Jury Deadlocks, Sparing Nichols a Death Sentence

Terry L. Nichols escaped a sentence of death Wednesday in the Oklahoma City bombing when a federal jury deadlocked because many jurors believed prosecutors had presented “sloppy evidence” in the trial and that the FBI’s investigation of the blast was “arrogant.”

The jury impasse means that Judge Richard P. Matsch now must determine whether the 42-year-old Nichols should spend the rest of his life in prison with no hope of release or be given a shorter, fixed number of years behind bars after being found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy.

The turn of events brought sharp bursts of anger from many of the victims who have prayed that Nichols, like co-defendant Timothy J. McVeigh, would be condemned to pay with his life for the April 19, 1995, explosion that killed 168 people and injured more than 500 others.

Equally stunning was the revelation from the jury forewoman that at the outset of deliberations, “a fair number” of the panel members believed Nichols was innocent.

“The government dropped the ball,” said Niki Deutchman, embracing the belief held by many in America that others beyond Nichols and McVeigh helped carry out the bombing.

“I think there are other people out there, and decisions were probably made very early on [by the government] that Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols were who they were looking for. And the same sort of resources were not used to try to find out who else might be involved,” she told reporters.

The Oklahoma City bombing, the single worst act of terrorism committed on American soil--has for nearly three years spawned undying theories of a wider criminal conspiracy that reached as far as Europe and the Far East.

Even now, with McVeigh sentenced to death and Nichols sure to spend much of the rest of his life behind bars, the matter is not laid to rest. Officials in Oklahoma City vow to press forward for more trials.

“It’s not over yet,” Oklahoma County Dist. Atty. Robert Macy said Wednesday, standing near the Oklahoma City bomb site and promising to prosecute both men on state charges of capital murder.

“Hopefully,” he added, “we’ll have a different verdict to talk about.”

The clear victor Wednesday was Michael E. Tigar, one of the nation’s preeminent criminal defense lawyers, who was appointed to defend a man most in the nation believed would be quickly dispatched to a cell on death row.

Much of Evidence Circumstantial

Although the government presented overwhelming evidence against McVeigh, much of what they had against Nichols was circumstantial, and Tigar and his chief assistant, Ron Woods, exposed a series of inconsistencies that suggested that if Nichols had been involved with McVeigh, it was tangentially, at best.

“Michael Tigar is one heck of an attorney,” Deutchman said. “He and Ron Woods really did a job with this.”

Tigar, in his typically reticent way, spoke only briefly after leaving the federal courthouse, a grin sheepishly crossing his face. He said the judge gave the public an “object lesson” in the justice system by presiding over a fair trial, adding: “We’re pleased.”

Larry Mackey, the government’s chief prosecutor, also was terse.

“We, of course, regret the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision,” he said. “But we understand how difficult those deliberations must have been, and we are grateful to their service.”

The bomb made of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil was packed inside the back of a Ryder rental truck and exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Among the dead were 19 children--15 of them from inside the building’s day-care center.

The blast triggered the biggest manhunt in U.S. history. Ultimately, only Nichols and McVeigh were charged in an 11-count federal indictment; their Army friend Michael Fortier became the government’s chief witness against McVeigh and Nichols in return for a prison sentence of 23 years or less.

In June, McVeigh was convicted on all counts. His jury recommended a death sentence, which Matsch imposed in August. McVeigh was seen as the bombing mastermind; he rented the truck in Kansas and drove it to Oklahoma City.

Tigar showed that Nichols stayed home in Herington, Kan., the morning of the blast. He told the jury that Nichols was trying to sever his relationship with McVeigh and that even if his client had been involved briefly in the conspiracy, at one point he wanted out--a fact that came from Fortier’s testimony.

Government’s Case Seemed to Falter

The government sought to prove that Nichols had a heavy hand in the conspiracy, but at key junctures its case seemed to falter.

Prosecutors suggested that Nichols helped McVeigh mix the bomb at a Kansas fishing lake the day before the blast, but they had no witnesses who saw them there.

Prosecutors said Nichols robbed an Arkansas gun collector to help pay for the bomb ingredients. But here too Tigar raised a number of questions--including whether the incident was even a robbery at all--pointing out that the victim was an old friend of McVeigh’s and someone Nichols had never met.

Both Nichols and McVeigh hated the federal government, and prosecutors said the bombing was their attempt to avenge the deaths of 80 Branch Davidian cult members who died in a 1993 government raid on their compound near Waco, Texas. But prosecutors were never able to show any direct link between Nichols and his anger over Waco--either through letters or his own conversations--that hinted he wanted revenge.

