June 13 OKLAHOMA: Religion Credited in Nichols Jury's Choice ---- Prison Conversion Helped Spare Oklahoma City Conspirator, Lawyers Say Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry L. Nichols may have been spared the death penalty for a second time because a jailhouse conversion to Christianity gained him sympathy from the jury, lawyers in the case said Saturday. The $10 million state prosecution, staged in an attempt to secure the death penalty, ended with the same sentence Nichols received in federal court 6 years ago: life. Juror Daniel Cochran said as many as 8 of the 12 jurors agreed to impose a death sentence. He declined to disclose further details of their deliberations. "We all agreed that what went on in the jury room would stay in the jury room," he said. But lawyers for both the prosecution and defense agreed jurors were influenced by Nichols's religious conversion. Nichols was also portrayed as susceptible to manipulation by Timothy J. McVeigh, the bombing's mastermind. During the sentencing portion of his trial, defense witnesses testified that Nichols had worn out four Bibles through prayer and research, and that he wrote an 83-page letter to a prayer partner in Michigan while trying to make a point about Christian faith. "Terry Nichols's belief in God is so firm that he believes if the rapture occurred today, he is going to heaven," defense attorney Creekmore Wallace told jurors. After convicting him of 161 counts of murder in just 5 hours, the jurors wrestled with his punishment for 19 1/2 hours before concluding they could not agree on a penalty. The deadlock means that Nichols will automatically be sentenced to life in prison for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. He received the same sentence on federal convictions for the deaths of 8 federal law enforcement officers in 1998. That jury deadlocked after 13 1/2 hours of deliberation. The state charges are for the other 160 victims and 1 victim's fetus. Prosecutor Wes Lane, who pursued murder charges filed by his predecessor, Robert Macy, said the prosecution was about seeking justice for the other victims, not securing the death penalty. "Justice was getting their day in court," he said. But in announcing the state charges, Macy had said he was not satisfied with the outcome of the federal trial. "Clearly, the reason they brought this action in Oklahoma was to kill Terry," defense attorney Brian Hermanson said. "They spent a huge amount of money. They caused a huge amount of heartache for a lot of people. And, basically, we reached the same result as the federal case." Lane said he believes that Nichols was spared because of "sympathy issues" among some jurors, including for his religious conversion -- one that prosecutors said conveniently began about the time state murder charges were filed against him. "I don't see Terry Nichols as being repentant necessarily," Lane said. "I know that Mr. Nichols was not willing to accept responsibility." Wallace said Nichols's religious conversion is genuine, and that jurors may also have believed that Nichols was used by McVeigh, who was executed on federal murder charges on June 11, 2001. Bud Welch, a death-penalty opponent whose daughter, Julie-Marie Welch, died in the bombing, said even some families who were angry that Nichols was spared a death sentence in his federal trial opposed the state charges. "It just made sense the jury would not go for the death penalty," Welch said. (source: Associated Press) ************************** Several jurors opposed execution of Nichols----4 or 5 would not agree to sentence him to death Terry Nichols didn't escape the death penalty on the back of a lone juror. There were 4 or 5 who couldn't agree to put a man convicted of 161 murders to death. The jury deliberated for 20 hours over three days before telling state District Judge Steven Taylor that they could not reach a decision on the fate of the man convicted in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. "If this magnitude of crime doesn't justify the death penalty, what does? I asked it time and time again with tears in my eyes," said juror Cecil Reeder on Saturday at his home in Arpelar, 12 miles west of McAlester. Mr. Reeder said that the jurors who opposed sentencing Mr. Nichols to death would not give him an answer. He said some of the jurors could not impose the death penalty because Mr. Nichols had undergone a religious conversion and because he was not in Oklahoma City the day of the blast. He said, "I do respect their decision. I may not like it, but they have the same rights to think as I did. "This has shook me as deep as I've ever been shook in my life," said the Korean War veteran. "We've lost one son and it didn't shake me like this." Mr. Reeder said he felt like he has let the families of the victims down. "The state asked me to punish this man. I couldn't do it. I'm deeply sorry I couldn't do it. I apologize to the victim's families. I'm sorry that I didn't get it done." 3 days of difficult penalty phase deliberations left the 6 men and 6 women of the jury emotionally and physically exhausted. They were nearly unanimous on one issue, however: What was said in the jury room ought to stay in the jury room. "It was tough," juror Terry Zellmer said in a telephone interview. "We had found it much easier to arrive at a guilty verdict, but the penalty phase was much harder." Ms. Zellmer said that at first she couldn't wait for the trial to be over, because there was so much she wanted to talk about. But after 3 days of tough deliberations over the death penalty, she said she thinks it's best not to say a word. Ms. Zellmer would not say how she voted or if the jury's deadlock was caused by moral convictions, although she did say