Jefferson County Circuit Judge Helen Shores Lee on Wednesday awarded Emily Lyons, the nurse who was seriously injured in the 1998 Birmingham abortion clinic bombing, and her husband Jeff, $115 million in damages. The civil suit, filed in 2000 while bomb suspect Eric Robert Rudolph was a fugitive, returned to active status at the county’s docket when Rudolph was captured in May. Increasing the awarded figure from the $110 million sought to $115 million, Judge Lee wrote, “Placing a bomb or incendiary device in a public place with the expectation that it will detonate and cause severe injury to all persons in its proximity is a depraved and repugnant act fully deserving of society’s moral outrage,” reported the Atlanta Journal-Constitution/Associated Press. Though the Lyons’ do not expect to receive money from Rudolph, they were pleased with the outcome. Attorney Scott Powell told the AJC/AP, “Eric Rudolph now will never be able to profit from his participation in any future book or movie deal.”
Rudolph is charged with the January 1998 bombing of the New Woman All Women Health Care clinic that killed off-duty police officer Robert “Sande” Sanderson and injured Lyons, who has undergone 20 surgeries to remove bomb shrapnel from her face and body and also became blind in her left eye. Rudolph is also charged with the 1996 Olympic Park bombing and the bombing of a lesbian and gay nightclub in Atlanta.
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