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Rudolph defense attorneys ask for delay in trialProsecution wants trial to begin June 1
ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Attorneys for accused bomber Eric Rudolph said Monday they cannot be ready for a trial next June and asked a federal judge to delay it. Their move came in response to a prosecution motion 10 days ago asking that the trial begin June 1. Rudolph will stand trial for the bombing the New Woman, All Women Health Care Clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, in January 1998. Birmingham police officer Robert Sanderson was killed by the bomb, while a nurse was critically injured. Rudolph, 36, has pleaded innocent to the charge. He could be sentenced to death if convicted. He is also charged in the 1996 Olympic bombing in Atlanta that killed one and injured more than 100, as well as bombings the following year in Atlanta at a women's health clinic and a gay nightclub. Prosecutors have said they have given defense attorneys 15,000 interviews done by the FBI, as well as 40 binders of photos and memoranda. They also expect to turn over all evidence to the Atlanta case by the end of this year. "The government is seeking to kill Mr. Rudolph," says the defense motion filed Monday. "Our investigation must be exhaustive." The defense motion says there are only two defense counsels, assisted by two other attorneys, to prepare for the Birmingham trial, and with more than 15,000 interviews turned over by the government, "it is totally unrealistic to expect the four members to review in the five months since their appointment what it has taken the government five years ... to collect, decipher and interpret." It also asks if government prosecutors will introduce evidence from the Atlanta bombings during the Birmingham trial. The defense has requested hundreds of interviews conducted after the Atlanta bombings by the FBI, including the file on security guard Richard Jewell, who was initially investigated for the Olympic bombing. Defense attorney Richard Jaffe raised the possibility this summer during a conference with prosecutors and a federal magistrate that the defense "may want to pursue the possibilities that a different person did them both, and neither was our client." The defense did not offer a date when it would feel comfortable beginning the trial, but in the past has said it might not be ready until early 2005. Rudolph was arrested May 31 in Murphy, North Carolina, after being a fugitive for more than five years. He is awaiting trial in the Jefferson County, Alabama, jail.
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