Book Review: Journalism and Justice in the Oklahoma City Bombing Trials, by Chad F. Nye

Abstract

Chad F. Nye Journalism and Justice in the Oklahoma City Bombing Trials. El Paso, LFB Scholarly Publishing, 2014, 272 pp.For those journalism practitioners and professors for whom law is not their central area of expertise, when the issue of fair trial/free press comes up, one typically thinks back to the Sam Sheppard/The Fugitive case from Cleveland. In it, the court hearings and trial for a doctor accused of murdering his wife in 1954 turned into a media circus, not to mention a TV series and movie. The 1994-1995 O. J. Simpson trial also comes to mind for the vast attention it attracted, as does the Bruno Hauptman Lindberg baby kidnapping case from 1935. But as important as these cases are, Nye makes a compelling case in his book that the trials associated with Timothy McVeigh's 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City define modern fair trial/free press law.McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing has certainly attracted plenty of attention over the years for the scope and shock of one of the biggest acts of domestic terrorism ever perpetrated in the United States. But less attention has been paid to the importance of the McVeigh case to the field of fair trial/free press. Few cases before or since have covered more issues to this contested field, and Nye gives an exhaustive look at the conflicts between the press's coverage of the case, the subsequent trial, and the interests of McVeigh, his accused collaborator Terry Nichols, and the government.In this scholarly examination of the case, Nye lays out 11 major fair trial/free press issues created by the Oklahoma City bombing case:* Pretrial publicity* Defense's working with the media* Change of venue* Press consortium* Audio feeds and tapes* Sealed documents* Information leaks* Gag orders* Confession stories* Restrictions on juror information* Closed-circuit broadcastingThe central conflict between the First and Sixth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution in this case was that the Oklahoma City bombing was by every possible definition a big news story. It involved the death of 168 victims, including numerous children and 8 federal agents. It was a heavily covered story in the United States as a whole, and the dominant story for months in Oklahoma. Nye argues that the more than 1,700 newspaper stories published nationally and 1,000 stories appearing in Oklahoma papers, along with more than 900 broadcast stories, were the core conflict that led to the remaining 10 fair trial/free press issues. Among the most significant of these stories werethe video and photographs of McVeigh being escorted from the Noble County Jail prior to his first court appearance, Governor Keating's statements to the press referring to McVeigh and Nichols as 'creeps,' and later the video and photographs of McVeigh and Nichols in chains leaving the Oklahoma County jail for the change in venue hearings. (p. 174)McVeigh's lawyer Stephen Jones chose to take an active effort in trying to humanize McVeigh by attempting to get his client interviewed both locally and nationally. His goal, Nye argues, was not to convince the public-and perhaps potential jurors-that McVeigh was innocent but rather that he was a human being and not the monster he was being portrayed as by the press.Concerns over how McVeigh and Nichols were portrayed by these hundreds of stories led to the call by the defense for a change of venue away from Oklahoma City. …