ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, April 17, 1996 TAG: 9604170061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
The five-year federal limit on prosecuting most crimes other than capital offenses means state officials may ultimately control whether a Unabomber suspect faces trial in attacks that occurred years ago.
``Federal prosecutors face potentially serious statute-of-limitation problems,'' said Jay Stephens, former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Of the dozen Unabomber attacks that occurred more than five years ago, none could have brought the federal death penalty anyway. A 1985 bombing killed a man, but there was no federal capital punishment at the time.
The Unabomber, if convicted of either of two later killings, could face the death penalty, because that punishment was restored to federal law in August 1994. Besides the three deaths, 23 people have been injured in the string of bombings that began in 1978.
To allow for federal prosecution in attacks that happened more than five years before indictment would require the involvement of a conspiracy or of racketeering or criminal organizations, not the act of a lone assailant, attorneys said.
But details of those earlier bombings may well be used - if a judge allows - as evidence of a pattern of behavior to bolster cases that can be brought, said Edward S.G. Dennis Jr., a former assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's criminal division.
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