After delib­er­at­ing for 20 hours over three days, the jurors who recent­ly found Terry Nichols (pic­tured) guilty of mur­der in the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb­ing expressed some of the anguish that choos­ing between life and death caused them. ​“It was tough. We had found it much eas­i­er to arrive at a guilty ver­dict, but the penal­ty phase was much hard­er,” said juror Terry Zellmer. Cecil Reeder, a Korean War vet­er­an who sup­port­ed the death penal­ty for Nichols, said, ​“This shook me as deep as I’ve ever been shook in my life.” Some of the jurors implied that Nichols’ reli­gious con­ver­sion in the years after the bomb­ing and the fact that he was not in Oklahoma City on the day of the bomb­ing may have con­tributed to 4 or 5 votes for life. The jury’s split ver­dict leaves the sen­tenc­ing for Nichols to the judge, who by law can­not impose a death sen­tence. Nichols is already serv­ing a life with­out parole sen­tence on a fed­er­al con­vic­tion in the bomb­ing. (Dallas Morning News, June 13, 2004) See Life Without Parole.

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