Guilty of 161 murders, but spared the death penalty

Convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols has been spared the death penalty by jurors who convicted him of 161 counts of murder but remained deadlocked over his sentence.

The impasse in the state trial is the second time prosecutors have been denied the death penalty against Nichols, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1998 after federal jurors also could not agree on his punishment.

Jurors announced they were at an impasse after deliberating for about 19 1/2 hours over three days. Nichols will be sentenced by Judge Steven Taylor, who is required by law to sentence Nichols to life in prison.

State prosecutors and victims’ family members had said death was the appropriate punishment for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building.

The jurors deliberated over Nichols’ sentence after a week of emotional testimony in the trial’s sentencing phase. Nichols faced sentences of life in prison or death by lethal injection on state murder convictions.

The jury convicted Nichols of 161 state murder counts last month. He will be sentenced on August 9.

Nichols, 49, escaped the death chamber after a federal trial in the late 1990s in which he was acquitted of murder but convicted of conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of eight government agents. Oklahoma prosecutors then brought him to trial for the deaths of the other victims, including one foetus, with hopes of winning a death sentence.

The 1995 bombing killed 168 people and wounded 500. Timothy McVeigh, Nichols’ former Army buddy and the mastermind of the bombing, was convicted of federal charges and executed in 2001 for what was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil at the time.

Prosecutors said the blast was a twisted attempt to avenge the deaths of about 80 people who died in the government siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, exactly two years earlier.

They said Nichols helped build the two-ton bomb – made from farm fertiliser and fuel oil – that was packed into a truck and detonated outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

Prosecutors put on 65 witnesses during the sentencing phase, including bombing survivors and victims’ relatives. The defence called several Nichols family members in arguing that he deserves a chance for redemption.

Nichols was at home in Kansas the day of the bombing. But prosecutors presented a mountain of circumstantial evidence that Nichols and McVeigh worked side-by-side to carry out the attack. They said Nichols bought the fertiliser, stole detonation cord, blasting caps and other materials, and helped finance the plot by robbing a gun dealer.

Defence attorneys maintained that Nichols was the fall guy for a shadowy conspiracy far wider than the government has acknowledged.

Nichols surrendered two days after the bombing – the same day President Bill Clinton vowed: “Justice for these killers will be certain, swift and severe. We will find them, we will convict them, and we will seek the death penalty against them.”

Nichols was first brought to trial in federal court in 1997. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1998 after the jury deadlocked on a death sentence.

In 1999, Oklahoma prosecutors charged Nichols with 161 counts of murder with the goal getting the death sentence Nichols escaped in federal court.

His Oklahoma trial began in March and lasted more than three months.