McVeigh’s Legal Team Asks Dismissal or Delay of Trial

Concerned about media leaks of a purported confession by their client, attorneys for Timothy J. McVeigh asked a federal judge in Denver on Friday to dismiss the 11-count indictment against him for allegedly blowing up the federal office building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Failing that, McVeigh’s defense team asked for a one-year delay in his trial, now set to begin March 31 in Denver. And failing that, they asked that the trial be moved to a new location.

All three requests were quickly opposed by prosecutors.

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch is expected to rule on the matter as early as next week.

Central to defense concerns are two media reports in recent weeks that allege that McVeigh had admitted carrying out the April 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building alone.

His lawyer, Stephen Jones, said that the intense pretrial publicity has harmed McVeigh’s chance for a fair trial and that the 1,000 Coloradans who recently received jury summonses now have been prejudiced into presupposing that McVeigh is guilty.

Jones is livid over reports published by the Dallas Morning News and Playboy magazine in which reporters said that they had obtained confidential defense documents in which McVeigh admitted being the primary conspirator in the bombing that killed 168 people. Jones first said that the documents were a hoax. Later he said that the documents were purposely fabricated to convince a hostile witness to help the defense.

Jones said the requests he made Friday were “based solely on circumstances that have occurred in the last two weeks, which are truly extraordinary in American jurisprudence.”

The lawyer argued that the two media reports, each rushed onto its respective media outlets’ Internet Web sites, have eviscerated McVeigh’s right to maintain his innocence.

“Whether the purported confessions by Mr. McVeigh to his lawyers are true,” Jones said, “most jurors who heard of them will think they are and will remember them. Even if they still have a doubt about the truthfulness of the confessions, they will nevertheless be haunted by them.”

To underscore his point, Jones said that a security guard at his Denver law office recently stated that many people have been exposed to the reports. “Everybody’s read those articles,” Jones said the guard had told him.

Jones added that an official at the Denver-area prison where McVeigh is being held also “despaired” about the reports. “Every time I turn the TV on, there it is,” the prison official told Jones. “I can’t help it.”

Prosecutors, eager to begin the trial as scheduled, opposed all of Jones’ requests. Sean Connelly, a special attorney with the government’s team, said defense lawyers “may or may not” actually be the ones responsible for the media leaks, and therefore jury selection should proceed.

“There is no guarantee that equally bizarre events would not recur as a new trial date approached,” Connelly said. “It is now the time to try the case in court rather than be held hostage to outside events that the court cannot control.”