(7 of 8)
The defense has a better hope of creating reasonable doubt by addressing specific aspects of the prosecution's case. Most important, Jones will be able to excoriate the FBI's forensics lab. The critical Justice Department report concludes, for example, that an investigator in the Oklahoma City case lacked an adequate scientific basis for stating that the bomb was made out of ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil. Ammonium nitrate was found at the scene, but the bomb could have been made out of another explosive that contains it, such as dynamite. The report says the investigator reached his conclusion in part by reasoning backward from the fact that a receipt for ammonium nitrate fertilizer had been found at Nichols' house. In fact, while the evidence is consistent with an ammonium nitrate and fuel oil bomb, it does not exclude other possibilities. The report also leaves open the question of whether McVeigh's clothing might have been contaminated with nitroglycerin and petn in the lab. Jones will hammer away on these points. He will call Frederic Whitehurst, the whistle blower who brought about the lab investigation, and Jones will also try to have the report itself admitted into evidence.
Prosecutors have anticipated the report, and have long planned to avoid calling anyone tainted by it. Late last year they hired a British expert, Linda Jones, to confirm the lab's findings. The only witness the government would call from the lab itself is Steven Burmeister. He is treated neutrally in the part of the report that deals with the Oklahoma City bomb and is praised in other sections. He found the nitroglycerin and petn on McVeigh's clothes, and he can testify that they were never in the two sections of the lab where contamination was found. Whitehurst, meanwhile, is harshly criticized in the report. Yet even if the prosecution is right on the merits in this dispute, the lab's shortcomings will give Stephen Jones priceless rhetorical opportunities.
Jones can also exploit the prosecution's failure to present witnesses who put McVeigh at the scene. Jones can simply say his client wasn't there. He can also ridicule the prosecution for its inability to present any witnesses who saw McVeigh and Nichols constructing the bomb, which would have involved hauling around two tons of fertilizer. This remains a hole in the prosecutors' story. They have dropped some witnesses who would have testified on the matter, and somehow, they will have to convince the jury that McVeigh and Nichols were so surreptitious they escaped detection.
After the bombing, Elliott first said that McVeigh was alone when he rented the truck, but then, the next day, Elliott said McVeigh had actually come with someone else--the famous John Doe No. 2; Beemer has said she remembers two men. The prosecution now maintains that McVeigh was by himself. Jones will try to use this confusion over John Doe No. 2 to question the accuracy of Elliott and Beemer's memories. (The prosecution probably will not even call Tom Kessinger, another employee at Elliott's whose statements about John Doe No. 2 have been the most sensational, and the most inconsistent).