Lawrence Trant sees himself as a righteous crusader. The state of New Hampshire sees Trant differently, says the Boston Globe. He is serving a 10- to 30-year sentence in New Hampshire State Prison after pleading guilty to attempting to murder two convicted sex offenders whose names and addresses he found on an Internet registry posted by the state. “I don’t want people to steal the souls of little kids,” Trant, 57, said last week. “I’m doing 30 years for something I think is morally justified.”
Prosecutor John Weld says Trant is one of the most cold-blooded criminals he has encountered. If Trant had not been arrested, Weld said, the native of Cambridge, Mass., probably would have killed someone convicted of a sex crime against children. On trial in June for a stabbing, in a half-hour, uninterrupted speech from the witness stand, Trant looked directly at the jurors who, he believed, sympathized with him. Trant recalled that he pointed a finger at the jury and said: “I wasn’t about protecting anyone from my family. This was about protecting you!” Three of the 12 jurors refused to convict him of attempted murder. The judge declared a mistrial on that charge; the same panel agreed that Trant had committed first-degree assault.
Link: http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2004/12/05/man_defends_attacks_on_sex_offenders/