Oklahoma City Bombing Trial

By: Mary Divins

Background

• April 23, 1968 Timothy McVeigh was born.

• June 1984 Parents permanently separate

• May 24, 1988- McVeigh, already with developed "survivalist" inclinations (having read, among other books, the Turner Diaries), joins the army.  He meets Terry Nichols in basic training in Georgia.  They both serve later at Fort Riley, Kansas.

Background Continued…

• April 1991-McVeigh moves into an off-base home in Herrington, Kansas, where he will live for the next eight months

• December 1991 moves to upstate New York, near Buffalo, to live with his father.  He begins working McVeigh leaves his army unit and for a security company. 

Background Continued…

• 1992-McVeigh becomes increasingly disenchanted with politicians, taxes, anti-gun activists, and U. S. foreign policy.  He experiences bouts of serious depression, including thoughts of suicide.  He writes angry letters to newspapers and to his congressman on subjects such as his objection to inhumane slaughterhouses and a proposed law prohibiting the possession of "noxious substances."   He urges friends to read the Turner Diaries, a book urging violent action against the United States government.

• Summer 1992 McVeigh has a long stay at the Michigan home of Terry Nichols, who shares McVeigh's growing hatred of the federal government.

Bombing/ Arrest

• McVeigh awakes near Ponca City and about 7 A.M. begins driving toward Oklahoma City.  About 8:50 A.M., McVeigh enters Oklahoma City.  As he drives the Ryder truck up NW 5th Street shortly before 9:00, he lights two bomb fuses.  He parks the truck at a drop-off point in front of the Murrah Federal Building, locks the truck, and walks quickly toward a nearby YMCA building.  At 9:02 A.M., the truck explodes, taking with it much of the Murrah Building and seriously damaging many nearby buildings.  Eventually, it will be determined that 167 people died, and over 500 were injured, in the explosion.

• McVeigh hops into his Mercury and heads north out of the city.  At 10:20 A.M., while driving north on I-35 about 35 miles from the Kansas border, McVeigh is stopped by trooper Charles Hanger for having no license plates on his vehicle.  He is arrested for having no vehicle registration, no license plates, and carrying a concealed weapon without a permit.  He is booked and lodged in the county jail in Perry, Oklahoma. 

Defendant

• Timothy McVeigh

Defendent

•In 1994, McVeigh's activities became overtly criminal.  According to FBI reports, it is

probable that McVeigh participated in a series of bank robberies around the Midwest with a gang from Elohim City in an effort to raise money for projects involving anti-government violence.  McVeigh cased banks, and most likely drove the getaway car in some of the heists.  He also plotted and carried out, with the help of either Nichols or Elohim City residents, an armed robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer that he had befriended at various gun shows.  Joined by Michael Fortier, he stole various items from an Arizona National Guard armory.

• 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."

Defendent

• 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. 

Plaintiff / Prosecution

• Prosecutor- Joseph Hartzler• Opening Statements:"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,

April 19th, 1995, was a beautiful day in Oklahoma City -- at least it started out as a beautiful day. The sun was shining. Flowers were blooming. It was springtime in Oklahoma City. Sometime after six o'clock that morning, Tevin Garrett's mother woke him up to get him ready for the day. He was only 16 months old. He was a toddler; and as some of you know that have experience with toddlers, he had a keen eye for mischief. He would often pull on the cord of her curling iron in the morning, pull it off the counter top until it fell down, often till it fell down on him. That morning, she picked him up and wrestled with him on her bed before she got him dressed. She remembers this morning because that was the last morning of his life...."

Plaintiff / Prosecution Continued…

• "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."

Where?

• Bombing took place in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

• A bomb carried in a Ryder truck exploded in front of the Murrah Federal buliding in Oklahoma City at 9:02

• Trial took place in Denver Colorado

Civil Or Criminal?

• The Timothy McVeigh trial is a CRIMINAL trial

• He was charged with Conspiracy to use weapon of mass destruction and Use of Weapon of Mass Destruction, Destruction by explosive, First Degeree Murder

Reults of Trial

• Found Guilty on All Counts(11)

• Jurys special findings recommended he get the death penalty

• Six days before the scheduled execution, the Justice Department admits that it found over 4,000 pages of evidence that should have been turned over to the defense before trial, but wasn't.  Attorney General Ashcroft postpones the execution for 30 days to allow defense attorneys to review the newly released documents.

• An appeal court denies McVeigh's request for a stay of execution, and McVeigh announces that he is ready to die.

• McVeigh is executed as survivors and relatives of victims watch on closed-circuit television. McVeigh is pronounced dead at 7:14 A.M.

What Happened to the defendant?

• McVeigh was pronounced dead at 7:14 AM

What Do I Think?

• I think what Timothy McVeigh did to all those innocent people is TERRIBLE!

• I think he had a fair trial and that their decision was just.

• Our Court system did they best they could be, to benefit the public of the United Stated

WORK CITED

• <http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/mcveightrial.html>

• ALL INFO CAME FROM THAT SOURCE