Section A·Page 6
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, March 9, 1999
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Nation/World
Clinton visits hurricane victims
President denies pleas to delay deportations in aftermath of storm
The Associated Press
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — On a mission of hope and solidarity with Central Americans battered by Hurricane Mitch, President Clinton knelt Sunday at a spot where the horror of 2,000 mud slide victims was captured by a single impression in cracked mud.
"The imprint of the child," Clinton mouthed as he and Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman placed flowers beside a wooden cross where a little girl's bones poked the earth.
Casitas Volcano showed the mud's deadly path of last October.
In the near distance, a gash on
"No picture cing of seeing, the outline of that small child's body by her grave and seeing the remnants of her skeleton," Clinton said.
States illegally became eligible for deportation. He turned down pleas for an extension of the halt in deportations that was instituted after last fall's devastating storm. The stay in deportations exmired yesterday.
His visit began just as 15 , 000 Guatemalans and Salvadorans who were in the United
But Clinton's first stop — the littered ruins of the only home left standing at the site of the Oct. 30 Casitas landslide that buried 2,000 people — underscored that many Central American immigrants have nothing to go home to.
To return them now would cause tragic problems of stability, warned Salvadoran President Armando Calderon Sol. Calderon pleaded for the United States to reconsider an extension.
White House spokesman Michael Hammer said the region was capable of beginning to receive its nationals. Deportations are not expected to begin immediately, he added.
In a Posoltega, Nicaragua
schoolyard, Clinton met survivors still living in plastic tents four months after Mitch.
Jose Ronaldo Romero, 40, a cane worker who earns about $53 a month, said he wanted Clinton's help getting a coffin for his father-in-law and eyeglasses for his daughter Escarilina, 9, whose vision was damaged when she and her mother were buried in mud.
Hammer said Clinton's trip was intended to provide hope to Mitch's victims and prevent political instability.
"Without rebuilding schools, homes, roads, crops and jobs, it can lead to despair and corruption." Hammer said.
Clinton's $956 million emergency aid package Sunday remained tangled in domestic spending politics on Capitol Hill.
Supreme Court denies McVeigh appeal
Convicted murderer claims biased jury, media-tainted trial
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Timothy McVeigh, sentenced to die for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured hundreds more, lost a Supreme Court appeal Sunday.
The court refused to hear McVeigh's arguments that his trial was tainted by jury misconduct and news reports that he confessed to the bombing, the worst such attack on U.S. soil.
His lawyer, Richard Burr, expressed disappointment, saying, they had hoped the Supreme Court would be able to rise above the terrible human consequences of the case in evaluating McVeigh's appeal.
"It is so easy to say 'no' to Timothy McVeigh." Burr added.
McVeigh was convicted of first-
degree murder, conspiracy and weapons-related charges in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The bombing could be heard miles away, and television screens soon were filled with stunning images of the shattered building and rescue workers looking for survivors.
A federal appeals court last fall upheld his convictions and death sentence in the deaths of eight federal law enforcement officers. Oklahoma prosecutors have said they plan to charge McVeigh with first-degree murder in state court for the deaths of the other 160 bombing victims.
McVeigh still can pursue a new round of appeals challenging the constitutionality of his federal prosecution. Under a 1996 federal law, inmates have up to a year to file such an appeal.
scale when the crime is unspeakable and public outrage is great.
The appeal
His Supreme Court appeal said that the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that upheld his conviction sent a message that the rules of law may be applied on a sliding
The appeal said pretrial news reports of a purported confession by McVeigh to his lawyers created a serious threat to his fair-trial rights. Four jurors indicated in pretrial questioning that they had seen the reports.
Justice
McVeigh: Sentenced to die for Oklahoma City bombing.
Department lawyers said the bombing caused extraordinary harm and that courts took extraordinary steps to ensure McVeigh a fair trial, including disqualifying the original judge and moving the trial to Denver.
Prospective jurors were examined thoroughly for signs of bias, and news reports never established that
McVeigh actually confessed, prosecutors said.
At McVeigh's trial in 1997, prosecutors said he and co-defendant Terry Nichols carried out the bombing in revenge for the April 19, 1993, deaths of about 80 people in the siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
Prosecutors said McVeigh, now 30, chose the Oklahoma City building because he believed people responsible for the Waco siege worked there and because the building was an easy target. Nichols was convicted of conspiracy in a separate trial and sentenced to life in prison.
McVeigh is being held under maximum security at a federal prison in Florence, Colo.
A federal death row and execution chamber have been built at a prison in Terre Haute, Ind. The facility has not been activated and the 19 other inmates currently under federal death sentences are being held in prisons around the country as they pursue court appeals.