Word: mcveigh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DENVER: Taking one last, wild shot before jurors began deliberating Timothy McVeigh's punishment, his defense closed with the somewhat incredible argument that McVeigh didn't deserve to die because we were all to blame. "Aren't we all in some way implicated in this crime?" defense attorney Richard Burr asked, arguing that Americans let tyranny reign during the bloody sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge. "We all bear some responsibility for Oklahoma City," he said. "We should not feel a clear conscience if we kill Tim McVeigh." The tactic smacks of desperation, notes TIME's Adam Cohen. "Now they...
DENVER: Closing with Timothy McVeigh's tearful mother and a five-minute video of a young Tim at Christmastime, the defense may have finally gotten through to jurors today in a trial dominated emotionally by the prosecution. "This was the big moment in the trial," reports TIME's Pat Cole from Denver. "McVeigh's parents made an appeal to a group of strangers to save their son's life," he said. "It made one juror cry, that in spite of what he was involved in, he was still a person who had a family, who had a childhood...
...defense's final sally came on Wednesday, when Jones played tapes of Michael Fortier, McVeigh's Army buddy, talking about the case with friends. The tapes were made by the fbi when Fortier was a suspect. Under a plea-bargain deal, he testified for the prosecution that he had helped McVeigh plan the bombing. "I can tell a fable," he said to his father when he was contemplating the deal. "I can tell stories all day long." On another tape he joked about how much money he could make selling his tale to newspapers and television shows...
...said, because "what we basically have here with the Fortiers is the prosecutorial equivalent of Eliza Doolittle being made over into the Henry Higgins of the fbi and My Fair Lady has become My Fair Witness." Another defense lawyer, Christopher Tritico, asked why PETN, the explosive material found on McVeigh's clothes, was not discovered elsewhere. "The government didn't give you any PETN from McVeigh's car," he said. "Why? Because there wasn't any...They even tested his hair, and they couldn't find any PETN in his hair...
...effective moment, yet altogether, the defense did not give an overpowering performance. Still, for two years, Jones has doggedly defended McVeigh, and he may have played the hand dealt him as best he could. "Before anyone should say Jones has done a bad job, you have to consider what he has to work with," says Welsh White, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who has followed the trial. "The prosecution does have a strong case, and I think they've presented it well. Jones has to try what's available...