Bring on the Victims

DENVER: Prosecutors in the Terry Nichols case will use a gallon of tears to convince jurors that Nichols deserves the same punishment as his co-conspirator Timothy McVeigh even though those very jurors were clearly unconvinced that the two bore equal responsibility for the Oklahoma City bombing.

Testimony began with U.S. Attorney Patrick Ryan describing the morning when Helena Garrett last saw her 16-month-old son, Tevin, who had been in the day-care center when the bomb exploded. Taking the stand soon will be victims' watchdog Jannie Coverdale, who has promised to invoke the memory of her two dead grandsons.

It will be a wrenching week for jurors. But prosecutors will be hard-pressed to convince the panel to vote for the death penalty when they couldn't even get an unequivocal guilty verdict, legal analysts say. "It would be a major upset if the government were able to obtain a verdict of death," said Stephen Jones, McVeigh's former attorney, on CBS's "Face the Nation." If they fail, it won't be for lack of crying.