McVeigh Jury Selection Off to an Arduous Start

Potential juror No. 858, the middle-aged man in a gray suit and red tie, has worked as a mining engineer and knows the danger of mixing ammonium nitrate with fuel oil. He believes that federal agents used “too much force” during the 1993 siege at Waco, Texas. He lived in Tulsa when the Oklahoma City federal building was bombed two years later. He visited the site. He prayed. He cried.

And he is the perfect example of why picking a jury to hear the trial of Timothy J. McVeigh in the Oklahoma case is moving so slowly this week.

Just as the bombing itself stunned the nation, many of the issues that surfaced in its aftermath and clearly trouble many Americans are being sounded out in U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch’s courtroom.

Echoing around the case are questions about gun control, the death penalty, the adequacy of the FBI laboratory and violent confrontations that have involved federal agents. And almost every one of the 25 potential jurors quizzed through Thursday has expressed strongly held views about these matters.

The result is that just four days into McVeigh’s trial, the process of selecting a jury of 12 and six alternates is expected to take a month or more. The questioning of No. 858 took almost an hour and a half.

“What we are seeing in the courtroom is the pervasiveness of this tragedy and how this crime has impacted in some way on everybody’s life,” said Robert Gordon, a jury consultant. “Here we have their attitudes on the death penalty and gun control and the presumption of innocence. And all of it is fascinating.”

Even the judge made note Thursday of the deep impact the case has had and how it has complicated jury selection. “We are asking them about their views of life,” Matsch said.

McVeigh, 28, is accused of plotting the April 19, 1995, truck bombing that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, killing 168 people and injuring more than 500. He faces charges of murder and conspiracy.

*

The case was transferred to Colorado because of concern that an impartial jury could not be impaneled in Oklahoma. Jury summonses were sent to about 1,000 Colorado residents. By the trial’s start Monday, however, only about 350 remained as potential jurors. The others had been excused for a variety of personal reasons.

The immediate challenge facing the case’s judge and lawyers is to qualify 50 or so men and women who, under federal law, do not object to sentencing McVeigh to die should he be convicted. Additionally, the potential jurors are being asked about issues that have been important to McVeigh and his defense.

The defendant, a former soldier, was an avid gun enthusiast. He hated the federal government. He believed federal law enforcement officials went too far in the bloody sieges at the Branch Davidian compound at Waco, in which more than 80 people perished, and at the Ruby Ridge, Idaho, home of Randy Weaver, during which the white supremacist’s wife, one of his children and a federal agent were killed.

McVeigh’s defense team, meanwhile, is expected to allege that forensic evidence against him was contaminated because of sloppy procedures at the FBI crime lab in Washington.

The identities of the prospective jurors are being kept secret. They are questioned in open court, but behind a screen. Each morning, before court convenes, the judge and lawyers review the previous day’s questioning. The sessions are private. As a result, it is not yet known whether any prospective jurors have been dismissed.

On Thursday, Matsch denied a request from the media that these sessions be made public.

It became clear from the responses by the first potential juror--No. 858--that the selection process would be arduous.

In describing his training in chemistry and his work as a coal mine engineer, he said he was well aware of the destructive force of an ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb--the kind the government alleges McVeigh used.

He said he was familiar with the kind of problems technicians would have if they inadvertently contaminated bomb residue or other traces of evidence.

About the incidents at Waco and Ruby Ridge, he said: “It seemed in a lot of ways those two situations were overkill. There was too much force used to accomplish the goals at hand.”

Like most of the other people questioned, he also described watching television images in horror on the day of the bombing. A few weeks later, he visited downtown Oklahoma City.

“I walked and stood and looked and felt things that I guess a normal human being would feel about what happened there,” he said. “It was very sad.”

A nurse, potential juror No. 552, recalled her college chemistry courses. “I remember that if you contaminate one ingredient with another, then the experiment might not be valid,” she said.

A second nurse, No. 762, who has worked at the federal Veterans Affairs hospital in Denver, indicated that--despite the fact that federal employees were killed in Oklahoma City--she might not be able to sentence McVeigh to death, if he is convicted.

“Only God can take a life,” she said.