Militants in the late sixties wanted the revolution televised. They got their way. Advocates of capital punishment today want the execution televised. They too will get their way — on May 16, when Timothy McVeigh is put to death by lethal injection.
McVeigh, you will recall, was that unremarkable, freckle-nosed, lonely, working-class kid from America’s heartland whose personal alienation had turned into paranoia and driven him into the subculture of the militia underground where conspiracy theories and hatred of authority, especially the federal government, are the norm.
When McVeigh was found guilty of the bombing in April 1995 of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people, the verdict had implications that went beyond the courtroom, for it revealed a dark undercurrent in American society of angry and resentful people whom few Americans understand and fewer admit that they exist in their midst.
In fact, immediately after the bombing, suspicion turned to the Middle East, to perpetrators from outside America’s borders, history and traditions. Thus after the news broke, a prominent network anchorwoman, Connie Chung of CBS News, went out on a limb with the announcement that “it was confirmed” that Arabs were behind the act, and a hapless Arab American passenger on an international flight that left Oklahoma City the day of the bombing, whose only crime was that he had an Arab name, was intercepted in London by the FBI and flown back to the United States for interrogation.
In about two weeks, then, McVeigh will be executed, and his execution will be televised. Attorney General John Ashcroft said recently that by televising the mass murderer’s death, he hoped to help the survivors and the relatives of the victims “close this chapter in their lives” by letting them watch the May 16 execution, the first by the federal government since 1963, via closed circuit television. “The Oklahoma City survivors may be the largest group of crime victims in our history,” he said at a news conference. “The Department of Justice must make special provision to assist the needs of the survivors and the victims’ families.”
The execution will take place at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, whereas the telecast will be at an undisclosed site in Oklahoma City.
Now there are voices being raised to promote the argument that if members of the families of the victim want to see McVeigh die, how many other Americans could honestly say they would feel any differently. This convicted killer, after all, has not shown any remorse for his act since his arrest and incarceration in 1995. In recent interviews with two journalists from the Buffalo News, he alludes to the 19 children who died in the blast as “collateral damage (you may recall the phrase from the days in Vietnam when American B52s, on “protective reaction” raids, would miss a military target and cause civilian deaths), and say of the victims and their families, “I have no sympathy for them.” He “regrets” that he did no manage to “knock the building down.”
Moreover, advocates of a publicly televised execution argue, as did the respected civil libertarian Nat Hentoff: “We, as a people, demand accountability of our public officials. Surely we should not shirk our duty to witness — and therefore be accountable for — the executions that we permit.”
Given the enormity of McVeigh’s crime, and his gloating confession to its perpetration, it becomes hard even for staunch opponents of capital punishment, including this columnist, to argue that there are no crimes for which an execution is justified.
But a televised public execution? What age are we living in? Are we in late 18th century Britain, when young pickpockets would be given a public hanging to which the mobs would come, complete with their picnic baskets, to ogle the spectacle? A telecast of a man being put to death by lethal injection — even a man who readily confessed to the murder of 168 people — is a grisly spectacle that would appeal to the basest instincts of the viewing public.
Indeed, not only are a majority of editorialists and commentators in the media in agreement on this, but it would appear that a majority of the relatives of the victims do not wish to view the execution either. Of the approximately 2,000 relatives and survivors of the bombing who legally qualify to see McVeigh die, only about 15 percent have expressed a desire to do so.
Marsha Knight, for example, whose 23-year-old daughter was killed in the blast, and who is not philosophically opposed to the death penalty, told reporters last week: “Viewing the execution does not seem mentally healthy to me. It won’t bring my daughter back, and I don’t want to feel dirtied by the process. I am afraid that it will not give people the relief they’re seeking and then they will have to live with what they have seen.”
Meanwhile, one to three days before his scheduled death, McVeigh will be moved to a holding cell closer to the execution unit. Two hours before the execution, all visitors must leave the execution area. Prison authorities will open a telephone line to the Justice Department’s command center in Washington — in case, just in case, of last minute appeals.
That is not likely. Timothy McVeigh is, in the parlance of death-row inmates, dead man walking.
