Okla City Bombing Trial(英)

ome jurors, were they to hear about the government's actions at Ruby Ridge and Waco, would find the bombing justified. (Given the carnage he caused, McVeigh's hope of sympathetic jurors seems far from realistic.) More importantly to McVeigh, a political trial might provide him the opportunity to make his case against an overreaching federal government in the larger court of public opinion.

　　McVeigh's lead lawyer was Stephen Jones, a Republican activist who had taken on other politically charged cases. Upon his appointment as lead counsel, Jones told reporters, "My role is as old as the Constitution. Whether I perform professionally will be determined by how I conduct myself, and whether my client is satisfied……" The relationship between McVeigh and his attorney soon became strained, when McVeigh suspected Jones as being the source of a leak reported in the New York Times that McVeigh had confessed. McVeigh also resented Jones's refusal to push his "necessity defense," a decision made by Jones after research convinced him that McVeigh had no chance of establishing——as he would be required to do to raise the defense——that the federal government put McVeigh in "imminent danger."

　　Rather than employ a necessity defense, Jones opted for a strategy of trying to poke what holes he could in the prosecution's case, thus raising a question of reasonable doubt. In addition, Jones believed that McVeigh was taking far more responsibility for the bombing than was justified and that McVeigh, although clearly guilty, was only a player in a large conspiracy. It fit McVeigh's personality, Jones thought, for him to sacrifice himself for others who shared his anti-government cause. Jones spent considerable resources investigating McVeigh's possible ties to Arab terrorists and Andreas Strassmeir and his Elohim City associates. So much so, in fact, that McVeigh took to sarcastically calling his attorney "Sherlock Jones." "He was investigating me, not defending me," McVeigh complained.

　　In his book about the McVeigh case, Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy, Jones wrote: "It strains belief to suppose that this appalling crime was the work of two men——any two men……Could [this conspiracy] have been designed to protect and shelter everyone invo

lved? Everyone, that is, except my client……" Jones considered presenting McVeigh as "the designated patsy" in a cleverly designed plot, but his own client opposed the strategy and Judge Matsch, after a hearing, ruled the evidence concerning a larger conspiracy to be too insubstantial to be admissible.

　　Jury selection in the McVeigh case began on March 31, 1997, a month after the appearance of a national news story reporting that McVeigh told defense investigators that he bombed the Murrah Building at the time of day he did to "increase the body count." The poorly timed leak probably came when a member of the defense team turned over to the Dallas Morning News a computer disk containing FBI reports, not knowing that the contents of their interview with McVeigh also were on the same disk. McVeigh became convinced that any chance of landing a sympathetic juror, or receiving sympathetic treatment from the judge, evaporated with the story about his interview. Over the course of three weeks, a jury of seven men and five women was chosen.

　　Opening statements began on April 24, in front of a packed courtroom at the Byron C. Rogers Courthouse and a closed-circuit viewing audience in Oklahoma that included many victims and their families. Lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler, a wheelchair-bound multiple sclerosis victim, led with a dramatic opening statement that reminded jurors of the tremendous losses suffered two years earlier:

　　"All the children I mentioned died, and more——dozens and dozens of other men, women, children, cousins, loved ones, grandparents, grandchildren, ordinary Americans going about their business. And the only reason they died……is they were in a building owned by a government that Timothy McVeigh so hated……And the man who committed this act is sitting in this courtroom behind me. After he did so, he fled the scene——and he even avoided damaging his eardrums because he had earplugs with him."

　　Hartzler scornfully attacked McVeigh's attempts to portray himself as a modern-day patriot "like Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams." Hartzler reminded jurors that "our forefathers didn't fight British women and children; they fought other soldiers." And, he said, they fought them fair: "They didn't plant bombs, and run away wearing earplugs."

