McVeigh, Lawyers Weigh New Options

May 16, 2001 -- On the day he was supposed to die, Timothy McVeigh is in good spirits and taking an active role in weighing all legal options available to him, his lawyers said outside the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. today.

"He said initially he was willing to consider all possibilities and that has not changed," said attorney Rob Nigh.

The convicted Oklahoma City bomber met with his lawyers for at least two hours this morning to discuss his options in light of the FBI's stunning revelation last week that the agency did not share more than 3,000 pages of evidence with the defense team during the trial.

In Washington today, FBI Director Louis Freeh told a congressional panel that the bureau has located "a number of additional documents" as a result ofa search ordered last Friday.

The documents are being reviewed to see if they should be turned over, he said. When reporters asked them about the additional documents, McVeigh attorneys Nigh and Nathan Chambers declined comment and would not say whether the government had informed them about the potential new evidence.

McVeigh was convicted for his role in the deadly 1995 attack on a federal building that killed 168 and injured more than 500 in the worst case of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.

His execution, originally scheduled for today, was postponed until June 11 to give his attorneys a chance to review the documents that had been withheld. Chambers and Nigh gave no indication when they would announce what legal strategy, if any, they would pursue on their client's behalf.

Lots of Room to Maneuver

The developments have given McVeigh, who last December willfully abandoned all appeals of his conviction, a surprising amount of room for legal maneuvering.

McVeigh could ask the Supreme Court, or an appellate court or presiding federal judge Richard Matsch in Denver, for a new trial, arguing he was prevented from mounting a complete defense.

While McVeigh has publicly taken responsibility for the bombing, he has never formally changed his plea from not guilty.

"If the defense lawyers can show that the evidence that was withheld would have been important to Tim McVeigh's defense — would very likely have made a difference — then the judge may grant a new trial," said John Coyle, McVeigh's first attorney after the bombing.

Failing that, a more likely step might be to seek a new trial just on the penalty phase of the case.

John Doe No. 2 Could Re-enter the Picture

Because the withheld documents deal extensively with early FBI suspicions of an accomplice, "John Doe No. 2," they might challenge the jurors' notion that McVeigh played the central role in the attack and therefore warranted a sentence of death.

"Anything that would minimize Tim McVeigh's involvement in the crime would be further grounds to grant a new trial on his punishment, on the death penalty," said Coyle.

However, that might be difficult given a letter, ostensibly written by McVeigh in response to a question from a Houston Chronicle reporter, categorically denying the involvement of John Doe No. 2.

"The bottom line is that it's still a very real long shot for McVeigh, even to get his sentence overturned," said ABCNEWS' legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

That raises the possibility of a third option: do nothing. If McVeigh wants to die on June 11, there's really nothing his lawyers can do to stop him.

But if he decides he wants to fight this, legal experts say the FBI has made it possible that this case could drag on for years to come. ABCNEWS' Dean Reynolds contributed to this report.