Deal Reached On Trial For Eric Rudolph

[CShine]

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. - A federal judge approved a plan Tuesday to try serial bombing suspect Eric Rudolph in Birmingham but pick jurors from throughout northern Alabama, instead of just a three-county area around the state's largest city. U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith approved the joint proposal that had been agreed to by defense attorneys and federal prosecutors. Rudolph had been seeking a change of venue.

U.S. Attorney Alice Martin said she was glad the Rudolph trial will be in Birmingham. Rudolph is accused of setting the Jan. 29, 1998, bomb outside New Woman All Women Health Care that killed officer Robert Sanderson and critically injuring nurse Emily Lyons. "I think it's important for the community, the victims and their families," Martin said. Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Rudolph also is charged in the bombing that killed a woman in Atlanta's Olympic park in 1996 and a pair of bombings in Atlanta in 1997, outside a gay nightclub and an office building that housed an abortion clinic. He became a fugitive after the Birmingham bombing and was arrested last year in Murphy, N.C.

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Rudolph is scheduled for trial Aug. 2. Smith said he will rule soon on a defense motion to delay the trial for as long as a year.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&ncid=718&e=6&u=/ap/20040622/ap_on_re_us/eric_rudolph

[Heddi]

1. Why isn't he being charged with domestic terrorism?

Why is it that only brown people can be terrorists? Or unknown Anthrax spreaders?

Why is this white, Anglo-Saxon male, who bombed abortion clinics & the Atlanta Olympics, not being held incommunicado, indefinitely, without a lawyer, holed up in Gitmo like oh so many other people who have NOT bombed anything or KILLED anyone or done ANYTHING other than being born in the wrong country?

Not that I think that anyone should be denied the right to see a lawyer, etc, but if ANYONE is a terrorist, this guy is 3:1 over ANYONE at guantanamo bay....

[booisblu]

2. I'm still kind of

surprised that this is going to trial. I was sure Assie would have stepped in and taken over with some obscure part of the patriot act.

[htuttle]

3. If Al Queda started bombing abortion clinics...

...would the Ashcroft Justice Dept do anything about it?