Shot Fired Into Home of Blackmun, Often Threatened Over 1973 Abortion Ruling

WASHINGTON —  Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who has received numerous threats since writing the court’s controversial 1973 decision legalizing abortion, said Monday that a bullet was fired through the window of his suburban Virginia home last Thursday night.

In a statement released by his office, Blackmun confirmed that a single shot had been fired through a window of his apartment on the third floor of a 12-story building in Arlington, Va., across the Potomac River from Washington. Both Blackmun, 76, and his wife, Dorothy, were at home at the time but neither was injured.

FBI Has No Suspects

William M. Baker, assistant director of the FBI, which is investigating the incident, said that there are no suspects in the shooting, which occurred after 10 p.m. “No one has claimed credit,” he said.

Baker said that the FBI is trying to plot the trajectory of a 9-millimeter bullet found embedded in a chair to determine from where it was fired. Law enforcement sources who asked not to be identified said that the bullet--the kind usually used in handguns rather than rifles--could have been fired from the other side of the Potomac River, raising the possibility that the shot was a random one that hit Blackmun’s window by accident.

One local law enforcement official said: “It doesn’t make sense to use a handgun if you’re really trying to hit someone. Odds are you’d use a rifle because of the distance and its greater accuracy.”

Blackmun has been under constant guard in public since he received a death threat last October from the Army of God, an alleged anti-abortion group that has claimed responsibility for attacks against abortion clinics throughout the country.

Threatening Letter

The FBI’s Baker said that Blackmun had received a threatening letter recently, “but (we) have found no connection between it and previous letters (threatening Blackmun) and the shooting incident.” Another source familiar with the letter noted that it made no mention of abortion and said that “the writer didn’t like the way Blackmun was doing his job.”

United Press International reported that the typewritten letter, postmarked in New York, threatened “to blow the justice’s brains out” and that the writer said he would attend Blackmun’s funeral “and laugh.” In a 1982 television interview, Blackmun said that he had been called “Butcher of Dachau, murderer, Pontius Pilate, King Herod--you name it.”

Blackmun is accompanied by security guards whenever he appears in public, including social functions and travel between his home and the court. Although the chief justice uses an official limousine, associate justices usually make their own way to and from work.

Court spokesman Toni House said that news of the shooting had been withheld “in the interest of Justice Blackmun and the other justices.” She said that Blackmun’s statement was released only in response to a reporter’s queries.

Wife ‘Quite Upset’

UPI reported that Blackmun and his wife were in the room shortly before the incident and that Blackmun had left the room moments before the shot was fired. Blackmun’s wife, reportedly showered with glass, was described as “quite upset,” and UPI quoted one source as saying that the bullet left a hole in the window the size of “an apple or orange.”

It was only the second time in history that a Supreme Court justice had been attacked. According to the Supreme Court Historical Society, Justice Stephen Field, who served on the court from 1863 to 1897, once received a bomb in the mail from California, but it was defused without injury.