Government says McVeigh does not deserve new trial
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Timothy McVeigh
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February 6, 1998
Web posted at: 9:42 p.m. EST (0242 GMT)
DENVER (CNN) -- Responding to convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's petition for a new trial, prosecutors Friday said that nothing in the defense motion justified overturning the guilty verdict and death sentence.
The 100-page government brief argued that testimony from former government militia informer Carol Howe -- excluded from the McVeigh trial -- was not relevant to McVeigh's guilt and would not have changed the verdict.
Prosecutors also argued that defense lawyers waited too late to object to pretrial publicity, including a so-called McVeigh confession published days before the start of the trial. If they wanted to delay the trial because of it, they waited too late to make the challenge, the government argued.
McVeigh lawyers have also argued that a note from a juror to the court clerk during the trial, saying that one juror had said "we all know what the verdict should be," was grounds for a new trial. But the prosecution said it was "no basis for concluding the jury could not be impartial."
"Casual and isolated remarks do not justify a new trial," the government argued.