Attorneys for Bruce Ivins Respond to Client’s Suicide

[WSJ_law_blog]

Earlier today, we noted the suicide of Bruce Ivins, a biodefense researcher who the DOJ was close to filing criminal charges against. Ivins, 62, was a leading military anthrax researcher who worked for the past 18 years at the government?s biodefense labs at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Ivins had reportedly been told of the impending prosecution. For their part, the prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty against Ivins.

This afternoon, Ivins’ attorneys at Venable, Paul F. Kemp (pictured) and Thomas M. DeGonia, released the following statement:

For more than a year, we have been privileged to represent Dr. Bruce Ivins during the investigation of the anthrax deaths of September and October of 2001. For six years, Dr. Ivins fully cooperated with that investigation, assisting the government in every way that was asked of him. He was a world-renowned and highly decorated scientist who served his country for over 33 years with the Department of the Army. We are saddened by his death, and disappointed that we will not have the opportunity to defend his good name and reputation in a court of law. We assert his innocence in these killings, and would have established that at trial. The relentless pressure of accusation and innuendo takes its toll in different ways on different people, as has already been seen in this investigation. In Dr. Ivins’ case, it led to his untimely death. . . .