The unabomber's twisted saga.

• Author: Vatz, Richard E.

There never was any doubt that the suspect arrested in April, 1996, in the Unabomber case was the man whose bombings over an 18-year period had caused the death of three people and injured more than two dozen other. When Ted Kaczynski was apprehended, a mountain of incriminating evidence was discovered, including a draft of the 35,000-word manifesto that he successfully had blackmailed several national newspapers into publishing.

Nevertheless, almost immediately, attention was focused on the possibility that Kaczynski either would plead not guilty by reason of insanity or argue that severe mental illness rendered the death penalty inappropriate. The possibility of Kaczynski's using an insanity defense was complicated by his demand, repeated many times, that he did not was "mental health" defense. That was cited by his attorney as evidence of his being mentally ill, a claim which may be quite reasonable within a legal context, but hardly is a substantively persuasive point. His lawyer, Judy Clarke, maintained that one of the symptoms of Kaczynski's "mental illness" was the "unendurability" of hearing himself described as psychologically deranged. Kaczynski's lead attorney's, Clarke and Quin Denvir, further argued, in opposition to Kaczynski's wishes, that he was so delusional he could not have formed the intent to commit the crimes of which he was accused.

As late as December, 1997, the prospect of an insanity defense for the man assumed to be the Unabomber seemed likely. It would have been the first time the revised Federal rule on insanity would have been applied in a high-profile case. It had been more than 16 years since the case of John Hinckley, who had attempted to assassinate Pres. Ronald Reagan, had led to substantial changes in the insanity defense under Federal law. At the time the Hinckley defense team persuaded the jury of his legal insanity. Federal law required the prosecution to prove a defendant's sanity once the defendant offered any evidence at all of insanity. Most legal scholars believe that the jury's finding of not guilty by reason of insanity in Hinckley's case was due to the inability of the prosecution to meet this heavy burden of proof imposed by the Federal law. Even some of the jurors later acknowledged that having heard psychiatric experts testify on both sides of the issue made it impossible for them to apply the law and reach any other conclusion, despite their dissatisfaction with this result.

Indeed, as The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb. 29, 1006, public outrage at the Hinckley verdict produced a number of reactions by juries and legislatures. In high profile cases, juries were less willing to find defendants not guilty by reason of insanity. Meanwhile, in Congress and many states, the burden of proof in insanity pleas was changed to require the defense to prove insanity by clear and convincing evidence, rather than requiring the prosecution to prove the defendant's sanity.

Kaczynski's lawyers wished to maintain that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and therefore could not have formed the intent necessary to be found criminally responsible for the 18-year-long reign of terror he visited upon those whom he found guilty of what he perceived as the over-technologizing of the U.S.

Although he eventually permitted defense psychiatrists to examine him, Kaczynski initially resisted psychiatric evaluation by even his own doctors. In fact, the Unabomber suspect had indicated from the start of his incarceration that he felt any psychologizing of his efforts would be invalid. This position, again, was inconsistent with what his attorneys recommended as his best legal strategy. The defense appeared ultimately resigned to Kaczynski's permanent incarceration and saw its primary service to his as voiding the death...