The Abolitionist Action Committee
AAC is an ad-hoc group of individuals committed to highly visible and effective publiceducation for alternatives to the death penalty through nonviolent direct action.
Selected News Articles
Interview With Bill McVeigh (Tim's father). New York Times, April 29, 2001, by Sara Rimer Bill McVeigh does not plan to be anywhere near Terre Haute on May 16, when his son will be executed. "At times I don't know how to express myself," he said. "I know what I want to say, but it doesn't come out right." McVeigh is bewildered by his son's political views. He is an Army veteran who flies the American flag in the front yard. Although he is opposed to
the death penalty, he says he is not angry at the federal government for putting his son to death. Timothy McVeigh has refused to appeal his death
sentence and has asked that the execution go forward. McVeigh's father plans to spend execution day alone "I wouldn't have any idea why he would do something like that. It still baffles me," said McVeigh, who is divorced from his son's mother, Mildred.
He declined to say where she lives. Neither are his son's anti-government views. "I don't want to take the time to think about it. It might make it worse," he said. On eBay, dozens of bidders have vied in auctions like the one inviting them to "commemorate the final days of America's worst terrorist" with a "colorful T-shirt." The folks at PETA, never content to leave well enough alone, have demanded that Timothy McVeigh's last meal be meat-free, prompting Mr. McVeigh to write them a letter suggesting that since his "time is short," they should proselytize Ted Kaczynski instead. Though an effort by the Internet pornographer who runs "Voyeur Dorm" to merchandise the execution as a live $1.95 Webcast was derailed in court, such video could yet proliferate on the Web anyway, not unlike the Tommy Lee-Pamela Anderson sex tape. By boasting about "the latest encryption technology" and "state-of-the-art video conferencing," Attorney General John Ashcroft has all but dared an international army of hackers to hijack the execution transmission he's sending over 500 miles of telephone lines from the death chamber in Terre Haute to the bombing's victims and survivors in Oklahoma City. Mr. Ashcroft has also set the inevitable theme of the weeks between now and May 16: closure, big time. He has said that he hopes his closed-circuit TV show can help Oklahoma City's bereaved "meet their need to close this chapter in their lives." He hopes the country can achieve closure, too, by ignoring Timothy McVeigh. To this end, the attorney general has attempted to manage news coverage by forbidding TV interviews with the murderer and by trying to strong-arm the press into minimizing any reportage whatsoever of his final weeks of utterances. Otherwise, Mr. Ashcroft says, the media could become "Timothy McVeigh's co-conspirator in his assault on America's public safety and upon America itself." Certainly all Americans hope that those who have suffered directly from this tragedy find a measure of peace in any way they can. But the notion that the country has something to gain by sweeping the murder of 168 innocent people and the execution of one guilty person under the rug is something only a platitudinous politician who's in over his head, like our new attorney general, could dream up. For some national wounds there is never any "closure" - witness the searing, conflicted emotions that rose up in many Americans, whatever their views about Vietnam, as they heard this week about the hidden past of Bob Kerrey. Only by learning from the blood bath in Oklahoma City, in which more Americans were killed than in our last war, in the Persian Gulf, can we grapple with its ghosts. Already the McVeigh execution has served to deepen our growing national debate about the death penalty. As Sara Rimer of The Times reported this
week, even some Oklahoma City victims and survivors have become vocal opponents of capital punishment - despite the efforts of Mr. Ashcroft, a
death penalty advocate, to misrepresent all these grieving families as single-minded in their desire for Mr. McVeigh's obliteration. On Monday,
George Ryan, the once pro-capital punishment Republican governor of Illinois who declared a moratorium on executions after repeated A parallel, and less predictable, debate has arisen over the issue of televising the execution. Ever since the author Thomas Lynch made an eloquent case on this page in February for the public's right to see the death being enacted by the state in its name, many anti-death penalty editorialists have seconded it. One common line of argument is that a public execution will cause Americans to question their own support for future executions - though a chilling counterargument has it that a televised execution might go down all too smoothly in a gladiatorial culture where the W.W.F. and "reality" programming like MTV's "Jackass" and UPN's "Chains of Love" are prime-time entertainment. It's worth asking if we can actually tell the difference between reality and "reality" programming anymore. Don Hewitt, whose "60 Minutes" once aired a Kevorkian euthanasia tape, told The Philadelphia Inquirer that broadcasting an execution by lethal injection would be ho-hum. "People watch that on `E.R' every week," he said. "What's the big deal?" But even as we debate the merits of holding or watching executions, there seems to be widespread support for Mr. Ashcroft's view that we avert our
eyes from those of Mr. McVeigh himself. Charles Gibson of ABC News parroted the attorney general when he declared that he would anchor his
network's execution coverage from Oklahoma City rather than Terre Haute because "the more important message is still with the survivors and the
victims, and not with the message of this guy." (Since when is a network news anchor's job to send a message, let alone by his choice of urban That explanation doesn't fly. The book is in fact a best seller - No. 2 on The Times's list - and deservedly so. The authors have woven 150 interviews, including 75 hours' worth with Mr. McVeigh, into what is likely to stand as the definitive record of the crime and the man who committed it. Though much publicity has attended the book's revelation of Mr. McVeigh's abhorrent lack of remorse, as exemplified by his description of the bombing's child casualties as "collateral damage," the Ashcroft head-in- the-sand attitude prevails in the relatively scant attention paid to the bulk of the book devoted to the ordinariness of its American terrorist. Mr. McVeigh was not your typical troubled loner who explodes on the nation's front pages. He was a Buffalo Bills fan, a junkie not for drugs but news, a Catholic of catholic cultural tastes ("Star Wars") whose unremarkable senior high school yearbook photo inscription read, "Take it as it comes, buy a Lamborghini, California girls." The "most disturbing thing about him," said Mr. Michel, the book's co-author, in a conversation this week, "is that he's a 3-dimensional person. Most people would love to dismiss him as a Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer a flat-line monster with a swastika on his forehead. But he's a son of suburbia who had every advantage in life." If anything, Mr. McVeigh, who had a latchkey childhood marked by some bullying, offers "a through line to the school shooters of today," says Mr. Michel. "It's to our peril as a society not to try to understand how he went from fairly normal to terrorist. For us to turn our back, and say no, this is just too painful to look at, is to invite the possibility of it happening again." According to the psychiatrist hired by his defense attorney, Mr. McVeigh was sane. The rage that he brought home from the Persian Gulf war, in which he was a decorated soldier, was stoked by the insular, itinerant gun-show culture, which fed his Second Amendment absolutism and hatred of government (he considered assassinating Janet Reno). "There are millions of Americans who share his anti-government views," says Mr. Michel, some of the most extreme of whom are now writing fan letters to the condemned man in prison. Even Mr. McVeigh "calls them kooks and crazies," adds the writer, who remains in communication with his book's subject in his final weeks. Those weeks are going to be filled with the white noise of an all-American circus. Any profiteer or publicity hound that can find his
way to Terre Haute will do so, and will soon be dutifully showcased on TV for our delectation. But the false pieties of supposed leaders like John
Ashcroft and those in the media who mimic his closure mongering are more offensive than the clowns peddling their tacky T-shirts. The
circumstances that produce a Timothy McVeigh are not going to be eradicated by shutting down his interviews, banning his words or, for
that matter, ending his life. To promote the fiction that such closure is attainable is, as our attorney general would put it, to be a co-conspirator in Mr. McVeigh's assault on America's public safety and upon
America itself.
