Judge rules N.C. Rudolph evidence OK
Judge rules N.C. Rudolph evidence OK
Asheville Citizen-Times and Wire Reports
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- A federal magistrate judge has ruled that evidence collected by authorities from bombing suspect Eric Rudolph's North Carolina trailer and shed was properly seized and can be used at his trial.
Rudolph has pleaded not guilty to charges that he bombed a Birmingham abortion clinic on Jan. 29, 1998, killing an off- duty Birmingham police officer and injuring a nurse.
U.S. Magistrate Judge T. Michael Putnam's recommendations on the evidence will now go before U.S. District Judge C. Lynwood Smith Jr., who will conduct Rudolph's death penalty trial in May.
Rudolph's attorneys challenged the validity of warrants used to search a storage shed and trailer. Putnam, who is handling pretrial matters, rejected that claim and found that Rudolph's May 2003 arrest in Western North Carolina behind a Murphy grocery store after his more than five years as a fugitive was legal.
The defense had challenged the arrest hoping to block use of false statements Rudolph made to police. The statements could now be allowed in his trial.
U.S. Attorney Alice Martin said Friday she was pleased with the recommendations. Efforts to reach Rudolph's attorneys were unsuccessful. Putnam's decision provides a 15- day period for objections.
Rudolph's attorneys had argued that federal agents improperly seized items such as a Bible, 24 books, a sales receipt, $1,600, two daggers, bayonets and pistols. Those items weren't within the scope of the search warrants, the lawyers argued.
But prosecutors said Rudolph abandoned his property to go into the North Carolina wilderness once he was linked to the bombing. Because he had left behind the property, it was searchable, they said.
The magistrate judge agreed.
"The defendant no longer held any reasonable expectation of privacy in the storage unit or trailer, having abandoned them in his flight from justice," Putnam wrote in his report.
According to testimony at an October hearing, traces of explosives were detected on seized items such as a towel, a turquoise and black baseball cap and a rocking chair cushion.
Rudolph, now held without bond in Birmingham, is also accused in the deadly bombing at the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 and blasts at two more sites in Atlanta in 1997.
Posted by Editor at December 21, 2004 07:24 AM
