Ten years ago, David Kaczynski was forced to make the heart-wrenching decision of going to the FBI with suspicions that his own brother could be the infamous Unabomber, who the FBI had been after for 17 years.

‘(My wife) and I were the only people in the world who could stop the violence,’ Kaczynski told a group of law students and faculty in the College of Law yesterday. ‘The thought that we could someday be responsible for the death of an innocent person was terrifying. We had to come forward.’

Kaczynski, the executive director of New Yorkers against the Death Penalty, spoke about his personal connection to the death penalty and the death penalty as a legal issue.

Although Kaczynski opened his speech by discussing death penalty law and court cases, the personal stories he shared later on seemed to make much more of an effect, bringing some audience members close to tears.

‘I was extremely moved by his speech,’ said Katherine Lawler, president of the St. Thomas More Society, a Catholic law student organization that sponsored the speech.

Kaczynski told the audience how his wife, Linda, first came to him with the suspicion that his brother, Ted, could be the Unabomber, who had placed 16 bombs during a 17-year time span. The Unabomber’s bombs had killed three people and injured many others.

Linda Kaczynski pointed to the Unabomber’s connection to Chicago, where David and Ted had grown up, and the University of California, Berkeley, where Ted had once taught, Kaczynski said.

‘At first, I assumed her imagination had gone way beyond her intuition,’ Kaczynski said. ‘I said, ‘That’s nuts!”

When the Unabomber released his anti-technology manifesto to the media, Kaczynski was able to read it online.

‘After reading the manifesto, I felt pretty chilled,’ Kaczynski said. ‘There were points where it sounded a lot like my brother.’

Kaczynski provided the audience with background on his brother who in his mid-20s had quit his job as a professor and moved to rural Montana, where he lived in a shack without running water. He said communications with his brother were very bizarre, and he had a very strong feeling and worry that his brother was mentally ill.

After a few weeks of poring over letters from his brother as well as the Unabomber’s manifesto, Kaczynski and his wife decided they had to bring the information to the FBI.

‘The realization that if we turned Ted in, there was a chance he would be executed scared me greatly,’ Kaczynski said. ‘I didn’t even believe in the death penalty. I had always been against it.’

Throughout his speech, Kaczynski emphasized his belief that there is a growing sense in the United States that the death penalty doesn’t work because of gaping holes in the system.

‘In a justice system the values of justice must be balanced with efficiency, a system that actually works,’ he said. ‘The (death penalty) system seems powerless to be applied fairly.’

Kaczynski said while he personally feels the death penalty is wrong, it is also impractical. He cited that there are currently 3,500 people on death row, yet few executions are actually carried out.

In the state of California, each execution costs about $100 million, Kaczynski said.

‘No matter what side you’re on, you have to believe that $100 million could have been better spent on programs to make society better,’ he said.

He described the death penalty as a strange animal within the legal system that has been ruled unconstitutional time and again. He cited many court cases throughout his speech, including two involving the state of New York.

New York passed a law that made the death penalty mandatory for certain crimes, and the state Supreme Court ruled this unconstitutional, Kaczynski said. There are currently two bills to bring the death penalty back to the state, and Kaczynski urged the students to contact lawmakers in opposition to them.

Kaczynski’s brother was not sentenced to death, but he said this was not due to his brother’s extreme mental illness, since mentally ill people often still receive the death penalty. He rather attributed the lighter sentence to the skill of his brother’s lawyers.

‘We aren’t executing the people who commit the worst crimes,’ he said. ‘We are executing the people with worst lawyers.’

Kaczynski spoke of a man who was executed even though his brother had confessed to the crime, and another man who was executed despite his extreme mental illness caused by serving in the Vietnam War.

Kaczynski ended his speech saying that he was speaking not because of his brother, but rather for the people like the two men who had been wrongly executed.

Thomas Maroney, a law professor, stood up after Kaczynski spoke and said that he had greatly enjoyed Kaczynski’s speech, but he wished more people had attended.

‘I’m struck by the irony of how few people came today,’ said Maroney, who said as a lawyer, he had requested the death penalty in some cases.

Audience members appeared visibly moved by Kaczynski’s remarks.

‘Before coming here, I hadn’t really made a decision about the death penalty,’ Lawler said. ‘He made justice the center of his argument, which made it very compelling.’

Published on March 26, 2006 at 12:00 pm