JURY deliberations stretched into a third day in the trial of the accused Oklahoma City bomber, Mr Timothy McVeigh, yesterday, as anxiety grew among waiting survivors and relatives of those killed in the devastating blast.
"I didn't think the jury would have taken this long. That's scary," said Ms Jannie Coverdale, whose grandsons Elijah and Aaron were among the 168 bombing victims. "Somebody on the jury doesn't want to find him guilty."
The panel of seven men and five women has been sequestered since starting deliberations on Friday morning. They deliberated for full days on Friday and Saturday.
They are weighing murder and conspiracy charges against Mr McVeigh (29), a former soldier, who is accused of blowing up the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19th, 1995. The explosion killed 168 people and wounded more than 500 others. Mr McVeigh faces a possible death sentence.
Lawyers adopted a more cautionary tone as to what a third day of deliberations meant. "I don't know if you can view a long or a short deliberation either way," said Mr Tritico, a member of the McVeigh defence team as he went into the Denver courthouse to see his client. "There's no way to tell," he said.
Judge Richard Matsch has allowed the jurors to set their own hours, making predictions of their schedule difficult.
Defence lawyers said McVeigh was reading and talking on the telephone to friends as he waited in a basement prison cell. "He's holding up as well as I would expect him to at this juncture," Mr Christopher Tritico said.
Survivors and family members waited at a nearby church, doing crossword puzzles and watching television. Sponsored by the Justice Department, groups of survivors and relatives have been attending the trial in weeklong shifts, and yesterday, many were preparing to return home to allow another 24 member group to come to Denver.
"I wish the verdict would have come in yesterday so the people that were up here could hear it," said Charles Tomlin, whose son Rick was killed in the explosion.
A local defence lawyer, Mr David Japha, who has followed the trial closely, said he read little or nothing into the length of the deliberations, nor the fact that the jurors had not returned with questions or requests for testimony to be reread.
"They're looking at each and every element: did each and every element get proved up beyond a reasonable doubt? And if you look at that, they're not really spending an inordinate amount of time."