Feds Lay Down For Rudolph

Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen Takes Justice Dept. To Task For Deal

(CBS)  Whether Rudolph is right about the abortion angle, whether I am right about the anti-government angle, or whether the truth lies somewhere in the middle, the about-face from the feds is startling. The deals formalized Wednesday say a lot more about the potential jury pools in Alabama and Georgia than they do about Rudolph. They say a lot more about politics in this country right now than they do about the particularly cowardly nature of Rudolph's crimes. And they say a lot more about the current leadership at the Justice Department than they do about the justice of it all. I just don't get how prosecutors can look at a woman like Emily Lyons (who can't look back because she was blinded and disfigured by one of Rudolph's bombs) and tell her that justice was done through these deals. Lyons, according to wire reports, "wept in the Birmingham court when Rudolph offered an abbreviated confession. 'He sounded so proud of it,' she said. 'I feel he is not being punished enough for what he did.'"

Just hours before Rudolph released his view of the world, federal prosecutors offered their own spin on things. "Today Eric Rudolph's reign of terror ended in courts of law and justice," U.S. Attorney David Nahmias declared from Atlanta. "It ended with certainty, immediacy, finality, and protection of public safety ... There can be no doubt anymore about who was responsible for those crimes, and no uncertainty about the results of long and complex trials. Eric Rudolph is guilty today. There will be no further delays in obtaining justice for the public and the many victims of his terrorist acts. Eric Rudolph is guilty forever more. There will be no long appeals."

That's all true. But this government spin ignores the fact that Rudolph's reign of terror actually ended in June 2003, when he was finally apprehended after evading one of the largest individual dragnets in world history. It ignores the fact that there was strong and clear direct and circumstantial evidence against him — certainly stronger and clearer than some of the junk evidence prosecutors routinely toss before jurors in criminal cases. It ignores the fact that many of Rudolph's victims do not see this result as justice. And the very language of the announcement arguably would justify the federal government's acceptance of a plea deal in every criminal prosecution.

Every plea deal brings with it certainty and finality. Every plea deal obviates the need for long appeals. Every plea deal avoids a long trial. But, for good reason, not every case ends with a plea deal. Sometimes, prosecutors make the tough call to bring a case to trial even though there is no guarantee of victory. Indeed, recent history is replete with examples where federal and state prosecutors took cases to trial they might have been better advised to plead out. For example, the aforementioned Nichols was re-tried in Oklahoma last year even though it was painfully obvious to any reasonable observer that any death sentence he might have received would have been voided by the federal courts. Sometimes, for political and even moral and ethical reasons, you just have to take a case to trial. Sometimes the trial itself, never mind the result, is what justice is all about.

But the feds didn't take their good cases against Rudolph to trial. They did what they have refused to do on countless occasions in the past. They failed or they refused to fight the good fight. Someone should be forced to answer for that. And if the answer, when it comes, is that Rudolph's analysis is correct — that a murderer caught the break of a lifetime (literally) because of the current state of abortion politics in Georgia or Alabama or Washington or anywhere else — then the politicians and the lawyers who signed off on these deals ought to be forced, at a minimum, to say so to what's left of Emily Lyons' face.