Report May Prompt Defense to Seek McVeigh Trial Delay

WASHINGTON —  The lead attorney for Oklahoma bombing suspect Timothy J. McVeigh said he may seek to delay the trial because of a newspaper report that said his client had confessed to his defense team.

Appearing on ABC-TV’s “This Week,” attorney Stephen Jones said he had a meeting scheduled today with the trial judge regarding Friday’s Dallas Morning News report that McVeigh admitted planting the bomb at the federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.

Jones said he thinks he knows how the newspaper got what it reported to be a defense document in which McVeigh admits driving the explosives-laden truck that demolished the building in April 1995.

The paper also reported that McVeigh said he chose a daytime attack to boost the “body count.”

“I don’t know everything that the Dallas Morning News knows, but this is not a legitimate defense memorandum, and I don’t know exactly how they obtained it,” Jones said. “But I have a pretty good idea this morning, and we will be going to the court [today] to inform the judge of what we know.”

Jones said he has not asked to relocate the trial but added that “it may be necessary to delay the trial,” now set to start March 31.

He said he hopes to find a resolution to the newspaper report issue “that will allow the trial to go forward. It will be an enormous expense and inconvenience, to say nothing of an emotional impact on the victims and others, if this trial is delayed,” he said.

Citing U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch’s gag order and his own code of professional responsibility, Jones would not say whether some elements in the newspaper report may be true.

“The only way that I can tell you . . . is to say, one, Mr. McVeigh has [pleaded] not guilty and, two, the defense will not present a false defense,” he said.