Word: matsch
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However, the road to the death chamber may be long, with many potential twists and turns. Sources close to McVeigh's defense have told TIME that his lawyers will file a motion for a new trial with Judge Richard Matsch in Denver, citing Rule 33 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. While the full details of the motion are still under discussion, the sources say it will be filed by July 7. It will argue that Judge Matsch may have committed several errors, including not allowing the defense to depose witnesses in the Philippines who would point...
Throughout the hearing, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch has proscribed evidence he considered inflammatory. He wants the jury to make a reasoned decision based on fact, he said, and so he disallowed pictures of the victims' weddings, for example, and ruled that a nine-year-old boy, Clint Seidl, could not testify about the loss of his mother. The boy's "age and innocence," Matsch said, would make his testimony appeal too much to the emotions. But keeping emotions out of the proceeding was impossible, and jurors cried again and again. The prosecution's final witness was Clint's father...
After working so hard to prevent a circus, Judge Richard Matsch was not about to preside over a lynching--or risk seeing the biggest case of his career reversed on appeal. So on Wednesday, with prosecutors ready to explain in grisly detail why Timothy McVeigh deserves death, Matsch ordered the jurors to lock away their feelings and remain "free from the influence of passion." He ruled that government evidence designed to stir those emotions--wedding portraits, poetry, the testimony of a boy who missed his mom--would all be inadmissible...
...Through it all sat McVeigh, cold and silent as stone. At that moment in that room, it seemed inconceivable that the jury could do anything but sentence him to death--and that anything but simple vengeance would be the reason why. When the day's testimony was over, even Matsch looked shaken. "You're human, and I'm human too," he told the jury. "[But] we are not here to seek revenge against Timothy McVeigh...
...turned on his lawyer: Legal sources tell CNN that McVeigh is considering using "quality of attorneys" as one avenue for his appeal, despite the fact that his defense cost taxpayers $10 million. If that doesn?t float, other issues under consideration as grounds for appeal include Judge Richard Matsch's ban on the defense theory that foreign terrorists were at the heart of the bombing in which McVeigh was a mere pawn and the restriction on using the FBI Inspector General's scathing report on the FBI crime lab. McVeigh's lawyers have until July 7 to file motions asking...