24/05/01

Ashcroft Vows No Delay in McVeigh's Execution

 By DAVID JOHNSTON WASHINGTON, May 24 - Attorney General John Ashcroft said today that he would not further delay the scheduled June 11 execution of Timothy J. McVeigh, but acknowledged that the F.B.I. had found about 900 more pages of documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing that the government had failed to turn over to Mr. McVeigh's lawyers for his trial. Mr. Ashcroft said at a news conference at the Justice Department that he was now certain that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had found all relevant documents in the case and that none cast doubt on Mr. McVeigh's conviction or the sentence of death he received for the 1995 terrorist attack that killed 168 people and injured scores of others. "The American people can have confidence that all documents now have been identified and produced," Mr. Ashcroft said, "and that nothing in any of the documents undermines McVeigh's admission of the murder of 168 of his fellow American citizens, or nothing in these documents undermines the justice of his sentence." The attorney general announced his determination to go forward with Mr. McVeigh's execution, which was originally scheduled for May 16, even as some government officials expressed concern that the new documents might lead to another postponement in what would be the first federal death sentence carried out in 38 years. Mr. McVeigh's two top lawyers, Robert Nigh Jr. of Tulsa, Okla., and Nathan D. Chambers of Denver, had far different views of the documents than the attorney general. At a news conference in Tulsa, Mr. Nigh said several of the witness statements that had been released to to the lawyers could have been used at Mr. McVeigh's trial. Mr. Nigh also questioned Mr. Ashcroft's assertion that all the bureau's documents relating to Mr. McVeigh had been found and turned over to the lawyers. Mr. Nigh said he had not talked to Mr. McVeigh about Mr. Ashcroft's statements but would continue to urge him to fight the execution. Mr. McVeigh has not yet made a decision about whether to do so, Mr. Neigh said. In Denver, Mr. Chambers told reporters, "We do not necessarily agree with his interpretation of the documents." Mr. Chambers added that he thought the new documents were "potentially helpful." In total, Mr. Ashcroft said federal prosecutors had provided nearly 4,000 pages of interview reports and other documents to defense lawyers for Mr. McVeigh, and Terry L. Nichols, who was sentenced to life in prison for helping to carry out the bombing. Mr. Nichols's lawyers have sought a new trial. Michael Tigar, a lawyer for Mr. Nichols, said today that Mr. Ashcroft was wrong in his description of the some of the documents as the irrelevant and unsolicited writings of psychics and mental patients. "There are no U.F.O. sightings I've seen," Mr. Tigar said of his review of the documents. "That's not the content of the majority of these documents. For him to suggest to the contrary and seek to kill another human being without an inquiry into the unprecedented series of F.B.I. failures to obey judicial orders seems to me unconscionable." The first collection of 3,135 pages of documents was given defense lawyers on May 10. Since then, Mr. Ashcroft said, additional documents about the bombing that had not been produced to the defense were found in bureau files in several cities. The documents, he said, included 103 pages of material found in the Baltimore F.B.I. office on May 15, 327 pages of documents found in Denver on May 18, 405 pages from various offices on May 23 and 63 pages from Oklahoma City produced today. But in an unusual step that seemed to reflect his shaky confidence in the the bureau resulting from the records lapse, Mr. Ashcroft said that he had obtained a legal certification from Director Louis J. Freeh of the F.B.I. assuring Mr. Ashcroft that the agency "has completed its search and produced every relevant document in its possession." In addition, Mr. Ashcroft said that he had ordered the public release of an internal Justice Department report on the documents. None of the documents at issue have been publicly disclosed because of an order issued by the trial judge barring release of evidentiary material. Nevertheless, Mr. Ashcroft suggested that many of the documents were unrelated to whether Mr. McVeigh was responsible for the bombing. Some documents, Mr. Ashcroft said, were letters from psychics offering to contact victims who perished in the attack. Another document, he said, was a letter written to the bureau by an unidentified man who offered information in exchange for money and the release of a federal prisoner. Other documents, he said, were clippings of newspapers and magazines, in one case material sent in by "a person under psychiatric care." If the imposition of Mr. McVeigh's death sentence is delayed past June 19, Juan Raul Garza, who was sentenced to death for three drug-related killings in Texas, would become the first federal prisoner in line for execution since the federal death penalty was re-established by Congress in the late 1980's.