August 14, 1996: Judge in Oklahoma City Bombing Trial Rules Evidence Admissible, Some Statements Inadmissible

Judge Richard P. Matsch, presiding over the trials of the accused Oklahoma City bombers (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and August 10, 1995), rules that statements made by Terry Nichols against co-defendant Timothy McVeigh cannot be used against McVeigh at trial. Matsch also refuses defense requests to suppress a wide array of evidence against both Nichols and McVeigh (see June 28, 1996). Prosecutor Joseph Hartzler says Matsch’s decision to retain the evidence “affirms that the federal government conducted its investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing with great care, as well as speed and skill.… The court ruled today that the government did not violate anyone’s constitutional rights, and it rejected all of the defense motions to surpress evidence. In short, every piece of evidence will be admissible.” Hartzler is not entirely accurate in his statement; Nichols’s statements against McVeigh given during Nichols’s nine-hour interrogation by FBI agents (see 3:15 p.m. and After, April 21-22, 1995) are not admissible, and the agents who interrogated Nichols cannot testify about what Nichols told them. That evidence includes Nichols’s assertion that met McVeigh in Oklahoma City on April 16, 1995, three days before the bombing, and drove McVeigh back to Kansas (see April 16-17, 1995). Nor will a jury learn that Nichols told agents he lent McVeigh his pickup truck on April 18, the day prosecutors say the two assembled the bomb (see 5:00 a.m. April 18, 1995 and 8:15 a.m. and After, April 18, 1995). [New York Times, 8/15/1996]