Attorneys for a Washington state man convicted of possessing the toxin ricin plan to file an appeal to his conviction this month, the Los Angeles Times reported (see GSN, Oct. 29, 2003).
Kenneth Olsen, convicted in July 2003 and now serving a 13-year sentence at the federal prison in Lompoc Calif., was convicted under the 1989 U.S. Biological Weapons Antiterrorism Act, but some legal scholars have questioned the use of federal terrorism statutes in the prosecution of nonterrorism cases.
Olsen’s conviction under the act required lower standards of proof and carried harsher sentencing guidelines than a conviction for attempted murder would have carried, according to his attorneys (Tomas Alex Tizon, Los Angeles Times, April 16).