McVeigh jurors nagged by one question: 'Why?'

'Twelve people cried when we pronounced him guilty'

June 14, 1997
Web posted at: 11:10 p.m. EDT (0310 GMT)

Latest developments:

Jurors were unanimous for conviction -- on 1st vote
'We didn't want to believe he was guilty'
Judge Matsch earns jurors' praise

DENVER (CNN) -- Jurors in the Timothy McVeigh trial said Saturday that finding him guilty was harder on them than sentencing him to death.

McVeigh trial jurors

"Twelve people cried when we pronounced him guilty" during the deliberations, juror Ruth Meier said. "It took us a good hour, hour and a half to calm ourselves down again so we could go into the courtroom."

McVeigh jurors' news conference
	20 min. VXtreme streaming video

Meier and 10 other jurors met with the media in Denver Saturday night for the first time since finding McVeigh guilty in the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people -- and just one day after recommending a death sentence.

While they were meeting with reporters, McVeigh was taken from the jail at the U.S. Courthouse in Denver in a red van. It was escorted by a police car carrying four officers, and a GMC Suburban with an unknown number of passengers.

"We went over the evidence piece by piece," Meier said. "We read papers and re-read papers. We handled the evidence, and the more we handled it and the more we saw it, the more sure we were we had to come up with a guilty plea."

"We were overwhelmed with the evidence," said juror Roger Brown. "That was the most shocking thing to me. It was, 'Yeah, he's guilty.' It just hit home."

Jury foreman Jim Osgood said jurors made it a point to "divorce ourselves from emotion" during the deliberations.

"That's why we spent four days deliberating the facts," he said. He added that when the panelists were finally satisfied that they had studied all the facts, "with a call for one vote, it was guilty -- unanimously."

'We didn't want to believe he was guilty'

"We didn't want to believe he was guilty," John Candelaria said. "That was the hardest part."

They said the decision to sentence McVeigh to death also took only one vote.

Asked as a group what single question they would have of McVeigh, the 11 jurors answered in unison, "Why?"

The jurors said that McVeigh often made eye contact with them, but they were troubled by his lack of emotion.

"It was hard for me to sit there and look at him," Candelaria said.

"It would be nice to know there was remorse on his part," Tonya Stedman observed. "But to be on trial for a crime of such magnitude ... the intensity and pressure ... probably it was better not to make an expression."

Several jurors said they wished McVeigh had testified, although it probably would not have made any difference.

"I would have loved to have heard from him," Meier said. "I would have loved to have known when in his life he changed."

Judge Matsch earns jurors' praise

Jurors said they were not impressed with the defense suggestion in the penalty phase that more violence could follow if McVeigh were executed.

"We were judging Tim McVeigh," Mike Leeper said. "We weren't judging the future."

They also said they gave little consideration to the possibility of unknown accomplices.

"I didn't think that's for us to answer," Leeper said.

Fred Clarke added: "It doesn't matter to me."

The jurors were full of praise for U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch, whose strict, no-nonsense demeanor had the courtroom under his control from the beginning.

"He was the man," Stedman said.

Osgood also praised prosecutors and defense attorneys for their professionalism. "I think we can all sleep better at night, knowing the system does work."

Osgood said that at the beginning of the trial, he thought McVeigh was innocent. "But each day, he became progressively more guilty."

Nevertheless, he said, he studied the facts carefully.

"I wanted to be able to look him straight in the eyes," he said. "And I made a point of doing that on each occasion (when the guilty verdict and death sentences were pronounced). I wanted him to know that I was sincere."

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