Mr. Nichols' guilt was not an issue in the deliberations. She and others contacted implied that some jurors did not believe the evidence warranted the death penalty. The husband of another juror said his wife wasn't convinced of Mr. Nichols' culpability. "She told me she felt like he was a scapegoat," the man said. Mr. Nichols was convicted May 26 of the murders of the non-law enforcement personnel who were died in the April 19, 1995, bombing. But the jury's inability to decide on a punishment leaves the sentencing of Mr. Nichols to the judge, who by law cannot give a death sentence. Judge Taylor has set Aug. 9 for Mr. Nichols' sentencing, which he has said will be life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or just life. Mr. Nichols also is serving a life without parole sentence he received on a federal conviction in the bombing. It was after the federal conviction that an Oklahoma County grand jury indicted him on the state murder charges and prosecutors vowed to seek the death penalty. After the jurors announced they were deadlocked, Mr. Nichols' lead attorney Brian Hermanson, praised their courage for refusing to impose the death sentence. "They have done a great service for this state," he said. "And we only hope that at some point the state of Oklahoma can see that the death penalty is not an option and that life is much more in this state's interest." None of the jurors contacted by The Dallas Morning News would comment on their view of the death penalty or explain how the jury became deadlocked. "We all agreed we wouldn't have any comment," said juror Daniel Cochran. "We just felt it should stay in the jury room." Jury foreman Peter Mills told the judge at the conclusion of their deliberations that some members of the jury had expressed "highly held beliefs." (source: Dallas Morning News) PENNSYLVANIA: Death-penalty lawyer standards: Tough enough? It will soon be impossible for a Pennsylvania lawyer with no criminal trial experience to be in charge of defending an accused murderer facing the death penalty. The state Supreme Court announced June 4 that, before being appointed to capital cases, defense attorneys must first obtain jury verdicts in eight "significant" felony trials, and take specialized training that averages about 6 hours per year. But some critics say the court missed an opportunity to impose more substantial standards and fear the new rules may turn out to be mere window dressing to hide the system's real shortcomings. "If the adoption of this rule is meant as a final step and it represents a decision that nothing further is necessary, then it's worse than no rule at all," said Robert Dunham with the Federal Defender's Office in Philadelphia. The American Bar Association says death-penalty defendants should have access to certain minimum levels of legal and investigative resources a proposal that taxpayers would have to fund. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, however, did not mandate anything that would require public financing. "We wanted to get something going as soon as possible in order to deal with what we felt was a problem, which was occurring on a reasonably regular basis," said Justice Russell M. Nigro, co-chair of the Supreme Court's committee on capital-case standards. "We did not want to take 2 or 3 years in order to try and cover every single aspect." A divorce lawyer or greenhorn just out of law school may no longer run a death-penalty case, but the experience requirements will also affect the untold hours of pro bono capital-case defense work being done by civil litigators at some of the state's most elite law firms. Sam Silver, who chairs the litigation services department at Philadelphia's Schnader firm, said he will have to decide if he wants to serve as second fiddle to another lawyer who specializes in criminal work or get out of death-penalty work altogether. He has already handled 3 capital appeals. "I can't imagine the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania intended that result," Silver said. Inexperienced, unqualified lawyers have mangled death-penalty cases. But Dunham said a far more common problem is criminal-defense lawyers who don't adequately examine their client's background for such mitigating factors as mental illness. That sort of evidence can persuade a jury to impose a life sentence instead of death. "More death sentences have been overturned in Pennsylvania for failures to investigate and present mitigating evidence, the very areas not addressed by the rules, than for any other reason," he said. Since Pennsylvania restored capital punishment in 1978, 3 people have been put to death and 5 death row inmates have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Nationally, there have been 914 executions and 114 exonerations since 1976. The ABA recommends that each defendant get 2 lawyers as well as an investigator and a mitigation specialist, and that fees not be capped or paid in lump-sum fashion. But Pennsylvania does not underwrite any of the cost of public defenders, meaning the 67 counties each decide what they want to fund. Bradford County Common Pleas Judge John C. Mott, who served on Nigro's committee, said smaller counties did not want a one-size-fits-all approach. "We don't want to go so far as to make it very, very difficult, in certain parts of the state, for attorneys to meet those standards. So there (are) compromises involved," Mott said. The public may find itself thinking about these issues in the coming years, as the number of executions is expected to increase. Old-timers among the state's 227-person death row are running out of appeals options and out of time. 14 of them were sentenced to death more than 2 decades ago. (source: Associated Press)
