This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A federal appeals court on Friday affirmed the conviction of an Illinois man who detonated a pipe bomb at the downtown Salt Lake City Library in 2006 — an explosion that shattered a window but did not injure anyone.
Thomas James Zajac had claimed in his appeal that his defense counsel provided deficient representation, which prejudiced him during his 2010 trial.
But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said that prosecutors presented "overwhelming evidence supporting Zajac's conviction ... "
The decision by the three-judge panel stated that while Zajac's trial may have been "imperfect," there was "strong evidence from multiple, independent sources that supported the jury's guilty verdict."
"In the face of this evidence, Zajac cannot demonstrate a reasonable probability that, absent the alleged deficient performance, his trial's outcome would have changed," Friday ruling states.
In 2012, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Zajac on claims that his constitutional rights were violated because it took more than three years for the case to go to trial. The judges said then that Zajac caused almost all of the delay.
Zajac was found guilty by a federal jury in October 2010 of six felonies involving the use and possession of an explosive device for purposes of damaging a building. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
Investigators tied Zajac to the Sept. 15, 2006, pipe explosion through a fingerprint on a scrap of paper — from packaging for a toy rocket motor — found at the scene. They later used phone and credit card records and library surveillance video to place Zajac in Salt Lake City and at the library. A similar device exploded in Hinsdale, Ill., two weeks earlier.
During Zajac's trial, a prosecutor told jurors he committed the bombings as "retribution" for perceived wrongdoings by police against his son. In an anonymous letter Zajac sent to Salt Lake City police, he claimed officers had "strong-armed a helpless person" — later revealed to be his son — who had been arrested for driving while drunk.