Mcveigh Trial Ran Circles Around O.J. Smooth Proceedings ‘A Wonderful Sign For America’
The judge ran the courtroom with a firm hand. The lawyers didn’t posture for the cameras. The jurors appeared to take their responsibilities seriously.
Timothy McVeigh’s trial was conducted with such dignity and dispatch that it might just help rehabilitate the post-O.J. image of the American criminal justice system.
“It really is the antithesis of the Simpson criminal case, and I think that’s a wonderful sign for America,” said Andrew Cohen, a Denver trial attorney following the case. “This case proves that if you have a good judge who takes control of the case, you can have an orderly trial, a fair trial and a trial that works the way the law is supposed to work.”
Simpson’s trial in the murder of his ex-wife and her friend dragged on for nearly a year. McVeigh’s case wrapped up in little more than a month.
Simpson’s jury, with 10 members replaced for various indiscretions, deliberated less than four hours before acquitting the former football star. The jury in McVeigh’s case remained intact and deliberated for 23-1/2 hours over four days before convicting him in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people.
Cohen and other attorneys said the contrast springs from the fundamental difference in the cases, the absence of cameras in the courtroom and the firm hand of U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch.
“A lot of the interest in that case was quite frankly lurid,” former federal prosecutor John Walsh said of the Simpson trial. “It was a murder case involving a celebrity. This case was much more fundamental than that, so many hundreds and thousands of people directly involved, so many innocent people killed.”
He added: “I think everyone, including the defense, was looking over their shoulder at O.J.”
Cohen pronounced Matsch “the anti-Ito” because his decisive courtroom style differs so strongly from the laissez-faire manner of Lance Ito, the judge in the Simpson murder case who put up with grandstanding and bickering among the lawyers.
“He wasn’t going to allow the lawyers to play games in court,” Cohen said.
Matsch also “kept both sides focused on what really was evidence,” Walsh said. He blocked prosecutors from putting on some particularly gruesome victim testimony, and he stymied the defense’s bid to suggest a larger conspiracy.
“I think the good news is that it goes a long way toward rehabilitating the image of judges, lawyers and even the system of justice that we have,” said Christopher Mueller, a law professor.
For those who lost loved ones in the bombing, the orderly trial - and, of course, the verdict - were a relief.
“I’ve been so worried that one juror would do the wrong thing,” said Glen Seidl, who lost his wife, Kathy Lynn Seidl. “The anxiety, the anticipation, what the verdict was going to be, you never know what it’s going to be. I think we learned that from the O.J. Simpson trial.”
Jim Denny, whose children, Brandon and Rebecca, were gravely injured in the bombing, took pleasure in the smooth operation of the system.
“The satisfaction I get with this is knowing and showing everybody that our system works,” he said.