A jury Friday convicted Walter Leroy Moody Jr. of all charges in the mail-bomb deaths of a federal judge and a civil rights lawyer in the Southeast.
The conviction came 18 months after what Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called one of the most intensive investigations ever by the Justice Department.Moody, 57, of Rex, Ga., showed no emotion and said nothing when the verdicts were read.
"He anticipated, in my opinion, the verdict," said Edward Tolley, one of Moody's lawyers. "We all anticipated what the verdict would be. We fought a good fight but we knew it would be an uphill battle."
Tolley said he expects to appeal.
Moody, who blamed the Ku Klux Klan for the slayings, was convicted on all 71 counts by the jury on its second day of deliberations.
The charges included first-degree murder in the death of Judge Robert Vance. Moody also was convicted of causing the death of Savannah, Ga., Alderman Robert E. Robinson and transporting explosive materials with intent to kill him.
Two of the four counts relating to Vance's death carry mandatory life sentences without parole and two carry a possible life sentence without parole.
Moody's attorney has said he expects Alabama and Georgia to file state murder charges. The attorney said possible death sentences in those states could supersede any federal sentence.
The judge's widow, Helen Vance, who was wounded in the bombing, said she was happy with the verdicts and didn't care whether or not Alabama authorities seek the death penalty.
"I want him off the street," she said, "but I don't care anything about the death penalty."
U.S. District Judge Edward Devitt did not immediately schedule sentencing. Moody was being held at Oak Park Heights state prison.
The jurors met for about seven hours Thursday. When they resumed deliberations Friday, they asked for a definition of interstate commerce.
One of the counts accused Moody of "transporting explosive materials in interstate commerce" in the mail-bomb killing of Vance, an 11th U.S. Circuit judge.
The jury was told that anything sent through the mail is considered interstate commerce, even if it doesn't leave the state, said defense attorney Don Samuel. The bomb that killed Vance was mailed from Georgia.
The December 1989 bombings killed Vance at his home in Mountain Brook, Ala., and Robinson at his Savannah office.
Bombs sent to the federal court in Atlanta and to the Jacksonville office of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were intercepted; a tear-gas bomb exploded in the Atlanta office of the NAACP caused no fatalities.