Security Will Be Tight At Prison Protests Officials have mapped out how they will handle demonstrators at Timothy McVeigh's execution, agreeing on tight security that will severely limit Demonstrators will be screened by Bureau of Prison officials, searched with portable metal detectors, then allowed to board buses with barred
windows. Warden Harley Lappin said he has been in touch with groups of death penalty opponents, but has no idea how many to expect for McVeigh's
execution.
Remorseless McVeigh is guilty -- so let him live USA Today / 19 April 2001 Good reasons There are in fact six strong arguments against sending McVeigh
off to his final reward:
But imagine if we do not kill him, if we declare him insane on the clear
theory that no one in his right mind would do what he did. Reduce his terrorist
act to an act of the irrational, evil, pathetic mind, then send him off to live
the rest of his life in solitary confinement.
No Closure From McVeigh's Death by Richard Cohen
Sadly, McVeigh is a typical American in many
respects Some people have professed to be shocked that Timothy McVeigh referred to the deaths of the children in the day-care center in the federal building at Oklahoma City as "collateral damage." Why in heaven's name does that shock anyone? It is much more than an Orwellian euphemism to describe the deaths of innocent human beings. It is meant to close the topic, to stop the conversation, to dismiss the lost lives as not worthy of any further discussion. They are, after all, merely "collateral damage." And one does not assume moral responsibility for "collateral damage." I have visited with McVeigh's mother and seen pictures of McVeigh as a boy and as a young soldier. He is, whether we wish to admit it or not, a typical American in many respects. He has absorbed the lessons of modern America. What are those lessons? First and foremost, that violence is an acceptable way to settle a dispute. Look how many times the American government has resorted to violence -- in Lebanon, in Libya, in Panama, in Grenada, in Somalia, in Iraq, in Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Yugoslavia. And in Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho. In every single instance, the deaths of innocent people were dismissed as "collateral damage." Yet in all those instances, Americans did not profess to be shocked, nor did they refer in hushed, horrified tones to the callousness of the government. In most cases, they cheered the violence. They, too, dismissed the dead children, the dead mothers, the dead fathers as "collateral damage." The U.S. government has killed a million times more civilians than Tim McVeigh, its decorated soldier. And soon it will kill him. People who are selectively horrified, depending on who the victim is, are, in fact, amoral people. The children in the federal building were no different than the children in Iraq, Yugoslavia or in the West Bank and Gaza. Nothing stings a Palestinian more than to see the American press give prominent attention to the death of a Jewish child while routinely ignoring the deaths of Palestinian children. They are all equal in their preciousness and innocence. It is racist to attach more importance to the death of one than to the death of the other. Many Americans, while they may not wish to admit it, see themselves when they look at McVeigh. Oh, they don't have the nerve to act out their malice as he did, but they are always eager to advocate violence; they, too, have cockamamie opinions based on propaganda; they, too, think that not all lives are equal and that some can be sacrificed for political reasons. Some are already saying what "we should do to the Chinese" if they won't release the crew on the Navy spy plane that landed on Hainan Island. Well, there is an ugly fact that Americans had better remember before their blow-hard pseudo patriotism goes beyond rhetoric. Those American crew members are in China, under the control of the Chinese government, and whether they will be released is entirely up to the Chinese government. Unless you wish to consider their lives as "collateral damage," I would suggest that diplomacy rather than bluster and threats is the better course of action. The pilot, by the way, should not have delivered an American intelligence
aircraft to the Chinese. He should have -- Navy folks tell me -- used his 60
miles to head toward the nearest American or friendly ship and ditched the
plane. At any rate, we are creating our own Frankenstein monsters, and McVeigh isn't
the only one by a long shot. A society that sends a message to its For once, I'd like to see the entertainment industry, which also teaches that violence is the way to solve problems, condemned for being the perverse purveyor of pornography that it is. For once, I'd like to see the American government actually play the peacemaker instead of the bully. For once, I'd like to see Americans grieve for the deaths of all children whatever their race, ethnicity or religion. For once, I'd like to see people realize that military action or other government force is the last resort, not the first option, and only then in defense of innocent life. McVeigh in one sense is also a victim. The deaths he caused were useless, and his own death will be useless. No one will have served any useful or worthwhile purpose; certainly not him but just as surely not the government, either. Just pain and grief. We seem to produce both as mindlessly as Hollywood produces trash. Reach Charley Reese at 407-420-5315 or creese@orlandosentinel.com Copyright © 2001, Orlando Sentinel
Executing McVeigh gives him exactly what he seeks Atlanta Constitution Staff The father of condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh says he will honor his son's request and stay away from his execution May 16. "He sent me a letter about his execution and in it Tim said he didn't want me there," Bill McVeigh told The Buffalo News in its Saturday editions, adding that no other family members will attend. Timothy McVeigh, 32, is scheduled to die on federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind. for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people including 19 children. McVeigh's father told the newspaper he had watched ABC's "PrimeTime Thursday," which focused on a new book in which his son admits to the bombing. "I laid awake half the night," he said. In the book, titled "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing," a remorseless McVeigh calls the children killed in the bombing "collateral damage." Details in the book marked the 1st time McVeigh has publicly and explicitly admitted to the crime. "He's my son and I love him, but what he did was absolutely wrong, and I have no idea how anyone could do it," the elder McVeigh said. "It's on my mind 95 percent of the time," he said. "When I'm busy, I'm not thinking about it. I try to keep going. I can't sit home and start thinking." Timothy McVeigh, convicted of federal murder charges, has waived appeals and
asked a federal judge to set his execution date. If the execution by injection
takes place, he will be the 1st federal inmate put to death since 1963. A
co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, was sentenced to life in prison on federal
conspiracy and involuntary manslaughter charges for the bombing. Media Swarms Prison At Terre Haute On the vast lawn outside the federal prison where Timothy McVeigh sits on death row, skinny wooden stakes already mark the spots where the major television networks will come to chronicle the Oklahoma City bomber's scheduled execution May 16. If he listens closely enough in the days before then, McVeigh, 32, might be able to hear the rap of hammers as crews build sets for the network anchors who will welcome a worldwide audience to his deathwatch. The sets are part of what will amount to a temporary public square on the prison grounds, with designated areas for what are expected to be thousands of reporters and demonstrators. As morbid as it sounds, McVeigh's execution is shaping up as the Next Big Show in a world of 24-hour news cycles, saturation coverage and heightened competition for ratings and readers. Besides being the public's revenge on the most notorious mass murderer of our time, McVeigh's appointment with a lethal injection represents the federal government's historic return to capital punishment after a 38-year gap. Americans may not want to watch - and in fact there won't be much to see, since no cameras and only 24 witnesses will be allowed into the execution chamber. However, all the big television networks are betting that the public will tune in anyway. That's why a media-driven frenzy is underway in this normally placid city of 60,000 near the Illinois border. Prison officials for