Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Trial May Renew Sense Of Justice

Martha Ezzard Cox News Service

Impressions from a pretrial hearing in Denver:

Junction City, Kan., population 21,000, seems an unlikely place for the beginning of a trail of evidence federal prosecutors hope will help convict Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy James McVeigh. And Elliott’s Body Shop, the site of broken-down cars and Ryder truck rentals, even more so. But the key witnesses from that small town - ordinary Americans - are destined to help make or break the prosecution’s case.

On the afternoon of April 17, 1995, a young man whom auto mechanic Tom Kessinger describes as “beady-eyed with a peculiar chin” came by to pick up a Ryder truck he had reserved the previous Saturday with the shop’s owner, Eldon Elliott. According to the two men, he was wearing a military shirt both times, not unusual in Junction City, located near Fort Riley, the Army base.

The man they say was McVeigh used the name of Robert Kling, paid $280 in cash and insisted he didn’t need any insurance.

Testifying at a federal court hearing requested by McVeigh’s lawyer, Stephen Jones, Kessinger and Elliott seemed certain of their identification of McVeigh even though Jones tried to show that TV news shots and dozens of meetings with FBI agents and prosecutors could have influenced them. Jones pounded hard on the fact that Kessinger had changed his story about the existence of a “John Doe II” who he originally said accompanied McVeigh. It was Kessinger’s description that facilitated a sketch artist’s amazingly similar portrayal of McVeigh. Yet Kessinger, after spending hours describing for the artist a second man with McVeigh - heavyset, in a “zig-zag” royal blue and white cap - decided months later that the second man was really in the shop the day after and that he had made a mistake.

On the witness stand, Kessinger wavered again on that point. “I’m about 90 percent sure he come in with another,” he said, but he never wavered about the man he identified as McVeigh. It was the peculiar chin with the crease under the lip that Kessinger said he’d never forget. “I’m sure it was him,” he declared to Jones’ sharp questioning, “I’m rock-bottom sure.”

Elliott, the shop owner, admitted under questioning from Jones that he had some T-shirts made after McVeigh was arrested that said: “Elliott’s Body Shop. We remember our customers.” Nobody in the hearing laughed. In fact, those who enter Judge Richard Matsch’s courtroom are well advised to keep quiet. The judge controlled the proceedings with an iron fist, overruling an over-anxious assistant prosecutor with a stern, “Sit down.”

Jones moved on with his meticulous, methodical questioning. Even though he lost his motion at week’s end to suppress the two eyewitnesses’ testimony, it was clearly a good dry run for a defense lawyer trying to figure some cracks, some holes, some contradictions.

In Denver for a few days last week, I thought about how different the Oklahoma City trial, which opens March 31, is going to be from the O.J. Simpson trial that has caused so many Americans to throw up their hands in disgust with the media, defense lawyers and the courts. There are no racial overtones to this trial, rather a highly charged antigovernment thread of rightist militia - the leftovers of Ruby Ridge and Waco.

The defense lawyers are not highly paid. Court-appointed lawyer Stephen Jones gets $125 per hour, compared with an approximate $400 per hour Simpson lawyer Johnny Cochran made. There are no Armani suits, glitzy cars, power lunches. Prosecution lawyer Joseph Hartzler wasn’t in court at the hearing I attended, but he operates so effectively from his wheelchair that nobody notices his multiple sclerosis handicap.

It was only a surface impression, but I came away feeling this judge and these lawyers really care about the values of justice over the values of the marketplace. For the 2,200 Oklahomans directly affected by the tragedy, I hope so. I wish for them not hasty convictions, but an abiding sense that justice is alive.

xxxx