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| S P E C I A L | The Terry Nichols Trial |
Nichols case goes to jury
December 16, 1997
Nichols in court Tuesday
Web posted at: 4:27 p.m. EST (2127 GMT)DENVER (CNN) -- A jury of seven women and five men began deliberating Tuesday over Terry Nichols' alleged role in the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
The panel must decide whether Nichols should be convicted on 11 counts of murder, conspiracy and use of weapon of mass destruction to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City. If found guilty, he could face a death sentence.
Nichols' alleged co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, 29, was convicted of the same charges last June and sentenced to die.
Jurors went home for the night Tuesday without reaching a verdict.
A L S O :
Oklahoma City bombing trial - Transcripts
Newsmaker Profiles: Terry Nichols
Earlier on Tuesday, the defense closed its arguments by attacking the FBI for trying to twist witness accounts, change testimony and ignore evidence that did not fit its theory.
Attorney Ron Woods said FBI witness interviews were "a disgrace" because they were not tape-recorded, notes were sloppy and incomplete and evidence was manipulated to elicit more useful witness testimony.
"They tried to put square pegs in round holes," he said.
Nichols, 42, who served in the Army with McVeigh, walked into the courtroom Tuesday morning and smiled at his lead attorney Michael Tigar, who patted him on the back. When he sat down, he seemed more subdued than usual.
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995
The defendant's wife, Marife, and his brother, sister, father, and mother and sister all were in the courtroom as the day's proceedings began.
The prosecution and defense summations began Monday and lasted eight hours, occasionally prompting some jurors -- and others in the courtroom -- to doze off.
As he picked up Tuesday where he left off Monday, Woods pointed to discrepancies in the testimony of key prosecution witnesses.
One, Richard Wahl, told the grand jury investigating the bombing he saw a truck the day before the attack at Geary Lake, Kansas, where the bomb allegedly was built, that had single square headlights, Woods said. In his trial testimony, he did not say that. Nichols' truck has dual headlights.
Woods said two witnesses from the Mid-Kansas Co-op, which sold two tons of ammonium nitrate to a man who used the signature "Mike Havens" in separate transactions in September and October of 1994, changed their description of the purchaser initially given to the FBI.
But, he said, they still did not identify Nichols as Mike Havens.
"You might think, 'Is this the FBI that I've seen on TV?' The difference in the myth of the FBI and the reality of the FBI is as big as the Grand Canyon," Woods said.
The April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City killed 168 men, women and children and maimed or otherwise injured 500 others.
McVeigh was accused of actually parking the bomb truck in front of the building, and the government concedes Nichols was at his home in Herington, Kansas, at the time of the attack.
But the thrust of its circumstantial case is the contention that Nichols helped to plan the bombing and build the nearly 5,000-pound ammonium fertilizer bomb used in the attack.
Even if acquitted, Nichols would not be freed. Oklahoma City District Attorney Robert Macy has indicated he will bring state charges against both men regardless of the outcome of the federal case.
T H E N I C H O L S T R I A L / T H E M c V E I G H T R I A L
T H E B O M B I N G / C N N S T O R I E S / L I N K S
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