whom routine is virtue have been taken aback by a flood of media requests that could alter the daily rhythm of the 1,300-inmate U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, where the U.S. government keeps some of its most dangerous criminals. TV networks have asked for permission to set up stadium-like lights to brighten up the prison at night, providing more "definition" to the scene behind the news anchors. Prison officials have not agreed to that; there is some concern that such lighting at night would interrupt inmates' sleep. During the week of the execution, the networks will have golf carts on prison grounds to ferry supplies and "talent" between reporting locations and their sets. Portable microwave towers will be built to beam broadcast signals back to the networks' studios. Networks also have asked that caterers be given access to the prison grounds to provide their staffs with 3 meals a day. Network officials acknowledge that their invasion might be a little overwhelming to people here, and that it might seem ghoulish to essentially build TV shows around an execution. But "it's a huge story," says Marcy McGinnis, a CBS News vice president. "We have to tell it. It's not distasteful to tell a story that's got distasteful bits to it." Not everyone here sees it that way. The anticipation of a nationally televised deathwatch already is rubbing some the wrong way, especially those who oppose the death penalty. "It reminds me of the early days of Rome," says Sister Rita Clare Gerardot, a member of the Terre Haute-based Sisters of Providence who ministers to inmates at the prison. "We're inviting all these people to come and enjoy it as we throw somebody to the executioner's hand," says Gerardot, who says she has seen McVeigh behind bars but has not talked with him. "As we get closer to the date, the spectacle becomes almost sadistic. It blows my mind." As a news event, there is no disputing the significance of McVeigh's execution. And even the most vocal death-penalty critics say that McVeigh, who 6 years ago detonated the bomb that killed 168 people and destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City, is an effective poster child for those who support capital punishment. CBS will send at least 30 people, including Bryant Gumbel, to broadcast its morning program from the prison grounds. Anchor Dan Rather may host the network's evening news show from Terre Haute as well. ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider says the network will be "devoting extensive resources" to the execution, which he calls "a story that's of great interest to the American people." It's likely that the network will break into programming with a live report as the execution approaches. The exact time of the execution has not been announced, but prison officials have indicated that it will be during the daytime on May 16. "If you're Bryant Gumbel, what are you going to do that morning except to talk about the crime and the punishment?" asks Steve Brill, founder of the magazine Brill's Content, which examines the media. Coverage of the McVeigh execution, like that of several school shootings, the saga of Elian Gonzalez, the trial of O.J. Simpson and other sensational stories, is likely to show the media at its best and worst, Brill says. "It'll probably produce more serious discussion about the death penalty than we've ever had, but it'll also probably produce more bad taste and more bad discussion about the death penalty than we've ever had," he says. "That's what you get when you get a lot of coverage." It 'doesn't seem quite right' For Terre Haute officials, the McVeigh execution is an economic boon-in- waiting that no one wants to talk about. The blue-collar city that gained brief notoriety in the late 1970s when basketball legend Larry Bird starred for the Indiana State University Sycamores stands to profit enormously from its role as host to what authorities say could be as many as 5,000 people who will come here for the execution. All 227 rooms at the Holiday Inn have been sold out since Jan. 16, the day McVeigh's execution date was set by a federal judge in Denver. In subsequent weeks, every hotel and motel room in the city has been booked for the week beginning May 13. Real estate agents are offering deals on vacant office space to the media. Families living near the prison have been getting calls from media outlets that have dangled money for the temporary use of their homes as news bureaus. Local restaurants, including The Stables Steakhouse, have been told by community leaders to brace for hungry crowds. "I am amazed when I hear the numbers coming here," says Melody Richards, manager of The Stables. "It all doesn't seem quite right. What do you do? Run an 'Execution Special?' " Even so, Richards says the restaurant will be ready. "We could take about 1,000 (diners) per night, if we had to. All we can do is be happy and be open. Right?" Mayor Judy Anderson prefers to muzzle any talk of an economic benefit from the execution. She says that she doesn't know whether there have been any estimates of how much the community stands to gain, and that if such projections exist, "I don't want to see them. Keep it away from me. "Somehow it doesn't seem right for us to have smiles on our faces because it's great for business," Anderson says. "But it is a fact of life. The best we can hope for is that people leave here with a good feeling about how they were treated. We're a place that just happens to be the federal government's home for death row." Anderson clearly is concerned about another potential impact of the execution: violence from sympathizers of McVeigh, who, according to federal prosecutors, wanted to destroy the government that he blamed for the deaths in 1993 on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. Closing schools, government offices Anderson and other officials have discussed closing local government offices on execution day, fearing that someone might target a government building here "to make a violent statement." "Right now, we're leaning toward closing government offices," Police Chief Jim Horrall says. "If something's going to happen, we'd rather the buildings to be empty." Local school officials have already decided to cancel classes that day for 17,000 students, in part because parents have expressed concern for the safety of their children. Sometime in the next month, Horrall expects the FBI to provide local law enforcement officials an "intelligence report" on groups of demonstrators who are likely to come here for the execution. For months, Terre Haute's police force - about 124 officers - has been involved in crowd-control training. Authorities say the execution's crowds are likely to represent one of the largest gatherings in the city's history. Barring any last-minute intervention - which is unlikely because McVeigh has given up further appeals of his case - the bomber will be the 1st person executed by the federal government since 1963. The federal government rarely has imposed the death penalty, allowing states to take the lead on the issue. Capital punishment was banned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, and when the court allowed executions to resume in 1976, few federal crimes beyond espionage and fatal assaults on federal facilities were punishable by death. But since then, Congress has dramatically increased the number of death-penalty crimes, largely to crack down on drug kingpins. The U.S. government's move toward resuming executions led authorities to designate Terre Haute's centrally located, 61-year-old prison to house the federal death row. An execution chamber where lethal injections can be performed was built here in 1995. Horrall acknowledges that local law enforcement officials had hoped there would be an execution or two before McVeigh's, if for no other reason than to "get a couple under our belt before the crowds and the television cameras came for this one." Juan Garza, of Texas, was to have been executed here on Dec. 12, but President Clinton, citing concerns about the disproportionate numbers of racial minorities on death row, postponed the death of the murderer and marijuana trafficker. McVeigh's execution is "going to happen," Horrall says. "We have to do what we have to do. We have to be prepared." Besides adding security and accommodating the huge media presence, the preparation has included confronting the community's feelings about being at ground zero for federal executions. For four days last week, Terre Haute began that process with community discussions of the death penalty. Hosted largely by local churches, the meetings featured guest speakers such as Oklahoma City resident Bud Welch, whose daughter, Julie, was one of McVeigh's victims. Speaking