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McVeigh and attorneys to meet Thursday to discuss appeal
DENVER (AP) Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh will meet
with lawyers this week and is likely to file a request to block his
execution, his attorneys said Wednesday.
The request would be based on about 4,000 documents the FBI
turned over to McVeigh's attorneys earlier this month, just days
before he had been scheduled to be executed for carrying out the
1995 blast that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.
At his office in Tulsa, Okla., Rob Nigh said he plans to meet
with McVeigh on Thursday at the federal penitentiary in Terre
Haute, Ind., and will seek his approval on a request to block the
execution.
Nigh declined to comment on the contents of the documents he
would show McVeigh.
"You can certainly anticipate it will request a stay," he
said.
Nathan Chambers, McVeigh's Denver-based attorney, said McVeigh
believes the information is worthy of judicial review.
"If he gives us permission to file something, we'll probably
file something tomorrow," he said Wednesday. "We're in the
process of drafting the paperwork."
McVeigh told a federal judge in December that he would not
appeal his death sentence.
In early May, the FBI gave McVeigh's attorneys thousands of
documents that it said had accidentally not been turned over to the
defense. Attorney General John Ashcroft then postponed McVeigh's
execution from May 16 to June 11.
Meanwhile, a former FBI agent who worked on the case reportedly
told a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee last
year that the FBI ignored evidence that might have helped the
defense.
Ricardo Ojeda, a former special agent in Oklahoma City, wrote
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in March 2000, complaining of
corruption and discrimination in the FBI's field office, according
to CBS' "60 Minutes II."
"I am also aware of instances in other cases, including the
Oklahoma City bombing, where exculpatory evidence was ignored and
not documented. Including exculpatory information I personally
gathered from leads assigned me in the case," Ojeda wrote.
Nigh said Ojeda's allegations should have an impact on the case.
"That information should, at minimum, change the course of this
case in the near future," Nigh said on "60 Minutes II."
The FBI said Ojeda's records were turned over to McVeigh's
lawyers, but that none of his investigation was used at trial.
Ojeda said he was fired from the FBI after testifying in a
discrimination hearing against FBI management.
"Because he is no longer on the rolls, former Agent Ojeda would
not know that his concerns are unfounded," FBI Deputy Director Tom
Pickard said in a statement. "Thousands of agents worked on this
case but, in the end, most did not have their work presented at
trial."
Ojeda could not be reached by The Associated Press; there was no
answer at his home in Oklahoma, and a message left at his wife's
business was not returned.
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