Timothy McVeigh of explosives and eight counts of first-degree murder. On February 20, 1996, the Court granted a change of venue and ordered that the case be transferred from Oklahoma City to the U.S. District Court in Denver, Colorado, to be presided over by U.S. District Judge Richard Paul Matsch. McVeigh instructed his lawyers to use a necessity defense, but they ended up not doing so, because they would have had to prove that McVeigh was in "imminent danger" from the government. (McVeigh himself argued that "imminent" did not necessarily mean "immediate.") They would have argued that his bombing of the Murrah
Timothy McVeigh he did not believe in a hell and that science is his religion. In June 2001, a day before the execution, McVeigh wrote a letter to the "Buffalo News" identifying himself as agnostic. However, he took the Last Rites, administered by a priest, just before his execution. Father Charles Smith ministered to McVeigh in his last moments in death row. McVeigh claimed that the bombing was revenge against the government for the sieges at Waco and Ruby Ridge. McVeigh visited Waco during the standoff. While there, he was interviewed by student reporter Michelle Rauch, a senior journalism major at Southern