against the death penalty Despite his loss, and to the annoyance of many in his hometown, Welch has spoken out against executing McVeigh and the death penalty in general. "As the day (of McVeigh's execution) approaches," says Dave Cox, spokesman for the Sisters of Providence, "people are recognizing that they are going to have to confront this major event in some way. We're hoping this forum will stimulate some dialogue about some deeper issues people should be considering when something like this happens." For now, though, much of the anxiety here is about how the media will portray a community that may not be quite ready for its close-up. "It will be an interesting exercise for the people here," says Max Jones, editor of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. "But I think that whatever happens may be a bit out of their control." Jones credits prison Warden Harley Lappin with taking a leading role in helping to prepare the city for execution crowds. Even so, Jones says that he doesn't think a lot of residents are going to be happy "when they see (network) golf carts running around" the prison grounds. Lappin has declined requests for interviews. When discussing May 16, some residents here find it too unpleasant to use the word "execution." "Nobody really knows quite what to call it," says Veronica McGlothan, a local meeting planner whose company is providing tables and chairs for some media outlets, as well as lining up catering services and additional electrical power sources. "The confusion about what to call it is a measure of the gravity of staging something like this. Many are simply referring to it as a media event. That pretty much describes it, I think." (source: USA Today) Public schools in Terre Haute, Ind., and the surrounding county will close May 16 because of safety concerns tied to the scheduled execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. "It's the unknown that concerns us," said Ray Azar, who is in charge of school safety and security there. Mr. McVeigh, 32, is scheduled for execution at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and injured more than 500. Thousands of people -- including reporters and protests -- are expected to swarm the city on execution day. Officials said the decision to close was based on worries about traffic jams and student safety, no because the schools had been threatened. "We have had no threats. We try to emphasize that," Mr. Azar said last week. "Obviously, we're always concerned about school safety and security, especially when you have that number of visitors in the community from unknown backgrounds and so on. "We just felt it was prudent for us to make this decision." The closing affects the 16,000 students in the 3 high schools, 2 alternate schools and 30 others public education facilities in the consolidate city-county school district. Classes at Indiana State University -- located in Terre Haute -- will not be canceled. Mr. Azar said some bus routes run near the prison, and officials were concerned that the routes could not be run May 16. "We could not be guaranteed that they would be able to get through on that particular day, and, if they were, it would be very slow going," he said. The school district would not have to make up the day is state education officials agree to a waiver. Molly Ellingsworth - mother of an 8th-grader at one of the schools closing for the day - does not agree with the move. She said schools are only allowing Mr. McVeigh to continue to act as a terrorist by shutting down the day of his execution. "It just seems like it is an extenuation of what he did with the bombing originally," Ms. Ellingsworth said. "He's just controlling the whole situation and controlling people's lives. "He's on this big ego trip." (source: Dallas Morning News) Bud Welch, whose daughter was killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, has every reason to hate Timothy McVeigh. Instead, he is traveling the country, preaching against the death penalty and calling for forgiveness for McVeigh. Everywhere Welch goes, the 61-year-old gas station owner delivers the same message: "There's no healing from killing people." It is much different from how he felt at the time of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil. The 168 people killed included Julie-Marie Welch, a Spanish interpreter for the Social Security Administration. "Julie was my best friend, my pal, my sidekick. We hung out together all the time," Welch said. Welch felt only rage and sought only vengeance toward McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the two men convicted in the bombing. "I just wanted them fried," he said in an interview. For weeks, he drank heavily to numb the pain so he could sleep at night. His pack-and-a-half cigarette habit went to 3 packs a day. This went on for nearly a year. One day, hungover and standing near the bombing site, he vowed to change. He brought his drinking under control. He quit smoking in 1998. Most of all, he started talking about forgiveness. And as news of his stance spread, people wanted to hear him. Welch recalled television footage of Bill McVeigh, the bomber's father. "I could see quite a large man who was stooped in grief. I could see the pain in his eye," Welch said. "I recognized the pain because I was going through it." Welch was invited to speak in upstate New York and allowed a nun to arrange a visit with Bill McVeigh and his daughter Jennifer. As the 2 men discussed Bill McVeigh's garden, they found common ground. The 2 Irishmen had been raised Catholic. Welch couldn't take his eyes off a picture of Timothy McVeigh hanging on a wall. "I said, God, what a good-looking kid," Welch recalled. A tear formed in Bill McVeigh's eye. "What I found that morning in western New York was a bigger victim than myself," Welch said. He put his arms around Jennifer McVeigh and hugged her. "I said, honey, the three of us are in this for the rest of our lives," Welch said. Later that night, Welch sobbed. "It was like all of this tremendous weight had been removed from my shoulders," Welch said. "I never felt closer to God than I did at that moment." Executing McVeigh would only hurt more people, Welch said: "We're going to victimize another family now, people who are innocent." Welch said relatives of some of McVeigh's other victims probably resent his message of forgiveness. About 250 people who were injured or lost loved ones in the bombing have told the government they want to see McVeigh take his last breath. As a result, the government is considering a closed-circuit TV broadcast of the execution by lethal injection. "They think they'll get some type of healing," Welch said. "There's nothing about killing that's going to help them." (source: Associated Press) The onlookers and protesters expected to turn out for Timothy McVeigh's May execution have prompted local officials to seek more than $90,000 in federal money for training and overtime pay. James Cross, executive assistant at the U.S. Penitentiary, said the requests for crowd-control training and overtime pay have been forwarded to the Bureau of Prisons' central office. No decision has been made on the requests, Mr. Cross said, adding that: "We completely understand their needs." Mr. McVeigh, convicted for his role in the 1995 bombing that killed 168 people at Oklahoma City's federal building, is to be put to death by lethal injection May 16 at the U.S. Penitentiary south of Terre Haute. State Police Lt. Mark Hartman expressed confidence in the level of cooperation among agencies, but local officials are concerned someone might use Mr. McVeigh's execution as a chance to commit a terrorist act. "We're trying to think of everything that someone could do to disrupt things," said Jon Marvel, Vigo County's chief deputy sheriff. Combined with a request by Terre Haute's fire department, local police departments are asking for almost $90,000 to pay their share in handling whatever may arise. The Vigo County Sheriff's Department has estimated it needs $4,000 and the State Police, $8,500. (source: Dallas Morning News) McVeigh
