Oklahoma City bombing defining case of SCOTUS nominee’s career

On April 19, 1995, as the first reports came in about a bombing in Oklahoma City, some of the federal government's top prosecutors gathered in the office of Merrick Garland, who at the time was the second-in-command to the Justice Department's second-in-command.

Someone turned on the television.

'We saw bodies of those young children being pulled out of the rubble. It was enormously moving to us on many levels, including as parents of young children,” recalled Jamie S. Gorelick, Garland's boss. All told, 19 children died in the explosion at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building - most of them killed in the building's day-care center.

As they watched, Gorelick said, Garland told her, 'You need to send me there.”

Garland oversaw the massive prosecution that followed, showing a meticulous streak that had long set him apart. He insisted on obtaining subpoenas for records - even when people were willing to hand them over - to insulate the government's case against future appeals.

And when conspirator Timothy McVeigh was arraigned at a nearby Air Force base, Garland was so determined to run the case by the book that he literally brought the book with him. A former colleague remembers Garland carrying a paperback version of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

'We needed to send someone who could assure that the investigation was perfect,” Gorelick said. 'And he did all of that.”

Garland, 63, now a longtime federal appeals judge, was nominated Wednesday by President Barack Obama to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

The Oklahoma City case was a defining moment in Garland's career, showcasing the intensity that had propelled him from the Chicago suburbs to a partner's office at a high-powered Washington law firm - and then out of that office to begin a new career in government as a low-level federal prosecutor in the early 1990s.

Garland said his grandparents had left Eastern Europe in the early 1900s to avoid anti-Semitic persecution. His parents had instilled in him a desire for public service.

'I know that my mother is watching this on television and crying her eyes out,” Garland said. 'I only wish that my father were here to see this today.” Garland's father ran an advertising business out of the family basement and died in 2000.

Garland has been married for more than 25 years and has two daughters.

He has the résumé of a Supreme Court nominee out of central casting: Harvard College, Harvard Law, two clerkships, a stint in government service and now a long tenure at the appeals court.

Along the way, he worked on one of Washington's legendary criminal cases - the prosecution of then-Mayor Marion Barry on drug charges in 1990 - and oversaw the case against 'Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.

But twice before, he had been passed over for a Supreme Court nomination.

In 2009, Obama considered him and then nominated Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice.

In 2010, Obama considered Garland before he chose Elena Kagan.

But this year, with Republicans promising to block anyone nominated by Obama, Garland's résumé and centrist reputation appear to have positioned him well to earn the nod.