McVeigh Team Rests Case After a Lean Defense

DENVER — The defense in the Oklahoma City bombing trial unexpectedly ended its case Wednesday after four days without delivering on a promise to present evidence of a grand conspiracy behind the blast or sweeping government flubs in scientific analysis.

Defense attorney Stephen Jones did not put defendant Timothy J. McVeigh on the stand and his case did not add any new insight into the possible existence of John Doe No. 2 or other possible conspirators.

And Jones was forced to cancel scheduled appearances by a number of witnesses after Judge Richard P. Matsch refused to allow evidence of troubles at the FBI’s crime lab not directly related to the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people. The judge also barred defense testimony from a former government informant about right-wing groups that discussed blowing up federal buildings.

Even when the government presented its case, Jones and his fellow defense attorneys often did little cross-examination. Jones’ own opening statement to the jury--his opportunity to strike an out-of-the-gate blow for his client--was most memorable for his quiet reading of the names of the people killed in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

It seemed the kind of tactic a prosecutor would use--not a defense attorney in a highly charged criminal case that could result in the death penalty for his client.

Among Jones’ last witnesses Wednesday was one who described the government’s star witnesses, Michael and Lori Fortier, as heavy drug users.

Jones also played tapes from FBI wiretaps of the Fortiers’ home that showed their bravado and eagerness to cash in on their roles as instant celebrities in the worst mass murder in U.S. history.

“The feds think I know something,” Michael Fortier said at one point. “I don’t know jack. There’s nothing else to tell.”

But another time he boasted that he could snare a “cool” $1 million by selling his story. “I’ll just give them something juicy,” he said.

He also described McVeigh’s arrest as simply a matter of being “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

With that, Jones rested his case. Government lawyers then brought in a handful of rebuttal witnesses.

One of them, FBI lab supervisor Steven Burmeister, testified that he examined a box that once had contained McVeigh’s clothing and found no explosive residue. Earlier, defense attorneys had sought to show that there was so much contamination in the lab that even the box for McVeigh’s clothing was not clean.

This morning, Jones and government prosecutors will deliver closing arguments to the jury. The panel of seven men and five women is likely to begin deliberating on a verdict no later than Friday morning.

Should the jury find McVeigh guilty, the trial will move into a second phase: The same jury will hear testimony on whether the 29-year-old McVeigh should live or die.

Colorado jurors have been reluctant to sentence convicted criminals to death, and the state has carried out no legal executions since 1967. But in Oklahoma, where there has been a sharp increase in capital punishment in recent years, many residents believe that this case, more than any other, cries out for the ultimate penalty.

In Denver, the back rows of the courtroom have been filled with bombing victims and families of the dead. Many are praying that McVeigh pay with his life.

In fact, many of the victims have scoffed at the Jones defense team.

“They never had anything to work with,” said Dr. Paul Heath, a Department of Veterans Affairs psychologist who was injured in the blast and serves as a spokesman for many of the victims. “How do you defend the indefensible?”

But the government’s case, despite its high-tech video presentations and quick pace, has not been without its gaps.

Its evidence is largely circumstantial, built on McVeigh’s alleged rantings against the government and statements to the Fortiers that he planned to bomb the Murrah building on that day.

Beyond that, the prosecution’s case loses some ground.

There were no eyewitnesses who could say that they saw McVeigh in Oklahoma City on the morning of the blast, much less anywhere near the Murrah building. Nor did prosecutors have anyone who could testify that he put together the bomb.

And they faltered when it came to evidence about the Ryder truck rental. Employees at the Junction City, Kan., truck agency were divided over McVeigh’s description and whether he rented the truck alone or with another man.

They also did not have McVeigh’s fingerprints on the rental agreement or on the truck shop counter.

Jones did appear to score some significant points with the jury. He was able to introduce confusion about the truck rental, particularly after Eric McGown, an employee at the Junction City motel where McVeigh was staying, insisted that he saw the truck the day before it actually was rented.

Defense lawyers also brought to the stand Frederic Whitehurst, the FBI employee who blew the whistle on problems at the agency’s crime lab. He testified about widespread contamination problems at the lab and criticized the way McVeigh’s clothing was handled and tested before lab officials concluded that it contained trace amounts of explosive material.

But under cross-examination, Whitehurst conceded that he could not say the lab’s shortcomings had any direct effect on the McVeigh case.

“I have no knowledge of any actual contamination of any evidence in the case,” Whitehurst said.

A final blow to the defense came Tuesday when Judge Matsch ruled irrelevant a story that a larger conspiracy was responsible for the bombing.

For Jones and his defense team, that meant the jury would not hear from Carol Howe of Tulsa, Okla., a former paid informant for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. She would have testified that a group of right-wing extremists not tied to McVeigh had talked about blowing up federal buildings in the period before the bombing.

Her attorney, Clark Brewster, said that it would have been “compelling” testimony and a real boost to what seemed to be a fast-fading defense for McVeigh.

“It would have allowed this jury to consider at least how some other people had not only the intent to bomb buildings,” Brewster said, “but also the means to carry it out.”