The jury of seven women and five men found Nichols guilty on Dec. 23 of conspiring with McVeigh in the bombing. But they acquitted him of actually using the truck bomb and destroying the building.

The panel also cleared him of first- and second-degree murder charges in the deaths of the eight federal law enforcement officers killed that morning, opting instead to find him guilty only of involuntary manslaughter.

Then, following a weeklong sentencing phase in the trial, the jury retired to begin deliberating Monday whether Nichols should live or die. The panel quickly became divided.

“There was a big range of ideas,” Deutchman said Wednesday, adding that jurors were primarily split on whether Nichols actually intended to kill those inside the Murrah building. Without a unanimous decision that he did indeed mean to kill people, the jury could not reach a sentence of death for Nichols, she said.

On Tuesday, they sent a note to Matsch: “The jury has reached a place of impasse. We are not unanimous.”

In a second note that afternoon, after hearing from Matsch that they must all agree on a sentence, jurors again advised the court of their dilemma.

“If this means we must be unanimous, we are ‘hung,’ ” the second note said. “We have not been able to come to a unanimous decision as to the defendant, Terry Lynn Nichols, acting with the described intention.”

Wednesday morning, the judge called them into the courtroom, took stock of their impasse and announced that this meant that under the law, he must decide the sentence.

“You have done your job in this case,” he said in discharging the jury. “I do not want you to feel that you have in any way failed to meet your responsibilities, because you have.”

Matsch set a Feb. 9 deadline for both sides to file legal arguments on what sentencing he should hand down, with a sentencing hearing to follow. The government will ask for life with no release; Tigar will seek a fixed term in prison.

Mixed Reactions From Nichols Clan

Nichols showed no emotion when Matsch recessed the hearing; his lawyers immediately hugged him and shook his hand before he was led back to jail.

His brother, James D. Nichols of Decker, Mich., another ardent government hater, seemed displeased with the outcome. “If we had won, he’d be free,” James Nichols snapped.

Their sister, Susie McDonnell, was more upbeat that at least Terry Nichols had eluded death. “It’s a positive step forward,” she said.

Deutchman, a labor and delivery nurse who is married to a doctor, sharply criticized the FBI’s handling of the case, saying it ignored leads about other possible bomb collaborators and did not tape-record Nichols’ crucial 9 1/2-hour statement to agents upon his surrender.

“It seems arrogant on the part of the FBI to say, ‘We have good recall and you can take what we have said,’ ” she said of the bureau’s practice of not tape-recording criminal suspects. “I hope that that changes.”

She also blasted the bureau for what she called “sloppy evidence,” including mismarked case work-sheets, the soiling of evidence at the FBI crime laboratory and shortcomings in fingerprint analysis. And in some cases, she said, government agents ran roughshod over witnesses.

“That’s the way the government does business,” she said. “But the government needs to be more respectful.”

Another juror, Holly Hanlin, also was unhappy with the FBI.

“I think there were some mistakes made there,” said Hanlin, who helps manage a company that provides day laborers in the Denver area. “I think the FBI knows that. They were in a frenzy to get this solved.”

Did she think Nichols deserved death? “Me personally, no,” she said.

Pat Ryan, the U.S. attorney in Oklahoma City, defended the government’s work. “We put on a good case. We put on a competent case. We did our level best.”

To many of the victims who sat through the two trials here, Nichols belongs beside McVeigh on death row.

“I’m disappointed, but I refuse to let this steal any more of my joy in life,” said Constance Favorite, whose daughter, Air Force Airman 1st Class Lakesha Levy, was killed in the blast.

Wearing a scarf designed in the pattern of the American flag, she urged others in the country not to be discouraged by the jury’s inability to send Nichols to death.

“I’m not going to let this take me down,” she said. “I am proud to be an American, and I am proud that my daughter was a soldier.”

Dawn DeArmon of Tulsa, whose mother, Kathy Leinen, a 13-year employee at the Murrah credit union, was killed, said: “All I can say to my mom is, I’m sorry.”

Times staff writer Louis Sahagun contributed to this story.

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THE NEXT STEP

Oklahoma County Dist. Atty. Robert Macy plans to file 160 state murder charges in the federal building bombing and seek the death penalty against Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, despite their convictions in federal court. The charges will cover the victims other than the eight federal agents whose deaths were the basis of McVeigh’s and Nichols’ federal trials.