Motion to suppress evidence filed in Rudolph case
From Henry Schuster
CNN
(CNN) -- Lawyers for accused bomber Eric Robert Rudolph asked a judge Monday to suppress evidence gathered during his arrest.
In making their argument to suppress, Rudolph's attorneys filed motions which said his capture was "the result of an illegal detention and arrest."
Rudolph had been on the run for more than five years when he was arrested by a rookie police officer behind a grocery store in Murphy, North Carolina, on May 31, 2003.
He had been the subject of an intensive manhunt and was wanted for the bombings of a clinic where abortions are performed in Birmingham, Alabama, and a string of bombings in Atlanta, Georgia, including the blast that took place during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Centennial Olympic Park.
During the arrest, police officer Jeff Postell spotted a man who then attempted to hide himself behind some milk crates.
Postell ordered the man to lay on the ground. When he asked the man to identify himself, the man said his name was Jerry Wilson and that he was from Ohio.
At least one of the officers responding to a back-up call from Postell thought the man looked like Eric Rudolph, but he was not positively identified until after he was taken in to the local jail.
"They didn't have any basis to take him in. I don't think there is any law against rummaging in a dumpster," one of Rudolph's defense attorneys told CNN. The defense attorney says Rudolph's team is not arguing that he should be released now, but that he should never have been arrested in the first place.
Rudolph told investigators the locations of those two camp sites the day he was arrested. He did not meet with a defense attorney until two days after he was arrested.
The defense wants any evidence gathered during that period suppressed.
The defense motion said the government had already agreed not to use any evidence gathered after Rudolph was identified, including evidence gathered from two camp sites.
There was no immediate response from the prosecution.
Rudolph faces the death penalty in his Birmingham trial. A police officer was killed by the bomb that went off outside the New Woman All Women Health Clinic on the morning of January 29, 1998.
Monday, Rudolph's attorneys again filed motions in federal court arguing that the death penalty was unconstitutional and should not be an option in his trial.
Jury selection for Rudolph's Birmingham trial begins in March 2005.
