The Timothy McVeigh case and its impact on media law

[Commentary] Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City (OK) on April 19, 1995, caused the deaths of 168 people, 19 of them children. In journalism circles, McVeigh’s case is also remembered for another reason: It has come to be a classic in the free press-fair trial area.

McVeigh’s trial, which produced his conviction and death sentence, addressed various evidentiary issues and his guilt -- but it also caused the collision of the First Amendment guarantee of a free press, the Fifth Amendment guarantee of due process, and the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a trial by impartial jury. It created a durable framework for determining when court records are public, and it signaled how the emerging technology of the Web would shift thinking about prior restraints on the press. All of these threads provided discussion fodder for a recent panel at a journalism historians conference, exploring the bombing and its implications for media law. Appearing were Stephen Jones, the lead defense attorney for McVeigh; Robert Nelon, a First Amendment lawyer at the firm Hall Estill in Oklahoma City who represented a coalition of national news media in the case; Brett Johnson, a journalism professor at the University of Missouri; and yours truly. Together, we tried to put the McVeigh case in perspective and understand what it means today.