Capitol Offense

The story -- a brutal attack on a college student in a nearby Virginia suburb -- was 15 years old, but when the Washington Post retold it last week, Capitol Hill seemed unable to concentrate on anything else. The reason went beyond the sheer savagery of the act: the attacker, John Mack, 35, is now the top aide to beleaguered Speaker of the House Jim Wright and arguably the most powerful staffer in Congress.

That Mack had a criminal record was no secret. Even so, there was horror at the viciousness and randomness of his crime as it was recounted by the victim, Pamela Small, the prosecutor and the surgeons who pieced her back together. Mack was managing an import store when Small stopped in near closing time to buy window blinds for her first apartment. Mack led her to a storeroom, where he grabbed a hammer and without provocation smashed it into her skull five times. Picking up a steak knife, he stabbed her shoulder and chest near her heart and slit her throat. He dumped Small in her car and left her for dead. Then he took in a movie.

If Small had the bad fortune to be shopping at World Bazaar that night, Mack had the good luck to have a brother married to Congressman Jim Wright's daughter. Mack was arrested and pleaded guilty to malicious wounding with intent to kill, saying stress made him do it. Mack was offered a job by Wright after sentencing, and ended up serving 27 months of a 15-year term in the relatively soft confines of the county jail rather than the state penitentiary.

Wright and Majority Whip Tony Coelho, with whom Mack golfs, support Mack's rehabilitation; they view the dredged-up story as an indirect attack on Wright, who is under investigation by the House ethics committee. Others feel that rehabilitation occurred before adequate retribution. Mack may have satisfied the demands of the legal system, but his elevation to a position of privilege may yet offend a larger notion of decency. Should a felon who has been denied the right to vote be instrumental in making the nation's laws?