　　In his opening statement for the defense, Stephen Jones charged that the government conducted a hasty two-week investigation of the actual bombing and then spent the next two years zeroing in on his client. Critical evidence was ignored, Jones charged, such as the eyewitness testimony of bombing victim Daina Bradley that the person she saw emerge from the Ryder truck by the federal building was black-haired, stocky, and had an olive complexion——"John Doe No. 2," not Timothy McVeigh. Jones saved his greatest wrath for star prosecution witness Michael Fortier, who he labeled as story-changing, dope-dealing conniver. Jones concluded his statement by promising jurors that by the end of the trial he would show them that his client was innocent of all charges.

　　The prosecution presented 137 witnesses. Some witnesses told of their own heart wrenching losses they suffered that April day. Michelle Rausch, a former journalism student, told of interviewing McVeigh as he peddled anti-government bumper stickers outside of government barricades near Waco in 1993. FBI agents described how they traced evidence found in the bombing to McVeigh. Charles Hanger of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol described his arrest of McVeigh on I-35, while other law enforcement authorities described evidence found in McVeigh's car. Tim Chambers, the Texas seller of the racing fuel nitromethane, described his dealings with the person he now knew to be McVeigh. McVeigh showed little emotion during the nearly month-long parade to the stand.

　　The Fortiers, Michael and Lori, filled in some of the most critical gaps in the prosecution's case. Lori Fortier admitted to some of he

r own failings and misdeeds, including drug use, lying to authorities, trafficking in stolen guns, wrapping blasting caps in wrapping paper, and helping McVeigh forge a driver's license. Nonetheless, she presented convincing evidence of McVeigh's key role in the bombing. For example, Lori Fortier described the day McVeigh laid about fifteen soup cans out on the floor of her trailer to illustrate the type of bombs he hoped to assemble in his truck. In his long and rambling cross-examination, Stephen Jones forced Lori to concede that she could have saved 168 lives with a simple phone call, but chose not to, and that she had been promised full immunity by the federal government in exchange for her incriminating testimony.

　　Michael Fortier proved to be the state's most important witness. Fortier could take jurors from the Timothy McVeigh he knew immediately after Waco, who at that time had unleashed a torrent of anti-government venom, to the one poised and ready to send a message to that same government in Oklahoma City. Fortier told jurors how McVeigh, in his living room in October 1994, had provided him with detailed plans to blow up the Murrah Building. By then, according to Fortier, McVeigh had already chosen the date for his attack to mark the second anniversary of the Waco assault. One of the most memorable moments of the trial came when Joseph Hartzler asked Fortier, "Did you have any discussion [with Tim McVeigh] about the deaths that such a bomb would cause?" Fortier replied, "I asked him about that…… I said, 'What about all the people?' And he explained to me, using the terms from the movie "Star Wars" —— he explained to me that he considered all those people to be as if they were the storm troopers in the movie "Star Wars." They may be individually innocent; but because they are part of the —— the evil empire, they were —— they were guilty by association." Fortier also revealed his own reaction, when he first heard the news from Oklahoma City: "Oh my God, he did it."

　　The most painful testimony for McVeigh probably came from his own sister, Jennifer McVeigh. Her obvious reluctance to offer testimony that hurt her brother made what she did say all the more damaging. Jennifer outlined for jurors her brother's evolution from a government critic to a militant poised to take violent action against what he saw as a lawless government. She revealed that he told her of his experience with explosives, as well as the ominous words that ended one of his last letters to her: "Won't be back forever."

　　The defense presented 25 witnesses over just a one-week period. The most effective witness for the defense might have been Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, who provided a damning critique of the FBI's sloppy investigation of the bombing site and its handling of other key evidence Unfortunately for McVeigh, while Whitehurst could show that FBI techniques made contamination of evidence possible, he could not point to any evidence (such as trace evidence of explosives on the shirt McVeigh wore on April 19) that he knew to be contaminated.

　　The task of the defense team was all but impossible. They could not come up with a single alibi witness. They faced the reality that McVeigh had told dozens of people of his hatred of the government, and had told a friend that he planned to take violent action on April 19. Rental agreements and a drawing of downtown Oklahoma City linked him to the blast. He carried earplugs in his car driving north from Oklahoma City forty minutes after the explosion. How could it all be ex

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