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For the record, McVeigh maintains his innocence. But if Jones should fall back upon the argument that his client played a part in the crime, but only a lesser one, he might at least spare him the death penalty. As a matter of law, if McVeigh committed the crimes with which he is charged, he would still be guilty even if he acted as an underling in a larger conspiracy. But if Jones can promote sufficient doubts and sympathies within the minds of the jurors, what the law directs may not matter.
In the indictment it handed down in August, the grand jury that charged McVeigh and Nichols with murder and conspiracy acknowledged that the pair may have worked "with persons unknown." Prosecutors are confident, however, that the two men were the prime movers behind the bombing and that the government has ample evidence of their involvement.
Witnesses identify McVeigh as the man who rented a Ryder van under a false name on April 17. During the days leading up to the blast, they place him and his truck at the Dreamland Motel in Junction City, Kansas, about 200 miles from Oklahoma City, where he was registered under his own name. Other witnesses say that in the moments before the explosion they saw McVeigh, a Ryder truck and the beige Mercury in which McVeigh was later arrested all in front of the Alfred P. Murrah building.
The prosecution case will depend mostly upon physical evidence. McVeigh's fingerprints were found on a receipt for 40 one-fifth-pound bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer--the chief ingredient in the Oklahoma bomb--that the FBI discovered at Nichols' home in Kansas, where they also found detonator cords with blasting caps. After McVeigh's arrest, traces of explosives were detected on his clothing and in his car. Prosecutors will argue that McVeigh and Nichols stashed the fertilizer in rented storage facilities, then mixed and assembled their bomb in a park near Nichols' farm. To clinch its case, the prosecution does have one star witness: Michael Fortier, another Army buddy of McVeigh's arrested in connection with the case. Last summer Fortier cut a deal to testify against his friend in return for lesser charges. He says he and McVeigh cased the Murrah building several months before the bombing.
Nichols' lawyer, Michael Tigar, is not talking as much to the press as Jones is, and he is expected to conduct his case in a less grandiose fashion, playing down Nichols' involvement in the plot without constructing a worldwide conspiracy. After hearing on the radio that he was sought for the crime, Nichols turned himself in and allowed agents to search his farm, a fairly grave mistake. But Fortier told investigators that McVeigh asked him to join the plot after Nichols got cold feet. And while prosecutors have significant evidence that he took part in the planning stages, no witness has so far placed Nichols at the scene.