The Law: A Chance to Explain

At 3:42 one August morning in 1970, Antiwar Activist Karleton Lewis Armstrong was still making good his escape when he heard the bomb he had helped plant tear out the sides of the University of Wisconsin's Army Mathematics Research Center. Four persons were wounded and a physicist was killed. Caught in Canada early last year and finally extradited, Armstrong, 27, pleaded guilty six weeks ago in Madison, Wis., to second-degree murder and arson—but not before an unusual bit of plea bargaining. Armstrong wanted, as Attorney William Kunstler put it, "a chance to bring to his compatriots what he did and why."

The...

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