Kaczynski Seeks Review of Case
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SACRAMENTO — Theodore Kaczynski says the judge and defense lawyers at his Unabomber trial coerced him into pleading guilty, and he wants a federal appeals court to review the case.
Kaczynski pleaded guilty in January 1998 to a string of bombings that killed three people and injured 23 others. After he was sentenced to life in prison, he requested a full trial.
U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. ruled last month that Kaczynski’s claims of coercion did not warrant a hearing.
On Thursday, Kaczynski, 57, filed handwritten papers by mail indicating he planned to have the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals review the case.
The mathematician turned forest recluse said that if it were not for the mistakes of the judge and his lawyers, who believed a mental-defect defense offered the best chance of saving him from execution, he “would not have pleaded guilty and would have gone to trial.”
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