U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch addresses prospective jurors in federal court in Denver Thursday, April 3, 1997. PAT LOPEZ CBS NEWS/AP

RICHARD MATSCH

In an age of televised courtroom spectaculars, Richard Matsch is an old-fashioned judge with no time for funny business. No cellular phones, beepers or reading materials will be allowed inside his Denver courtroom and the regulation for coats is just as strict: they must be left outside or put under seats out of view. Lawyers who have taken tongue-lashings from Judge Matsch in the past say it's best to take his rules very seriously. After twenty years on the federal bench, Matsch has earned a reputation as a stern, but fair judge who favors trials that cut to the evidence, leaving witness dramatics and interminable bench conferences to Perry Mason re-runs. According to the Denver Post, the 67-year-old judge prefers to work at a stand-up desk. Even before the trial began, Matsch fired out a series of tough decisions. On moving the trial out of Oklahoma City, he sided with the defense against victims' families. In separating the trials of McVeigh and co-defendant Terry Nichols, he ruled against the prosecution.

The McVeigh trial is not the first encounter with anti-government militancy for the Burlington, Iowa native. In 1987 he heard a case against The Order, an extreme-right milita group, in which two members were convicted for the murder of talk radio host Alan Berg. Matsch, by all accounts, is approaching the McVeigh trial with a similarly steely concentration. In the courtroom or out, Matsch, a law graduate of the University of Michigan, sees himself as "being on the front lines fighting for justice, " one friend told the Denver Post.

Stephen Jones and Chris Tritico, right, defense attorneys for Oklahoma City bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh, leave the federal courthouse in Denver on Wednesday, April 2, 1997. ED ANDRIESKI/AP

STEPHEN JONES

For all his addiction to stiff wool suits, Stephen Jones is no button-down Brooks Brothers jurist. Never one to shirk controversy, Jones' first high-profile defense case 25 years ago was representing a student protestor who had been arrested for carrying a Viet Cong flag. He won his case, but, as a result, lost his job. Now the senior partner at Jones, Wyatt & Roberts, a small law firm in Enid, Oklahoma, Jones, 56, faces an even more daunting task: the defense of Timothy McVeigh, who stands accused of the most heinous act of terrorism in U.S. history.

In pre-trial action, Jones has gotten the trial moved out of Oklahoma City, has pushed agressively for access to classified documents and attacked the Dallas Morning News for reporting that McVeigh had confessed his participation in the Oklahoma City bombing. Associates and former opponents cite intimidating cross-examination tactics and Jones' substantial experience handling death penalty cases as key advantages for the defense. Jones, who knew one of the bombing victims, says he took McVeigh's court-appointed case as part of his civic duty as an attorney. After representing McVeigh for two years, he characterizes relations with his client as amiable. Paid $125 an hour, Jones works with a defense team of 12 lawyers in a downtown Denver office building two blocks from the federal building where the trial is taking place. Jones, who temporarily dropped out of law school at the University of Oklahoma to work as a research assistant in 1964 for Richard Nixon, is a Republican activist, who has made four unsuccessful bids for public office.

Joseph Hartzler, special prosecutor in the Oklahoma City bombing trial, arrives at the federal courthouse in Denver Thursday, April 3, 1997. MICHAEL CAUFIELD/AP

JOSEPH HARTZLER

Since taking over the case against Timothy McVeigh in May 1995, lead prosecutor Joseph Hartzler has maintained a low profile, quietly interviewing thousands of witnesses and amassing a multi-point case against the defendant. "This case is not about me," he has told reporters. "This is about the job we have to do."

After finishing tops in his class at American University Law School, the Springfield, Ill. federal prosecutor worked stints as head of both the criminal and civil divisions in the U.S. attorneys office in Chicago. Among his prominent court victories was the conviction of Puerto Rican nationalists accused in a Chicago bombing plot. Later, as an independent counsel for Chicago's Cook County, he put a judge behind bars following an FBI investigation into judicial corruption.

Hartzler was eager to work on the Oklahoma case from the moment he heard the first reports of the explosion while driving home from his office in Springfield, Ill. He later told reporters that he had the urge to keep on driving straight to Oklahoma City to help.

A devoted father of three boys, and a little league softball coach who abandoned a fast-track career at a prominent Chicago law firm to spare time for his family, Hartzler barely slowed down when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1988. He now uses a motorized scooter to get around.

Timothy McVeigh talks to TIME during a prison interview. FOR TIME BY ROBBIE MCCLAREN

TIMOTHY MCVEIGH

From his blue-collar origins to his unremarkable high school years, nothing suggested that the shy, scrawny Timothy McVeigh would ever attract public notice. After a brief stint studying computers at a two-year business college, McVeigh, a solid A-and-B student from Pendleton, New York, got a job as a driver for an armored truck company. If anything made him stand out in co-workers' minds, it was his obsession with guns, a passion he had nurtured since age 10. McVeigh told acquaintances he was a survivalist, stocking up food and weapons for an imminent nuclear attack, poring over doomsday literature and purchasing 10 acres of woodland southeast of Buffalo, New York for use as a survivalist bunker.

His love of weapons finally found expression in the Army, where McVeigh, who continued to build up an ever-growing assortment of rifles, missile launchers and homemade bombs, was considered a shoe-in for rapid promotion. It was a career choice that would prove fateful: at Fort Riley, Kansas, McVeigh became friends with co-defendant Terry Nichols and Michael Fortier, slotted as the government's star witness in the bombing trial. After a stint as a Bradley gunner during the Persian Gulf War, McVeigh set his sights on the Green Berets. He didn't make it.