Nichols spared

last updated 8 January 2015

McAlester, Okla.

Terry Nichols, who helped Timothy McVeigh blow up the Oklahoma City federal building, escaped the death penalty last week. A jury had convicted him of 161 counts of murder, but it deadlocked on whether he should be executed. Jurors said four members of the panel who opposed putting Nichols to death were swayed by his jailhouse conversion to Christianity. A judge will now pick one of two options—life in prison with parole or without it. Nichols was already serving life for the deaths of eight federal agents killed in the 1995 blast, so the new convictions changed little. Gloria Taylor, whose daughter died in the explosion, was dismayed that Nichols’ life had been spared. “One hundred and sixty murders of innocent people—men, women, and children,” she said. “What more would it take?”