Bombing Jury Hears End Of Case First Day Of Deliberations Lasts Four Hours

Jurors in Spokane’s terrorism trial resume deliberations this morning after spending four hours Tuesday considering the fate of three Sandpoint men.

The federal jury viewed 500 pieces of evidence, heard testimony from more than 100 witnesses over 23 days and listened to 1-1/2 days of closing arguments.

In a final round of arguments Tuesday morning, attorney Roger Peven insisted defendants Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Verne Jay Merrell are falsely accused of the bombings and robberies last year in the Valley.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice told jurors to watch out for defense “tricks and tactics.”

Peven said the defendants don’t have to prove their innocence, unlike the 37 men on death rows across the country who were set free last year after DNA evidence belatedly exonerated them.

“How does it happen?” Peven said. “Faulty eyewitnesses, circumstantial evidence and defendants who can’t prove themselves innocent.”

He pointed to inconsistencies in witness testimony and noted that no one claimed to have seen his client - Barbee - at the crime scenes.

Barbee had no motive to bomb The Spokesman-Review’s Valley office, Peven said, but the newspaper probably was targeted by anti-government radicals who shared his white-separatist religious beliefs.

Peven suggested the government tailored its evidence to fit the defendants.

“I’m going to be cynical here,” he said. “I think it happens. Ask Richard Jewell.”

Jewell was initially suspected in the Atlanta Olympics bombings.

The defendants’ midnight trip to a Portland bank in October was a botched publicity stunt, not a failed robbery as prosecutors contend, Peven argued.

But Rice compared that explanation to a child who gets caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

“What does that child say?” Rice asked. “‘I only took one.’ They only admitted what we caught them doing, red-handed.”

Berry, Barbee and Merrell are in their second trial in U.S. District Court, accused of bombing the newspaper, Planned Parenthood and U.S. Bank and twice robbing the bank in April and July 1996.

The first trial ended in April in a hung jury, after one juror refused to convict on the most serious charges.

Tuesday, defense attorneys hesitated to guess how long jurors might be out.

“A verdict today would be unheard of,” Peven said Tuesday. “Tomorrow would be unusual. Beyond that, I wouldn’t guess.”

Berry, Barbee and Merrell are charged with eight felonies and face mandatory life sentences.

, DataTimes