Case Spurs Questions About Public Executions The prisoner trembles as he's led past thick prison doors into the muddy street filled with spectators. The gallows looms. A hangman offers a chance for a few last words -- and a hood. For centuries, this was a familiar scene in Europe and early American cities. The last U.S. public execution, held in 1936 in Owensboro, Ky., brought out 10,000 people who munched hot dogs and guzzled Cokes while 22year-old Rainey Bethea swung from the scaffold. Today, executions have been driven behind prison walls, banished by changing public tastes. Over the centuries the deplorable behavior of spectators, who were supposed to be learning a moral lesson but instead treated the event as a carnival, helped force the death chamber behind bars. But will it stay there? The May 16 lethal injection of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., has prompted calls for a closed-circuit telecast to accommodate as many as 250 survivors and relatives, who want to see the execution but can't fit into the witness room. And the bomber himself, perhaps hoping to turn his death into a lasting monument to his anti-government cause, has asked that his execution be broadcast live on network television. The federal Bureau of Prisons says live TV won't happen. But the bureau is considering the closed-circuit feed. What that means for the future of capital punishment -- and whether it represents a first step back outside the prison gates for the state's ultimate display of power over its citizens -- remains a question. Victim's father: 'This is not a sporting event" Even though Tom Kight supports the death penalty in McVeigh's case, the thought of a network broadcast appalls him. ''I'm totally opposed to that. We did that back in the old Wild West days, when we had lynchings,'' said Kight, who lost daughter Frankie Ann Merrell in the blast at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. ''I don't think it's much appropriate to watch it sitting in a bar, having a cocktail. This is not a sporting event. This is about a man's life, and it's about 168 other lives.'' He recalls overhearing his fellow Oklahomans, gathered around the site of the blasted federal building shortly after the bombing, talking about how they would handle the bomber if they got their hands on him. ''They'd be saying, 'Hey, we shouldn't even have a trial. They should just let us have him. We'd take care of it, and save the government a lot of money,' '' Kight said. ''But where would it stop? I think that's what the problem was with Tim McVeigh. He became judge, jury, and executioner because of Waco and Ruby Ridge. He became a vigilante.'' Kight likes the idea of the closed-circuit telecast for victims' families. But Kight's former wife, Marsha Kight, who works for the National Organization for Victim Assistance in Washington, D.C., opposes the death penalty, mainly because lethal injection means McVeigh will simply, albeit permanently, be put to sleep. ''Basically, that's what would happen when he's executed. And I have a life sentence,'' she said. Better for him to live on in solitary confinement, she said, free to think about his crime. Viewing McVeigh's execution would make her feel ''dirty.'' ''There are probably those who hope it will give them some sense of relief, and I don't think that'll happen.'' Modern solemnity in the face of execution represents a tiny blip, of course, in Western civilization's history of public disembowelment, drawing-andquartering, flaying, stake-burning, impalement, hanging and beheading. How European governments, and later those in America, became so accustomed to putting their citizens to death has a 1,000-year history leading back to when the Roman Catholic church and its pope were among the main governing forces in Europe. That's when killing non-believers for religious reasons was approved for the first time by the church. ''It's there that we see the acceptance of violence for the sake of the church,'' said James Megivern, author of a book on the roots of the death penalty and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. But soon, the church authorized death not only for nonChristians, but also for heretics -- former Catholics who didn't abide by the teachings of the church. Catholic support of the death penalty declined over the centuries. In 1995, Pope John Paul II repudiated it completely, according to Monsignor Joseph Schaedel of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. Private executions not a deterrent, some say But the pope's rejection had little effect in the United States, where executions are performed by 38 states and the federal government. The United States is alone among Western democracies in maintaining capital punishment. But the private way in which executions now are carried out has weakened one of the arguments in its favor, some say. ''Deterrence was a major reason for the existence of all punishment,'' said Bruce Adams, a history professor at the University of Louisville. ''The idea is to frighten people, to make them think, 'This is me if I do what this person did.'' The problem was, festive crowds at historical executions usually chose to focus more on the entertaining aspects of the situation and less on the lesson. ''It wasn't mainly entertainment, but it was often treated that way by the crowd,'' Adams said. ''There were always hawkers and barkers and people making a couple of pennies on the side while someone else was being hanged.'' The executioner's retreat into the prison yard -- which some say was made to preserve the death penalty in the face of growing sentiment to abolish it -- has left curious contradictions in its wake. For example, there are the people who show up outside a prison when an execution is scheduled inside. There's nothing to see, but they come just the same. ''Texas is probably best known for that,'' said Paul Leighton, an assistant professor at Eastern Michigan University. ''There are all sorts of tailgate parties in the prison parking lot. It's very much like the football tailgate parties. People bring the keg of beer, or the big coolers with the beer, and hang out, and whoop and yell and everything else.'' Leighton has mixed feelings about televising executions, but ultimately supports the idea. He backs up his argument by citing the need for accountability and the increasing openness of American government. Cameras in the courtroom were unheard of a few years ago, he said. Now they're commonplace. Court TV, C-Span, and video cameras in police cars all work to make government processes more open. Some jails are even equipped with Web-cams, so Internet users can tune in. And the now-dominant method of execution, lethal injection rather than the electric chair, is no longer so obviously violent as to be overwhelmingly offensive. ''It's an interesting argument, that we have to do (executions) in secret,'' he said. ''If there's nothing wrong with this, why are we so concerned?'' How long, then, before Americans can turn on their television sets and witness an execution by, as one British newspaper put it in a recent headline, ordering up a little ''Slay per View''? ''I think we're really headed toward this,'' Leighton said. ''It seems to me that if some of these democratic principles mean anything, we should do (executions) publicly, and deal with that, or we should abolish it.'' Others, such as professor Megivern, disagreed. ''That really is a step backwards,'' Megivern said. ''I don't think the American public would very long tolerate it.'' Monsignor Schaedel echoed Megivern, even though public revulsion at the process might give aid to those determined to abolish capital punishment. ''I don't think the end justifies the means,'' Schaedel said. ''I still don't think it would be appropriate. . . . I just think the gruesomeness of it is not worth it.'' Whatever becomes of the debate, Marsha Kight knows one thing: Nothing is going to bring back her daughter. So she sought relief another way last month. She wrote her daughter's killer a letter, asking for the opportunity to sit down and talk to him before his time runs out. ''I'm hoping as you prepare for your final days, you will help me find some peace,'' she wrote. McVeigh hasn't responded. But that hasn't swayed Kight. She still refuses to take part in his execution. ''I don't want to be a part of the circle of violence.'' Trucker tries to leave
