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CNN Live At Daybreak

McVeigh Attorney: McVeigh Preparing Emotionally, Psychologically for Death

Aired June 08, 2001 - 08:49   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: The days dwindle down for Timothy McVeigh. He is to die 72 hours from now. One of those who argued for a stay of Monday's execution joins us from Houston this morning.

Richard Burr is one of McVeigh's defense attorneys and had served on the original criminal trial back in 1997.

Good morning, Mr. Burr.

I'd like to tap into your death penalty background and experience here. Are there any other legal options available? Or can anything potentially change, I should say, over the weekend until Monday's execution date? Do you expect it to?

RICHARD BURR, ATTORNEY FOR TIMOTHY MCVEIGH: I don't expect it to. If Tim changed his mind, a petition could be filed in the U.S. Supreme Court, but that's not going to happen.

LIN: Did you think that you had a shot before the U.S. Supreme Court?

BURR: We'll, I think the issues were very serious. There is -- there is serious indications of misconduct by the FBI. Whether it's purposeful or not, we don't know. But there are some signs that it was. And it's important not just for this case, but for a whole variety of federal prosecutions for answers to be had and real truth to be told about what happened here.

I think the Supreme Court might have seen that that was an overarching concern and might have seen that the way to get to it was through Mr. McVeigh's case. And the only way to do that was to stay the execution.

LIN: You had a month to take a look at some of the thousands of documents that were not presented in the original trial, these FBI documents. What, if anything, in that amount of time, were you able to cull from these documents that you could have taken to the U.S. Supreme Court to make a convincing argument -- one item?

BURR: Well, there were -- there were -- at trial, we attempted to put on evidence of other people's involvement from a little community in Arkansas near Oklahoma. We were not allowed to put that evidence on because it wasn't quite connected up enough to the Murrah Building bombing.

Some of the documents that we got added more information about that connection. And had we had those documents before trial and been able to do the investigation that they called for, we might well have been able to put on that evidence. And, in fact, when Terry Nichols was able to put on -- not evidence about those folks, but some other possible folks involved...

LIN: So even to...

BURR: ... he got a life sentence.

LIN: So even to prove a point, why didn't Timothy McVeigh want to go ahead with the appeal to the Supreme Court then?

BURR: Well, I think that Tim has had a struggle for a long time about what the end of his case would be. He felt all along that he would be put to death. And he has vacillated between holding onto life and letting go of life over many months. I think that he had a renewed interest in struggling with this because of the FBI's misconduct. But I think with the denial of the stay from Judge Matsch, he simply felt like there was no alternative and that, for himself, he needed to gather his own resources and get ready for this.

LIN: So aside from the usual logistics leading up to the execution, how is it, personally and very specifically, is Timothy McVeigh preparing to die over the weekend?

BURR: Well, I know he is probably writing a number of letters to people. He is -- he maintains correspondence with many, many people who care about him. And I know that he is probably doing whatever one does psychologically and emotionally to get ready for something like this.

I have represented many people facing this over many years. And as close to it as I have been, I have never quite been able to imagine how one does it. But I've seen many people do it. And it is a process of gathering one's own internal strength.

LIN: Richard Burr, thank you very much for joining us this morning -- Richard Burr, defense attorney for Timothy McVeigh live from Houston.

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