Sweeping aside defense claims of official misconduct, a state judge on Monday opened the trial of Terry Lynn Nichols in the deaths of 160 people killed in the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19, 1995.
But in ruling that jury selection could proceed, the judge, Steven Taylor of District Court, warned that any improper withholding of information by state or federal prosecutors would void the case. "There will not be a mistrial," Taylor said. "There will be a dismissal, period."
Nichols, 48, in a gray jacket and white button-down shirt, sat between his lawyers looking somber and at times appearing to doze.
Taylor also voiced some impatience with the FBI, which is reviewing its handling of certain leads in the case. The defense claims these point to white-supremacist gang members as possible accomplices of Timothy McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for blowing up the Alfred Murrah Building with a 1.8-tonne truck bomb.
But the judge said, "It would be irresponsible for this court to shut down this trial today based on speculation and guesswork what the FBI can come up with."
Nichols is already serving life without parole on a 1997 federal conviction for assisting McVeigh in the attack, laid to anti-government hatred. An associate, Michael Fortier, who became a government witness, is serving 12 years for concealing the plot.
In all, 168 people were killed in the attack. Nichols is being tried for the deaths of those who did not work for the federal government. If convicted in the state trial, he could face the death penalty.
In an unusual 7am hearing called by the judge before potential jurors were questioned, one of Nichols' lawyers, Barbara Bergman, argued a motion for delay, contending that McVeigh had been in league with undisclosed others, that he framed Nichols, and that material that might help the defense was not being turned over as required.
"Everywhere we turn we are being stymied by the federal government, your honor," Bergman told the court. "It's outrageous. Why is the federal government so afraid?"
Sandra Elliott, an assistant district attorney, denied that information had been improperly withheld. Elliott also said that no overt act to further any conspiracy had come to light on the part of any of 48 different groups she said people had tried to implicate in the bombing.
But she said, "Whether or not anybody else is involved, we can prove Nichols is."
The Associated Press reported last week that the FBI had turned up links, never made public, between McVeigh and a gang of bank robbers called the Aryan Republican Army. The articles said that blasting caps similar to those used in the bombing had been found in a gang hideout.
They also reported that the alias of a gun dealer who the government said had been robbed by Nichols turned up on a driver's license in the gang's possession.
Bergman cited the articles in her motion for a delay. But Taylor was not swayed. "I'm not going to grant a continuance with respect to AP stories," he said. "The court finds it speculative and guesswork."
Instead, he stressed several times, he was relying on the repeated assurances of state and federal prosecutors that all the evidence that could potentially help the defense -- known as Brady material -- had been turned over. "That better be correct after nine years," he said.
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