Posted on 03/10/2010 2:18:17 PM PST by Justice Department
Just weeks before government scientist Bruce Ivins' suicide, a grand jury was convening on the third floor of the federal courthouse, near the U.S. Capitol, looking into the 2001 anthrax murders. Things weren't looking good for Ivins, the only suspect in the case.
It was July 2008. His attorney, Paul F. Kemp, according to court documents reviewed by AOL News, had just filed court papers to become a death-penalty-certified attorney in the case -- a little-known fact. And the chief U.S. District judge in Washington, Royce C. Lamberth, had approved the request.
"I thought this was a precaution to take. My job is to anticipate anything," Kemp said.
He said he had told Ivins the investigation could turn into a death penalty case. "At some point in the near future I felt the government was probably going to the grand jury and would issue an indictment."
What Kemp -- and the government as well -- didn't anticipate was the unthinkable. On July 27, Ivins, 62, loaded up on Tylenol with codeine in a suicide bid. Two days later, he died.
"I was disturbed over it," Kemp said in an interview this week . "I never had a client commit suicide. It's a terrible experience. I'm much more distraught for his family."
With the suicide, so died the chance for the government to prove its case before a jury or for Ivins to prove his innocence. No charges were ever filed in the case, in which letters containing anthrax spores were mailed to five media outlets and two senators. Five people died and 17 others were sickened.
On Feb. 19, the Justice Department officially closed the case and issued a 92-page summary stating why Ivins not only did it, but acted alone. It concluded that his lab notes showed he "could, and did, create spores of the concentration and purity of the mailed spores."
Kemp, a suburban Washington attorney, said he read the report, but didn't buy into it. Not at all.
Kemp said Ivins repeatedly denied that he sent the letters or that he developed the deadly anthrax spores. And Kemp cited Ivins' fellow scientists, who insisted he was incapable of making such a high-grade, dried anthrax with the equipment available at his workplace at the Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases in Frederick, Md.
"There's not one shred of evidence to show he did it," Kemp said.
Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., echoes some of that skepticism. Last week, he called for a congressional investigation into the anthrax probe.
"We don't know whether the FBI's assertions about Dr. Ivins' activities and behavior are accurate," Holt wrote in a letter to the chairmen of the House Committees on Homeland Security, Judiciary, Intelligence, and Oversight and Government Reform.
Government investigators disagree with the skeptics.
"Suggestions that this is an entirely circumstantial case are not accurate," said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. "We are confident Dr. Ivins acted alone in carrying out this attack. There is the direct physical evidence. The murder weapon was created by Dr. Ivins and solely maintained by Dr. Ivins.
"We wish we had the opportunity to present this case and all the evidence to a jury, but we were not able to, given the circumstances."
A Justice Department source familiar with the case insisted Ivins was "singularly capable" of producing the deadly product. The person said investigators spent an "extraordinary amount of time" researching who in the science world was capable of producing the high-grade anthrax used in the deadly letters and "Dr. Ivins came up as one of the pre-eminent anthrax researchers."
Regardless, in his final weeks Ivins had been thinking about the prospect of facing the death penalty. News reports said that during a July 9, 2008, group therapy session, he mentioned that if he faced the death penalty he would go out with a blaze of glory and shoot some of his co-workers.
Kemp acknowledges the government contacted him in the final weeks to say they were concerned about Ivins' state of mind and well-being.
To many in the public, Ivins' suicide was viewed as an admission of guilt. But others -- particularly some who knew him -- saw a man who collapsed under the mighty weight of a government determined to indict him.
Kemp says he still thinks about the suicide and wonders if he couldn't have conveyed the prospect of a death-penalty case to Ivins more gently. He won't get into specifics of the conversations with Ivins, citing client-attorney privilege. But he does share this much.
"I question myself. Maybe I was too strong," he said. "I second-guess a lot the wording I used."
The FBI hounded this man to death, in my opinion.
When have you EVER heard a defense lawyer say about his client “the sumb@tch did it”
Ping
Yo Sherm, the fat lady has Laryngitis
Where you at?
Wake up brother
?
Evidence as I know it from this side of the computer.
2004-5-6-7 FBI looks at, discusses with Ivins, the anthrax situation.
Then they find 15 pairs of women's panties in the garbage at Ivins house. Fourteen of these have an unknown semen on them. Could be any males semen.
Then they ask Ivins for a DNA sample to eliminate him as the semen donor. Ivins knows this.
Five days later they find Ivins unresponsive on the floor of an upstairs bathroom.
So the real question is how long does it take to die from an overdose of Tylenol? I've got this question in to my EMT contact and I did see him, but he was on his way to a call, and said he would get back with me.
So how do you commit suicide with Tylenol?
Day 1...the day you find out they have taken your DNA in order to compare it with the panty semen. You take ??? how many Tylenol?
Day 2....do you feel that you might live, and then take more, and how many is enough?
Day 3....starting to feel sick or sicker? Do you take more? Did you take enough on Day 1? You can still tell the wife you have the flu.
Day 4....still no one knows you took all those Tylenol, so do you take more, is there a limit. Does anyone know how much to take? It will not show...not like you are shooting yourself, or got a noose around your neck.
Day 5.... passes out on the bathroom floor, not to be revived..
Dr. Ivins had plenty of opportunity to do this when they first let him know he was being investigated for anthrax. And they did pressure his family, but that did not break him.
It was this little set of panties that he did not want to answer for.
Now most MEN would just say...yeah and I sure had a lot of fun! Or it was realllllly good!! They would just own it and go on.
This was something that Ivins could not face and he chose suicide. But it was the DNA sample that triggered it, not anthrax.
Tylenol overdose can kill, but the way it kills will vary from person to person.
A general rule of thumb is a toxic dose is 150mg of acetaminophen for each kilogram of your body weight. The less you weigh, the less it will take. The more you weigh, the more you have to take.
Even then, other factors add on to what makes it lethal. If you were fasting, drink more than 3 alcoholic beverages, or for whatever reason not eating, half the normal lethal amount could kill you.
Even if you take the recommended amount, but for longer than 10 days, you could have the lethal amount build up inside of you.
Then again, you might be one of those odd people who could take a massive dose over a long period of time and nothing at all will happen.
How long will it take to die? Could be a few days, a few weeks, a few months, a couple of years, or never.
If you damage your liver, you risk other organ damage such as kidney, pancreas, heart and brain. You might not die, but you might have to live with the damage...or not.
It is a game of roulette
Ivins weighed what?? 150-160 soaking wet! So he would not have to take that much.
Maybe I should have asked, Can you die of a Tylenol overdose in less than 5 days?
Do you agree that the stimulus was the DNA swabbing for the semen on the panties?
LOL!
Denial of what?
The article says that Dr. Ivins lawyer applied for certification to handle a death penalty case, and it was granted.
The article says that Dr. Ivins lawyer told his client that the government was going to ask for the death penalty. He says he should have broken it to Ivins more gently. He says the government advised him that they were concerned about Dr. Ivins' state of mind and well-being. In other words, they were worried that Dr. Ivins might commit suicide. But Ivins' lawyer evidently did nothing about it.
Ivins lawyer says the case against Ivins was entirely circumstantial.
The article says:
"'Suggestions that this is an entirely circumstantial case are not accurate,' said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. 'We are confident Dr. Ivins acted alone in carrying out this attack. There is the direct physical evidence. The murder weapon was created by Dr. Ivins and solely maintained by Dr. Ivins.'"
What is there to deny?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.