Bible for McVeigh TERRE HAUTE - A trucker from Georgia was detained for three hours this week by federal prison guards after he tried to leave a Bible for Timothy McVeigh. Steve Schlafer, 44, drove his semitrailer about noon Tuesday onto the prison grounds south of Terre Haute, where McVeigh is scheduled to be executed May 16 for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, after making deliveries in the area. "I just recently became a born-again Christian and thought as a nice, kind, human gesture that I would try and stop out at the prison and see if I could give him a Bible," Schlafer said. "I had expected just to drop the Bible off at a guard shack. There is no shack or any gates, so I drove into the property." James Cross, administrative assistant at the prison, said "no trespassing" signs surround the entire penitentiary property and were clearly visible. "As it gets closer to the execution, we of course will strengthen our security, but at this point with a lot of curiosity seekers, we are trying as tactfully as possible to deal with them," Cross said. Schlafer said he decided on a whim to try to help McVeigh. "I don't have a thing about Tim McVeigh," he said. "He is an evil man and deserves to be punished, but he is also a human being. I felt perhaps a little kindness would help, at least help me, if nothing else." Once on prison grounds, Schlafer spotted a sign for truck receiving and entered an office. There he asked whether the Bible could be delivered to McVeigh. "I was told it could not. They looked at me a little funny," he said. "I am well aware that this is a little odd request and they have to be somewhat careful. But I figured since there was no guard or gate, I was doing nothing wrong." Schlafer was assessed a $76 ticket for not having his log book up to date. Cross said prison guards confiscated Schlafer's Bible for security reasons and that religious materials had to come through the prison's religious services department. "There are specific provisions about what can be given to a Bureau of Prisons inmate as far as correspondence and personal property from outside people," Cross said. "We can't just give things that are just dropped off or sent to us to give to the inmate." Some Death Penalty Opponents Favor Killing Terrorists Americans view terrorism with such abhorrence that about 1/5 of those who usually oppose the death penalty would support the execution of a defendant convicted of a terrorist attack, survey results show. About 20 % of the respondents surveyed by Los Angeles-based DecisionQuest, a jury and trial consulting firm, said they opposed the death penalty under all circumstances. However, a significant number of those same participants said they would change their mind if a terrorist act was involved, particularly if the attack was both carried out by and killed Americans. The results of the survey were released to Reuters Tuesday. Of these respondents 24.5 % said they would sentence to death an American who committed a murder through terrorism that killed people in the United States. The figures are 19.4 % for a foreigner who murdered Americans, 18.3 % for an American who murdered foreigners, and 15.1 % for a foreigner who murdered foreigners. "The closer to home it is, the more likely they are to change their mind," said Dr. David Davis, a DecisionQuest senior vice president in Boston. "Terrorism evokes a strong punitive impulse in people." The telephone survey of more than 1,000 adults was conducted Feb. 16-18. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 %. Among other survey findings was that 12.1 % believed a murder committed by a terrorist is more deserving of the death penalty than other murders. The results also showed that between 72 % to 80 % (depending on the specific scenario) of those who support the death penalty under some circumstances would sentence a defendant found guilty of murder through a terrorist act to death. MCVEIGH PASSES ON CLEMENCY The death penalty survey began the same day that lawyers for condemned Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh announced their client passed up his last chance for clemency. McVeigh, 32, faces execution on May 16 for the bombing that killed 168 people. It would be the 1st federal execution since 1963. McVeigh is scheduled to die by lethal injection on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, for detonating a truck bomb on April 19, 1995, that destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. The survey also began the day that Martha Barnett, the president of the American Bar Association, reiterated the legal group's call for a moratorium on the death penalty. Barnett spoke at the ABA's midyear meeting in San Diego. Barnett, who describes herself as a "reluctant supporter" of the death penalty, has been urging lawyers to take a more active role in stopping executions in their states until it can be shown the death penalty can be imposed fairly. During last month's meeting, she said state and local bar group leaders would be receiving "tool kits" of materials in the coming weeks to help them work with legislators toward achieving such a moratorium. The death penalty survey was also conducted about a week after testimony began in the Manhattan federal trial of 4 Osama bin Laden followers charged with conspiring with the Saudi dissident to kill Americans. 2 of the 4 men could face the death penalty if convicted. The men are accused of trying to kill U.S. military personnel and civilians in schemes that began in 1989 and included the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. Bin Laden allegedly masterminded the blasts that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and wounded thousands. (source: Reuters) Used without permission Moynihan:
McVeigh execution blow to concept that life is sacred On May 16, at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., the government of the United States will, on behalf of the American people and in the name of justice, kill Mr. McVeigh. Thus will he receive his legal punishment for setting off a bomb in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killing 186 people on April 19, 1995. Mr. McVeigh will die on that date because he has ordered an end to all legal efforts to save his life. Through his lawyer he has said that he prefers death to the alternative, which is to spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement. Within his greatly limited range of choice, Mr. McVeigh has made his decision, and he will get his way. But there's more to his victory than that. Given the scale and notoriety of Mr. McVeigh's crime, his impending execution took on an unusual dimension when about 250 survivors responded positively to the Federal Bureau of Prisons' invitation to come and watch the act being done. There is only enough space in the viewing room for eight, so arrangements are being made to allow the rest to watch on closed-circuit television. This overflow prompted Mr. McVeigh to write a letter to the Sunday Oklahoman, suggesting that the lethal injection and its effects on his body be turned into "a true public execution -- allow a public broadcast." It won't happen, of course. The authorities are not about to allow the condemned to exert even further control over the course of events. His request is being dismissed as a perverse publicity ploy, or as a way of calling even further attention to what he and similarly minded critics of the federal government regard as his martyrdom. The killing at Oklahoma City was an act of retaliation for what Mr. McVeigh and his supporters see as the criminal killings perpetrated by federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas. Mr. McVeigh chose Patriot's Day to visit vengeance upon the federal government. He goes to his death, apparently, believing that he is a patriot and a hero. Undoubtedly the hundreds of survivors who want with their own eyes to see Mr. McVeigh draw his last breath are motivated by a wide range of thoughts and emotions, and it ill behooves those of us who did not personally experience those days of agony or the next six years of lingering bereavement to make judgments about them. There are reasons, however, to consider what is going on with the rest of us. In killing Timothy McVeigh the federal government will be acting upon what is currently a principle of American law, that it is justifiable to punish killing by killing. We have done that 697 times since 1976, 14 times so far in 2001. We have more than 3,300 individuals stacked up on death rows. Mr. McVeigh likewise believes that it is justifiable to punish killing by killing. There is of course a huge legal chasm -- as well as a huge difference in scale -- between what he did and what the federal government is about to do to him. It is not a principle of our law that citizens -- or anyone else -- can retaliate against government violence by committing mass murder. Mr. McVeigh has nevertheless managed to bring the government of the United States and the people it represents onto a shared moral plane. Both parties are affirming that killing is a legitimate tool for asserting what is right. Why, really, won't we watch Mr. McVeigh being executed? Opponents of the death penalty naturally regard the prospect as abhorrent, but many who support capital punishment also don't want a public execution. They don't, as noted earlier, want to enhance Mr. McVeigh's stature among those who regard him as a hero, and they don't want to let him further manipulate his final living moments as a celebrity. But there's more. Death-penalty supporters also tend to argue that while capital punishment is morally justifiable, public executions would hearken back to a less civilized past, would tend to coarsen feelings, would dull sensitivity to the