Son of Oklahoma City bomber won’t testify

Tuesday, July 25, 2000 | 11:17 a.m.

Centuries ago, God recognized the special bond between a parent and a child when he stopped Abraham from sacrificing his only son, Isaac, on the altar -- an act Abraham was reluctantly performing to prove his faith to the Almighty.

For 20 years, Las Vegas attorney Dominic Gentile has tried to get the judicial system to recognize that same special tie between parents and children -- a parent-child privilege -- but has fallen short of having it become precedent.

Now, he may have a case to gain such a precedent as he represents Joshua Isaac Nichols, 17, of Las Vegas, the son of federally convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, who is facing state murder charges in Oklahoma.

In an out-of-state subpoena hearing Friday before District Judge Lee Gates, Josh Nichols agreed not to fight the subpoena and go to Oklahoma City. But Gentile said his client will refuse to testify based on the parent-child privilege that some legal experts contend does not exist.

Gentile, who has represented Josh Nichols for the last three years, said the court in Oklahoma could order his young client, who works as a laborer, jailed for refusing to testify at the Oct. 9 preliminary hearing.

"If the family is the fundamental unit of society, as many claim, then it should be impregnable from the government," Gentile said. "I am basing this (court action) on the Torah, Abraham and Isaac and basically a cultural value that has been in existence for thousands of years."

Gentile practically introduced the theory of parent-child privilege to the American court system in 1980 when he represented the 12-year-old stepdaughter of a member of the notorious Las Vegas "Hole in the Wall Gang" burglars after she was subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury.

"I did the research (for that case) and found that there was not a single case anywhere that recognized the right of a child not to be forced to testify against a parent," Gentile said.

Nevertheless, Gentile filed the case that became moot when his client testified that she knew nothing about the matters before the grand jury.

Gentile later represented the son of a Las Vegas hotel entertainment director who was said to have ties to the mob and won a federal court judge's opinion that a parent-child privilege does exist. As a result, the son did not testify. The federal government filed an appeal, but later withdrew it.

Gentile said a court ruling of precedent for the parent-child privilege could be disastrous for prosecutors. He said that, since the mid-1980s, courts in drug cases have ruled against the parent-child privilege and have compelled blood relatives to testify against each other.

"You cannot force a wife to testify against a husband -- but the only reason that privilege exists is because hundreds of years ago it had to have been litigated," Gentile said. "There is no reason the same privilege should not be extended to parents and children."

In the mid-1980s, Gentile wrote the book "The Parent-Child Privilege: A Case for The Family," which Lana Padilla, the mother of Josh Nichols and the ex-wife of Terry Nichols, read before seeking Gentile's representation.

Terry Nichols, who lived in Las Vegas during the early 1990s, and Timothy McVeigh were convicted in federal court in 1997 for conspiracy in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the federal court building in Oklahoma City, where 168 people were killed and hundreds more were injured.

McVeigh was sentenced to death. Nichols was given life in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted in the federal trial of involuntary manslaughter in the deaths of eight federal law enforcement officers.

In the state case, prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Nichols' role in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The preliminary hearing will decide whether Nichols should go to trial on 160 counts of first-degree murder.