McVeigh Lawyer Will Ask to Quit Bombing Case

ENID, Okla. — Timothy J. McVeigh’s lead defense attorney said Monday he will go along with his client’s wish and ask the courts to let him withdraw from the Oklahoma City bombing case.

McVeigh, formally sentenced to death last week, had told the Buffalo (N.Y.) News that he wanted Stephen Jones off his appeal because the lawyer had told him lies.

Jones denied the accusation.

“No one has lied to Mr. McVeigh on the defense team,” Jones said. “Certainly I haven’t lied to him, and I can’t imagine that anybody else” on the defense team has.

“I think it would be extremely difficult to represent him in view of these statements he has made that have no basis in fact,” Jones said. “He doesn’t have any basis to seek my withdrawal, but I have a basis to seek it.”

Jones had said last week he was legally obligated to represent McVeigh at least until the first appeal failed. On Monday, however, he said he would file a motion with the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to request the withdrawal.

Jones, who returned to his hometown of Enid after McVeigh’s trial in Denver, said the court might overrule his withdrawal.

McVeigh had told the Buffalo newspaper, which circulates in his hometown of Pendleton, N.Y., that Jones promised to remove himself from the case once the trial was completed but went back on his word.

McVeigh, convicted in the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people, wasn’t specific on the lies he said Jones told him.

“It’s for Congress, the bar and the judiciary to investigate and discover,” he said.

In the newspaper interview, McVeigh said he bears no grudge against jurors in the trial. “I thought they ruled too much on emotion--but I wanted to convey no personal vendetta against them,” McVeigh said.

The newspaper interviewed McVeigh at the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo., where he was moved after his sentencing.