alleges were other “serious” suspects in the FBI’s Unabomber investigation. After studying these documents, Hollows said he would decide whether any should be released to the defense.