sacredness of human life. This may suggest that an underlying reason why some people don't want to look is that they are not as convinced as they think they are that our government is doing the right thing. In a New York Times op-ed piece, author Thomas Lynch did not argue that capital punishment was wrong; only that all who believe it is right should be willing to witness it in action. "What other justice, righteousness or humanity would we turn our faces from?" he asked. "It will be we the people who put Timothy McVeigh to death ..." he wrote, "and we the people should be allowed to watch." Recognizing our "national ambivalence about doing evil to our most evil evildoers," Mr. Lynch suggested "that if we cannot watch, then we should reconsider." Writing in Newsday, criminology professor Paul Leighton of Eastern Michigan University came to a similar conclusion: "If we cannot televise McVeigh's execution to the world and deal with all its implications, nationally and globally, then McVeigh's should be the last execution in this country." We cannot finally escape the evil of choosing to do evil. If events unfold as they apparently will, an advocate of killing for righteousness' sake will get the United States to stand with him, even as it kills him for righteousness sake. Whether we will have witnessed it or not, Timothy J. McVeigh, with the help of our government, will have struck another blow against the concept that human life is sacred. Kenneth J. Moynihan's column appears regularly in the Telegram & Gazette. © 2001 Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corp. http://www.telegram.com/oped/ken7.html Used WITHOUT Permission The warden of the federal prison where Timothy McVeigh's execution is scheduled to occur in May is warning county officials to brace for a media "city" outside the prison. Warden Harley Lappin of the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute says 1,300 media representatives have told the Bureau of Prisons that they plan to cover the May 16 execution of the convicted Oklahoma City bomber. The media intend to erect portable buildings, trailers and staging platforms outside the prison, raising public safety issues, he has told the Vigo County Safety Commission. "It's shocking to me what they want to do. They want to build a city out there," Mr. Lappin told the commission last week. Mr. McVeigh was convicted of murder and other charges in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The blast killed 168 people and injured more than 500 in the deadliest act of terrorism ever on U.S. soil. Mr. McVeigh is to die by lethal injection inside the prison. As the media begin arriving, Mr. Lappin said residents could count on traffic congestion near the prison and nearby Honey Creek Mall. At the same time, nearby hotels and restaurants expect to be doing a bang-up business. Media organizations have asked for a list of caterers or restaurants that deliver. "When you bring in 1,500 people, you're talking about a lot of carry-out," Mr. Lappin said. Television networks will set up staging areas on prison property, and plan to broadcast morning and evening news programs from the site. Media representatives will arrive in Terre Haute as early as the Thursday or Friday before the execution, which is set for a Wednesday, Mr. Lappin said. The time of the execution has not been decided but will be between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., he said. "Our hope is we have it done after kids are in school and before they get out of school," Mr. Lappin said. He said prison officials didn't know how many protesters would gather for the execution. But all the protesters will have to park their cars away from the prison and be bussed in, passing through metal detectors before reaching prison property. Prison officials have talked to Amnesty International, which likely will bring the largest contingent of anti-death penalty protesters. The group intends to be peaceful and will abide by prison guidelines, Mr. Lappin said. (AAC COMMENT: The person the prison has spoken with is an Amnesty volunteer who is a part of our planning process - FYI.) The Bureau of Prisons has not decided whether it will allow hundreds of victims and family members of the bombing to watch the execution via closed-circuit television. The bureau might let them watch by closed-circuit television in Oklahoma City or Terre Haute. Fire Chief Mike Gummere of the Honey Creek Fire Department said the circus like atmosphere the execution will likely create disturbs him. "It's a sad testimonial to the American public that this is all we have better to do, [to] send 1,500 media people to come watch this," he said. "I think this whole thing is pathetic." (source: Dallas Morning News) Execute Terrorists at Our Own
Risk CAMBRIDGE, Mass. As a nation, we have decided that terrorism that results in loss of life should face the possibility of the death penalty. But is this wise? This question is worth asking, now that four men are being tried in New York for their alleged participation in the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and wounded thousands. Two defendants, Mohamed Rashed Daoud al-'Owhali and Khalfan Khamis Mohamed, who allegedly worked for Osama bin Laden, could face the death penalty if convicted. Another terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, is scheduled for execution on May 16 for his role in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. Mr. McVeigh has refused to appeal his death sentence, preferring, he now says, to have his execution broadcast live on television. Some of his victims worry that Mr. McVeigh will become a martyr, inciting further violence. One can argue about the effectiveness of the death penalty generally. But when it comes to terrorism, national security concerns should be paramount. The execution of terrorists, especially minor operatives, has effects that go beyond retribution or justice. The executions play right into the hands of our adversaries. We turn criminals into martyrs, invite retaliatory strikes and enhance the public relations and fund-raising strategies of our enemies. Moreover, dead terrorists don't talk, while a live terrorist can become an intelligence asset, doling out much- needed information. Of course, imprisoning, rather than executing, terrorists is not risk-free. Supporters could try to kidnap Americans, and refuse to release them until their colleagues are released. Still, other countries with far more experience in counterterrorism have concluded that imprisoning terrorists is the better option in the long run. For instance, the United Kingdom in 1973 debated whether to repeal the death penalty in Northern Ireland. By a margin of nearly three to one, the House of Commons decided that executing terrorists, whose goal is often to martyr themselves, only increased violence and put soldiers and police at greater risk. In a highly charged political situation, it was argued, the threat of death does not deter terrorism. On the contrary, executing terrorists, the House of Commons decided, has the opposite effect: It increases the incidence of terrorism. The Israeli government unwisely creates martyrs with what it calls preventive attacks, in which military or intelligence operatives kill those suspected of terrorism. By contrast, judges in Israel have never sentenced terrorists to death; capital punishment would be dangerous and counterproductive. Terrorism's greatest weapon is popular support. We've already seen this dynamic at work. After Mr. bin Laden's 1998 embassy bombings, the United States retaliated by striking a purported chemical weapons facility in Sudan and a few crude camps in Afghanistan. The result? In the extremist religious schools I visited in Pakistan after the attack, Mr. bin Laden had become a hero. Parents named their children after him. Schools and businesses were renamed in his honor. Does anyone believe that executing his minions will deter Mr. bin Laden from future terrorist attacks? The opposite is far more likely: the United States could become more frequently targeted. Our most powerful weapon against terrorists is our commitment to the rule of law. We must use the courts to make clear that terrorism is a criminal act, not jihad, not heroism, not holy war. And then, we must not make martyrs out of murderers. Jessica Stern, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995. Faith Community Opposes Execution Cardinal Francis George said Monday that even Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh can repent, and the faith community should oppose his scheduled May 16 execution. George, head of the Chicago Archdiocese, said crime victims and their families find healing only through forgiveness, not vengeance. "The promise of