McVeigh guilty

Prosecution lined up friends, family, evidence

In the well-disciplined court of U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, the prosecution presented a streamlined case, calling 137 witnesses over 18 days.

The government argued that McVeigh spent months planning the bombing to avenge the government's deadly 1993 raid near Waco, Texas.

Lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler and his team interspersed technical testimony with the emotional recollections of rescue workers and survivors. On several occasions, some jurors cried after hearing the harrowing tales of survivors.

Friends and family members took the stand against McVeigh. His sister Jennifer and old friends Michael and Lori Fortier testified of McVeigh's transformation from a decorated Gulf War veteran into an extremist with a deep hatred for the government.

The Fortiers, under a plea bargain, testified McVeigh told them of his plans to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City about six months before the Murrah building blast.

Michael Fortier said he and McVeigh cased the federal building together, and that McVeigh showed him an alley where he planned to stash a getaway car. Lori Fortier described how McVeigh made a model of the bomb's construction with soup cans in her kitchen.

Jennifer McVeigh, 23, identified her brother's handwriting on key evidence, and described the increasingly fatalistic letters she received from him, including one saying, "Something big is going to happen," shortly before the bombing.

The prosecution also introduced a letter purportedly written by McVeigh in which he wrote that his mindset had shifted from the "intellectual ... to the animal."

Charred pieces of the Ryder truck that prosecutors said was used to carry the explosives -- including a 250-pound mangled axle -- were hauled before the jury. FBI witnesses said explosives residue was found on a truck fragment and even on the clothes McVeigh was wearing when he was arrested, shortly after the bombing, near Oklahoma City.

Defense kept its case short, focused

The defense took just four days to call 25 witnesses. The scaled-down approach came after Matsch refused to allow theories of a larger conspiracy.

McVeigh did not take the stand in his own defense. Lead defense attorney Stephen Jones suggested the real bomber was killed in the blast, and suggested the evidence was contaminated in the much-maligned FBI crime lab.