Judge Won’t Bar Death Penalty in Kaczynski Case

A jury can consider the death penalty against Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski if he is convicted of a bombing death, a federal judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell denied a request from Kaczynski’s attorneys to block a possible death sentence, rejecting their arguments that a capital sentence is “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Jury selection in Kaczynski’s trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday. The former mathematics professor is charged with using bombs to kill a businessman and timber lobbyist a decade apart in Sacramento, and of injuring two other people.

He also has been charged in New Jersey with the bombing death of an advertising executive. He has pleaded innocent to all charges.

The government contends that Kaczynski is a serial bomber responsible for 16 attacks between 1978 and 1995 in which three people were killed and 23 injured. He was arrested in Montana in April 1996.

The defense had urged Burrell to block potential imposition of a death sentence, contending that the federal statute was vague and that the prosecution’s plans to discuss evidence of alleged crimes that are included in the indictment could prejudice a jury against Kaczynski, particularly during a penalty phase.

But Burrell disagreed, ruling that there is not “an evidentiary free-for-all” that would deprive Kaczynski of “his constitutional rights or automatically compromise the reliability of the information admitted at the sentencing hearing.”

Prosecutors pushed for a death sentence, saying that Kaczynski would be a serious threat even if he were locked in a prison cell for the rest of his life.

If convicted, Kaczynski would deserve the death penalty because he would represent “a continuing danger to society” with a “reckless disregard for human life,” prosecutors charged.