Okla City Bombing Trial(英)

plained away?

　　In his closing argument, Jones pointed the jury to what the prosecution didn't have, such as an eyewitness that placed him near the Murrah Building around 9:00 a.m. on April 19, or the lack of McVeigh's fingerprints on the ignition key for the Ryder rental truck recovered in the bombing investigation. The Fortiers' lacked credibility, Jones said, they were just out to save their own

skins. For a sympathetic defendant charged in a less heinous crime, poking holes in a prosecution case can sometimes be enough. Not in this case, however.

　　After over twenty-three hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict: guilty on all eleven counts. McVeigh sat expressionless at the defense table as the verdict was read.

　　The same jury listened to evidence in the penalty phase of the trial, with McVeigh's life hanging in the balance. Much of the testimony did not make for easy listening. Stories of heartbreak and loss, told by victims and rescue workers and medical personnel. Doctors told of sawing off legs of people trapped under the rubble. Wifes told of husbands who would never see their children graduate or get marries. Firefighters described recurring nightmares they had experienced since the tragedy. Police officers described finding dead babies in what was once the second-floor daycare center at the Murrah Building. In the face of this powerful testimony, testimonials from McVeigh's Army buddies and the argument of Stephen Jones that his client was not motivated by hatred of the victims paled in comparison. The last two witnesses for the defense probably were its strongest, Timothy's divorced parents, Bill and Mickey McVeigh. Mickey cried as she read a statement she had composed the previous night. She told jurors that Tim was "a child any mother could be proud of; I still to this day cannot believe he would have caused this devastation." Bill McVeigh introduced a fifteen-minute videotape showing his young son meeting Santa Claus, playing with his toy train, and appearing to be a normal, All-American boy. "I love Tim," Bill McVeigh said simply.

　　For two days, the jury discussed McVeigh's fate. On Friday, June 13, 1997, the jury's decision was announced: death. Two months later, McVeigh returned to Judge Matsch's courtroom to hear the formal pronouncement of his sentence. Asked by the judge if he had anything to say, McVeigh quoted from a 1928 dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: "'Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' That's all I have." After Matsch pronounced the sentence of death, McVeigh was escorted from the courtroom by federal marshals, to be readied for transport to Florence, Colorado, the site of a federal prison known as "Supermax."

　　The Trials of Terry Nichols and Epilogue

　　Six months after McVeigh received his sentence, co-conspirator Terry Nichols escaped a death verdict in his trial before Judge Matsch. Although found guilty of conspiracy to bomb a federal building and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter, the jury acquitted Nichols on charges of using a weapon of mass destruction and first-degree murder. The jury apparently agreed with the argument of defense attorney Michael Tigar that Nichols had decided to drop out of the conspiracy some time before the actual bombing. The fact that Nichols spent April 19, 1995 at home with his family in Kansas probably figured large in the jury's decision. The jury might also have been swayed by Nichols's show of remorse——he cried at several points during the testimony——, which stood in stark contrast to McVeigh's courtroom demeanor. (In May 2004, Nichols found his life spared a second time, when a jury deadlocked on his sentence after he had been found guilty in state court in Oklahoma on 160 charges of first-degree murder.)

　　In a sixteen-page letter written to Judge Matsch prior to the imposition of sentence, Nichols wrote, "If I did anything to contribute to the cause of the Oklahoma City bombing I am sorry, I'm truly sorry." He implied in his letter that he never believed McVeigh would actually go through with his bombing plan. On June 4, 1998, Nichols listened as Judge Matsch pronounced his sentence: life in prison without parole. Authorities delivered Nichols to the same Colorado prison that

housed McVeigh and other celebrity inmates including Unabomber Theodore Kacyznski and the mastermind of the first attack in 1993 on New York's World Trade Center, Ramzi Yousef. (In a letter to the authors of American Terrorist, Kacyznski said he "liked" McVeigh, who he described as "an adventurer by nature" who, at the same time, was "very intelligent" and expressed ideas that "seemed rational and sensible.")

　　Later in 1998, Michael Fortier joined McVeigh and Nichols at the Supermax. Fortier plead guilty to lying to federal officials and failing to warn authorities of McVeigh's planned bombing. He received a twelve-year sentence. (Fortier was released from prison in January 2006, after serving ten years and six months of his sentence.)

　　McVeigh's appeals, as expected, met no success. In September 1999, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed his conviction. Six months later, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal. Authorities moved McVeigh to the only federal death row (there had been no federal executions since 1963) at a penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana in July 1999.

　　The American public got its first chance to hear directly from McVeigh in March 2000, when prison officials allowed Ed Bradley of the CBS show "Sixty Minutes" to interview him. McVeigh set only one condition for the interview: that Bradley not ask him whether he bombed the Murrah Building. He still had last-ditch appeals to think about. In the over thirty-minute interview, McVeigh offered his thoughts about politics, about his service in the Gulf War, and about what he perceived to be his unfair trial. Still, however, he showed no remorse over what happened in Oklahoma City. He blamed the U. S. government for teaching, through its aggressive foreign policy and application of the death penalty, the lesson that "violence is an acceptable option."

　　In January 2001, McVeigh decided to drop all his appeals and expedite his own execution. Judge Matsch set May 16 as the day he would receive a lethal injection. However, just six days before the scheduled execution, the Justice Department revealed that it found over 4,000 pages of evidence that should have been turned over to McVeigh's defense attorneys before trial, but wasn't. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that McVeigh's execution would be postponed for one month to allow the defense to inspect the newly released documents. Angered by what he saw as another example of the government's unfairness, McVeigh at first decided to renew his appeals, but after his first appeal was rejected on June 7, McVeigh announced that he was ready to die.

　　On the evening of June 10, McVeigh had his last meal (two pints of chocolate chip ice cream). The next morning, he woke early to take a shower. At 7 a.m., dressed in a shirt, khaki pants and slip-on shoes, McVeigh was led to the execution chamber. A "restraint team" strapped him to a padded gurney. The curtains over glass panels separating the chamber from a viewing area parted to allow 30 people to directly watch McVeigh's final moments, while another 300 victims and relatives gathered in Oklahoma City to watch the event on closed-circuit television. McVeigh made no final statement, but instead left a handwritten copy of the poem "Invictus," with its concluding lines, "I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul." Warden Harley Lappin read an official statement and then said, "We are ready." As the drugs entered his veins, McVeigh lifted his head and made eye contact with witnesses in the viewing room. He was pronounced dead at 7:14 a.m.

　　Three months after his execution, on September 11, 2001, McVeigh lost his claim to having masterminded the worst terrorist attack in United States history when hijacked airplanes slammed into the two towers of the World Trade Center

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