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December
17, 2003 David Kaczynski, who led federal investigators to his brother, “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, in 1996, spoke out against the death penalty last month at the Xavier Center, St. Elizabeth College, Convent Station. “The more you learn and think about the death penalty, the less likely you are to support it,” Kaczynski stated. “There exists a serious inequity in the structure of the system. The worst lawyers are reserved for the poorest individuals.” On hand were members of New Jerseyans for a Death Penalty Moratorium (NJDPM), who believe that there should be a Senate vote in New Jersey to allow for a moratorium on capital punishment, as was done in Illinois by Gov. George Ryan. “There needs to be a ‘time-out,’ to study the death penalty in this state, and hopefully realize that, ultimately, it is not effective. There has not been an execution in New Jersey in decades, yet the government continues to spend millions of dollars on it,” he said. Kaczynski, whose brother Ted was responsible for mail bombings that killed three people and injured 23 between the years of 1978 and 1995, saw his brother evade the death penalty. Yet Kaczynski believes that his brother was afforded an unfair advantage, and that race and economics play a major role in capital punishment decisions: “The death penalty is a response lacking compassion, imagination or any developed spiritual dimension.” For Kaczynski, that story began in August 1995. It was his wife, Linda, who first began to suspect that her estranged brother-in-law might be the Unabomber. “I arrived home, and my wife asked me to sit down—she had something to tell me. She had a hard time starting. Finally, she managed, ‘Do you think your brother is the Unabomber?’ ” he remembered. Linda Kaczynski had never met Ted, who had become estranged from the family, but she had read some of his letters to David. “The Unabomber had written a manifesto about how technology was ruining humanity, and there was a similar theme running through Ted’s letters. He had said he wouldn’t kill again if it were published. I couldn’t believe what my wife was suggesting, but if the manifesto were published, I would read it,” he recalled. Shortly thereafter, the document was published in the Washington Post. “Linda and I went to the local library; it had been posted on the Web. After a few minutes of reading, I realized Linda wasn’t looking at the screen–she didn’t need to. She was looking at my face,” he said. Kaczynski recounted his horror and the onset of depression as he began to truly consider that his brother might be the source of one of the most expensive manhunts in U.S. history. “Our main concern then became, if Ted was responsible for these acts, what if he struck again?” At this point, David and Linda Kaczynski went to the FBI with their suspicions. Perhaps most difficult for Kaczynski would be having to tell his elderly mother, Wanda, that he believed Ted was the Unabomber. According to Kaczynski, government officials had promised that the family’s involvement would remain confidential. He did not want Ted to hear from anyone else that his brother had turned him in. However, in the ensuing days, a news frenzy engulfed the Kaczynski home. “The media’s appetite was ferocious, and everywhere, the story was that Ted had been turned in by his brother,” he explained. “Ted was arrested in his cabin in Montana in April 1996. Investigators found another bomb under the bed ready to be delivered. There was no doubt of his guilt—we knew that now it was a matter of death or life in prison. But we asked ourselves whether his behavior was a product of mental illness? “The prosecution hired a well-known psychiatrist [Dr. Sally Johnson] who went around the country, testifying always on behalf of the prosecution. They were not interested in finding the truth, but in demonizing my brother, destroying evidence and seeking the death penalty. “I remember the sense of betrayal,” Kaczynski noted. “Our family came forward because, for us, there were no sides, just the human side. We came forward out of principle. But here was the U.S. government interested only in winning, and putting the ‘Unabomber’ to death,” he emphasized. After two years of lost privacy for the Kaczynski family, a plea bargain was struck. Ted Kaczynski was spared the death penalty. “He was given life in prison with no parole—it was not a joy, but it was a relief,” Kaczynski stated. Some time after the sentencing, David Kaczynski received a telephone call from Bill Babbitt, a Californian who had turned his brother in to the Sacramento police after finding strong evidence that tied him to a recent break-in robbery, where an elderly woman had been beaten, suffered a heart attack and died. Unlike Ted Kaczynski, Manny Babbitt was African-American—a sixth-grade drop out who had joined the U.S. Marine Corps at 17, completed three tours of Vietnam, and returned suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Later he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent three years in a mental institution. He had committed the crime only a few months after his release. “Manny’s court-appointed lawyer had never even tried a criminal case. There was eyewitness testimony that he drank heavily during the trial. He also selected an all-white jury, despite Bill Babbitt’s objections,” Kaczynski explained. “The jury never heard about the Purple Heart or other medals Manny received for his courageous service in Vietnam,” he added. Kaczynski and his wife Linda resolved to help the Babbitt family in any way they could. They held press conferences with Bill Babbitt, and even appeared on “Good Morning America.” Babbitt was later convicted for the crime and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Kaczynski recalled that Bill Babbitt went to San Quinton to see his brother’s execution, because “he did not want his brother to see only angry faces.” At the funeral, Kaczynski recalled the most emotional point of the day. “His mother just buckled and began to weep. I began to cry, and I cried during the entire trip home that day. My tears were not just tears of grief, but tears of shame. I realized that without the access to the media, the money and privileges we were afforded, this could have been us,” Kaczynski said. “That day was a turning point. Before, I had just wanted to return to my previous life, but now I realized that would be impossible. There was something larger here—these stories had to be told.” In their 1980 statement on capital punishment, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) stated that abolition of the death penalty would: reaffirm the unique worth of dignity of each person from the moment of conception; remove any ambiguity as to the Church’s affirmation of the sanctity of human life and be in accordance with the example of Jesus.
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