Georgia Man Found Guilty of Fatal Mail-Bombings

ST. PAUL, Minn. —  A jury Friday convicted Walter Leroy Moody Jr. of all charges in the mail-bomb deaths of a federal judge in Alabama and a civil rights lawyer in Georgia.

Moody, who blamed the Ku Klux Klan for the slayings, was convicted on 71 counts by the jury on its second day of deliberations.

The U. S. District Court jurors 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 U. S. 11th Circuit Judge Robert Vance at his home in Mountain Brook, Ala.

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 trial, which began June 4, was moved to Minnesota partly because of pretrial publicity in the Southeast.

Moody, 57, of Rex, Ga., was charged in the December, 1989, mail-bomb deaths of Vance and civil rights lawyer Robert E. Robinson at his office in Savannah, Ga.

The bombs sent to the federal court in Atlanta and to the Jacksonville, Fla., office of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People were intercepted.

Moody was the only defense witness, taking the stand against the advice of his court-appointed attorneys.

Moody blamed the Klan for the bombings and said he was unwittingly used by his former attorney, Michael C. Ford, to get parts for the bombs.

Prosecutors said Moody had a vendetta against the court system for his 1972 conviction of possessing a pipe-bomb.

They said Moody sometimes masqueraded as a lawyer and hated blacks partly because he thought they received preferential treatment by the courts.

The prosecution said Vance was a perfect target because he had ruled in favor of black plaintiffs in a school desegregation case, saying their 20-year-old claim was not outdated.