OKLAHOMA CITY -- Attorneys for bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh asked a judge yesterday to move the trial outside of the state Oklahoma, arguing that intense local media coverage of the attack would make a fair trial impossible.
"There exists in this district so great a prejudice against Mr. McVeigh that he cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial at any place fixed by law for holding court within this district, or, in fact, within the state of Oklahoma," attorney Stephen Jones wrote in the motion.
Attorneys and clerks hauled in thousands of pages of newspaper tearsheets and other exhibits on a small cart to file within the court system.
U.S. District Judge Wayne Alley has set trial for McVeigh and Terry Nichols for May 17 in Lawton, about 90 miles southwest of the site of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
Alley ruled that finding an impartial jury in Oklahoma City would be "chancy," but defense attorneys maintain that Lawton's jury pool would be equally suspect.
Jones has said that more than half of 400 Lawton-area residents polled believe that McVeigh is guilty, and most of the rest were undecided about whether or not he is responsible.
Jones and Michael Tigar, the head of Nichols' defense team, have proposed there be alternate trial sites in places including Charleston, W.Va., San Francisco and Denver.
Nichols and McVeigh have been indicted on federal murder and conspiracy charges in the April 19 bombing, which killed 169 people and injured more than 500.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against both men, although only McVeigh is accused of actually driving a truck bomb from Kansas to Oklahoma City. Both men are accused of planning the attack.
Yesterday, attorneys for Nichols and McVeigh challenged federal death penalty laws as unconstitutionally vague and asked Alley to bar prosecutors from seeking capital punishment.
The federal government has not executed anyone in more than 30 years.