Feds Lay Down For Rudolph

If Eric Robert Rudolph weren't a cold-blooded murderer on the verge of spending the rest of his life in a federal penitentiary he'd make an excellent legal analyst. Amidst an ugly 11-page manifesto (think Timothy McVeigh meets Paul Hill meets the Unabomber) Rudolph cogently described why the feds cut him a sweetheart deal that spares him a possible death penalty.

The Justice Department chickened out, Rudolph surmised, because federal lawyers figured they never could get a unanimous jury in the South to recommend a death sentence for a man convicted of trying to stop the practice of abortion — even though he chose to do it by bombing a clinic and killing a cop (and by bombing the 1996 Olympics and killing an innocent bystander). "They were afraid," Rudolph boasted in his diatribe, "that in at least one jurisdiction they were going to run into this recalcitrant pro-life juror who would hang the jury and deliver a political defeat and embarrassment to Washington's efforts to make an example out of the person who assaulted their specially protected policy of child murder."

My view of why the feds backed down is not dissimilar — just a bit more diffuse.