Here's how one man turned on courthouse staff and killed my father-in-law: Ex-prosecutor
As part of a conversation about political or ideological violence against judges inspired by recent events involving Donald Trump, former federal prosecutor, Joyce White Vance, revealed a tragic story about a disgruntled litigant who killed her father-in-law and left injuries and victims in his wake.
"You know, you think about this a lot in these situations," Vance said about the political violence facing different groups this week. "My father-in-law was an 11th Circuit judge who was murdered by a mail bomber. That person was a dissatisfied litigant and that person posed a threat to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. He sent a bomb to the court which, fortunately, didn't go off. He sent a bomb to the NAACP in Florida. He sent a bomb that tragically went off and killed an alderman in Savannah, Georgia. So these risks of violence are not new."
The bomber she is referencing is Walter Leroy Moody, who was ultimately caught and executed in 2018.
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"When federal appeals Judge Robert Vance opened the small brown parcel in the kitchen of his suburban Alabama home on December 16, 1989, it exploded, killing him instantly and seriously injuring his wife," the FBI history page said. "Two days later, virtually the same scenario happened again. This time, the victim was Atlanta Attorney Robert Robertson."
In total Moody sent four bombs before being stopped.
"What is new" today, Vance explained about acts of violence, "is that they are being condoned. And perhaps even worse, the singular voice that could condemn them, a former president simply refuses to do so. It is inexplicable that this is an aspect of our politics that people are so wrapped up in obtaining and keeping power that we now lack the simple decency to say, there are limits in a democracy. And among those limits is threatening violence. Jurors like the grand jurors in Georgia, judges like Judge Chutkan. We simply can't tolerate this and remain the America that we want to be."
See the full comments from Vance and the panel below or at the link here.
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