US trials of the year

From O.J. Simpson to Timothy McVeigh, from Louise Woodward to Paula Jones, America spent 1997 absorbed by courtroom dramas that mirrored th...

From O.J. Simpson to Timothy McVeigh, from Louise Woodward to Paula Jones, America spent 1997 absorbed by courtroom dramas that mirrored the nation’s angst and obsessions. Traumatised at the prospect of domestic terrorism in the Oklahoma City bombing, the nation was fascinated by the trial of Timothy McVeigh, 29, who was raised in middle America but joined militias hostile to the federal government.

Showing no remorse, McVeigh was sentenced to die for the blast that killed 168 people and injured more than 600 in April 1995. A second Oklahoma City trial is now under way — that of McVeigh’s alleged co-conspirator Terry Nichols. The trial has attracted less attention but could lead to yet another death penalty in a country that is executing people as fast as in the 1950s: nearly 80 people were scheduled to be put to death in the last month of the year.

At a time when the Internet and computers are ever more popular, authorities believe they have finally caught up with the anti-technology "Unabomber", whose mail bombs terrorised high-tech targets for 17 years. Theodore Kaczynski, a 55-year-old former mathematics professor turned hermit, is on trial accused of killing three people and injuring 23. He was turned in by his own brother.

Moving on to sex and celebrity, Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton does not seem to have threatened his popularity. He is accused of asking Jones — then a young Arkansas state employee — for oral sex.

Clinton has weathered the storm well even as Jones — in May — reportedly gave intimate details of the President’s genitals. A judge promptly slapped a gag order on the revelation but another woman who claimed to be Clinton’s mistress has put what she says is the same information on the Internet.

The President has also weathered controversy — and congressional and Justice Department investigations — into fundraising during his 1996 re-election campaign. The public responded with a yawn.

More salacious was the abortive trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, 56, who was accused of rape and biting his victim’s back. He decided after four days that it was better to plead guilty to assault and battery than to allow damning testimony by a second woman and was immediately fired by NBC television.

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Former football great O.J. Simpson had been acquitted of killing his ex-wife and a friend but, in February, lost a $33.5 million lawsuit in connection with the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in June 1994.

The civil trial was not televised and there was none of the racial overtones prevalent in the criminal time which found him innocent in October 1995.

A trial that rivalled the Simpson event for courtroom drama was that of Louise Woodward, a 19-year-old English nanny convicted of shaking to death her infant charge in a Boston suburb.

The trial polarised opinion on both sides of the Atlantic and differences were deepened when a judge freed her. The prosecution is appealing.

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The trial captured the American imagination because so many are torn by the fact that they leave their children in the care of underpaid young women with little or no licensing or oversight.