Reuters Oklahoma D.A. to Decide Bombing Conspirator's Fate By Ben Fenwick OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) -- Oklahoma County's new district attorney will
announce on Wednesday whether he will drop or continue a state capital
murder case against federally convicted Oklahoma bombing conspirator Terry
Nichols, his office said on Monday.
District Attorney Wes Lane, who took over in June from 21-year veteran
Bob Macy, will make the announcement at the Oklahoma City National
Memorial, which marks the site where a car bomb killed 168 people in April
1995.
The district attorney's office made the announcement in a statement,
but did not indicate what Lane had decided. Telephone calls to his office
were not returned.
Nichols, 46, was sentenced to life in prison without parole after a
federal jury in Colorado convicted him of helping plan the bombing that
gutted the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
Lane has raised questions about pursuing the Nichols case since taking
over on July 2 from Macy, who originally filed 160 counts of state capital
murder charges against Nichols in 1999 but saw the case mired in a series
of pre-trial court setbacks.
Macy was the driving force behind the Nichols case, vowing to seek a
death penalty conviction on state charges after the federal jury was
unable to agree on a death sentence.
The 160 capital murder charges cover each of the victims whose deaths
were not covered by the federal trial.
The case has been controversial in Oklahoma from the start. State
legislators temporarily blocked funding for the case last year until a
judge overruled them.
Opinion polls continue to show Oklahomans split over whether a death
penalty conviction is worth spending millions of dollars and reopening
emotional wounds.
While giving no indication of which way he will decide, Lane has cited
the financial costs of a trial, the time demands on his office and the
strain of reviving bombing memories as reasons why he might drop the case.
In July, Lane met with bombing survivors and relatives of the dead to
gauge their views on whether to proceed. Participants said opinions at
that meeting were split about evenly on either side of the issue.
Nichols's former army friend Timothy McVeigh was executed in June on a federal conviction for detonating the
Oklahoma City bomb out of anger at the U.S. government.
Nichols is in jail in Oklahoma City awaiting a preliminary hearing that
will determine if there is enough evidence to go to trial on the state
charges. No date has been set for that hearing.
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September 3, 2001
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