McVeigh Jury Deliberates 3rd Day Without Verdict

DENVER — As tension mounted over the waiting, jurors cut short their third day of deliberations without a verdict Sunday in the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy J. McVeigh.

“I am going to grant your request that you recess your deliberations now and take the rest of the day off, as it were,” U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch told the jury after its 3 1/2-hour session. “Take advantage of this time now to rest and relax a bit.”

The sequestered panelists, who had deliberated for 19 hours since Friday, were told from the beginning that they could set their own hours and decided to cut their work short at noon Sunday. They planned to resume this morning.

Before sending the jury back to its hotel, Matsch warned the seven-man, five-woman panel not to discuss the case and to avoid news reports. “We’ll help you to be careful by continuing the sequestration,” he said.

McVeigh attorney Stephen Jones said the jury impressed him as “being cautious and careful and considerate,” but he said that didn’t make the wait any easier.

“I’ve waited out a lot of juries,” he said. “I’ve never been able to decide what’s more difficult, waiting for the jury or waiting for the birth of yet another child. I think both involved a lot of patience.”

Jones said, however, that McVeigh, who could get the death penalty if convicted on murder and conspiracy charges, is coping relatively well.

“This is a man that went to war in the Persian Gulf and was in the Army, so he’s used to waiting,” Jones said.

At a church a block away, Jannie Coverdale, whose two grandsons were among those killed in the April 19, 1995, blast, endured the wait with other family members.

“We expected the jury to reach a verdict by now, and just the sitting around waiting, you start getting scared,” she said.

But in Oklahoma City, where bombing survivors and victims’ friends and relatives watched the trial over a closed-circuit TV feed, the short day of deliberation came as a relief to some.

Anxiety over the wait for a verdict also arose in a sermon, with the congregation of the First United Methodist Church told to seek justice--not revenge.

“There’s a lot of people here in Oklahoma City that are getting hate in their hearts,” said Associate Pastor Todd Scoggins. “I don’t know what the outcome may be, but the thing we have to watch is that hate does not plant a seed in our hearts.”