closure is a false promise, it won't be closed" by the use of the death penalty, George said at a seminar sponsored by Evansville's Catholic diocese. "The heart is not healed by killing somebody." McVeigh was convicted in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people. He is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, about 100 miles north of Evansville. Society must allow for the possibility that McVeigh will repent "so that what he has done will not kill all of us morally," George said. The Catholic church's stance on the death penalty has evolved, George acknowledged. In the past, the death penalty was necessary to protect society, but a modern penal system can protect the public from the criminals, George said. "It's no longer morally justifiable," George said at a news conference prior to his speech. McVeigh has dropped all of his appeals, and George said that by executing him, the state is essentially assisting in his suicide. The cardinal urged Catholics to write letters to newspapers in opposition to McVeigh's execution and to hold prayer vigils the day of his execution. However, he said protests should stop short of becoming a circus that would "further brutalize our society," George said. He also asked for prayers for McVeigh's soul, the people ministering to McVeigh and his victims' families. The church's stance against the death penalty does not mean it has forgotten the victims and their families, George said. Leading up to a well publicized execution such as the one expected for McVeigh, those opposed to the death penalty are often falsely portrayed as not being on the side of the victim's family, George said. "We have to check ourselves to make sure that is not true," George said. Sister Helen Prejean, who wrote the book "Dead Man Walking," also is scheduled to speak in Evansville against the death penalty on May 6. (source: Associated Press) Washington Post From the Washington Post. Used WITHOUT permission. The extraordinary nature of the Oklahoma City bombing, and the sheer number of those it affected, is likely to pose some unusual challenges for the government as it prepares for the May 16 execution of Timothy J. McVeigh. The federal government has written to 1,100 victims of the crime, asking relatives of the dead and survivors of the 1995 truck bombing if they wish to witness what may be the first federal execution in 38 years. Under the U.S. Bureau of Prison guidelines for executions, there are only 8 seats at the Terre Haute, Ind., federal death chamber set aside for so-called victim witnesses. But the government has indicated a willingness to expand those numbers if needed. "We are trying to evaluate the scope to fully determine what we are going to have to do to meet the needs of the victims," said Daniel Dunne, spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons. "We understand the unique nature of this case in the sense that there are so many victims." Dunne said nothing has been ruled out, including the possibility of allowing a closed-circuit camera into the chamber to transmit the execution back to a designated location in Oklahoma City. McVeigh's lawyer said his client would not object. Attorney Karen Howick, who persuaded the court to allow a closed circuit hook-up for the federal bombing trials in Denver, said she is prepared to formally make the request to allow a camera in the execution facility. "Any victim who wants to" should be allowed to witness the execution, said Howick. "I don't know how you choose what 8 people get to come to closure . . . The trauma of the bombing should not be exacerbated by telling people this is a lottery -- you take your chances." McVeigh, 32, will be permitted to have 6 witnesses present: 2 attorneys, a spiritual adviser, and three relatives or friends. The decorated Persian Gulf War veteran was condemned to death in 1997 for the April 19, 1995, truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which killed 168 people and injured more than 500 in the deadliest act of terrorism committed on American soil. His co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, escaped a death sentence in the federal case, and is awaiting trial in Oklahoma on state charges. Last month, McVeigh unexpectedly dropped his remaining appeals, clearing the way for his execution by lethal injection. He reserved the right to ask for executive clemency, but his lawyers said he has not decided whether to do so. In any case, a grant of clemency from President Bush -- a staunch death penalty advocate -- is seen as unlikely. In Bush's 6 years as governor of Texas, 152 inmates were executed. Bush commuted a death sentence to life only once, for Henry Lee Lucas, when questions were raised about his guilt in that one murder case. "I harbor no illusions that George 'The Reaper' Bush would grant me a commutation of sentence, nor would I beg any man to spare my life," McVeigh recently wrote in response to questions from the Buffalo News, the New York newspaper from McVeigh's home area. Victims' families have been second-guessing his motives for ending his appeals, with a number speculating that he was simply being manipulative in trying to schedule his own death. Robert Nigh Jr., his long-time attorney, denied any sinister motives. "He was just determined that he didn't want to proceed through the courts any longer," said Nigh. "He thought he had very compelling issues on direct appeal that were turned down. He believed that the likelihood of success on further appeal was nonexistent. He didn't want to keep pursuing it just for the purpose of delay. He doesn't want to give them any more paper to write on." Besides, said Nigh, "existence on death row is not all it's cracked up to be." McVeigh has been confined to the Terre Haute federal penitentiary since 1999, when a special confinement unit was opened to house as many as 50 federal death row inmates; there are currently 20 death row inmates there. (The last federal execution was in 1963, when Victor Feguer was hanged in Iowa for kidnapping and murder.) The penitentiary also houses the only federal death chamber in the country in a separate building. 4 small witness rooms, for victims, the media, prosecutors and the inmate's representatives flank 2 sides of the chamber. McVeigh spends his day in a small cell, isolated from the rest of the prison population, reading or watching television. His lawyers say he plays an active role in his case and stays current with the news. Prosecutors alleged at his trial that hatred for the government drove McVeigh to blow up the building. He allegedly wanted to avenge the government's 1993 siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, where about 80 people died. McVeigh has never admitted guilt or expressed remorse -- something the victims and their families hope he will do before he dies. His lawyers say he has no plans to grant media interviews. However, McVeigh reportedly wanted his story told in a book, and he will get his wish. 2 Buffalo News reporters have written "American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing," based on 75 hours of interviews with McVeigh. It will be published in April and, at a minimum, it is excepted to reveal for the first time McVeigh's motives. (source: Washington Post) News Article - Clinton Stays First
Federal Execution Clinton Again Delays Execution of Murderer WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 - Mr. Clinton's decision to postpone the execution, which was scheduled for Tuesday morning at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., was hailed by a broad coalition of death penalty opponents. But those opponents were displeased that the president stopped well short of their call for a complete moratorium on federal executions. In delaying Mr. Garza's execution for a second time - the original execution date was Aug. 5 - Mr. Clinton cited a current Justice Department review of racial and geographical disparities in the administration of the federal death penalty. "I am not satisfied that, given the uncertainty that exists, it is appropriate to go forward with an execution in a case that may implicate the very issues at the center of that uncertainty," Mr. Clinton said. A preliminary review by the department, cited by the president as disturbing, found that just a handful of United States attorneys accounted for 40 percent of federal death penalty cases and that members of minority groups were disproportionately represented among the 20 people on federal death row. Mr. Clinton reached his decision after a meeting today with Attorney General Janet Reno; Eric H. Holder, a deputy attorney general, who oversees the department's criminal cases; Beth Nolan, the White House counsel; and John D. Podesta, the White House chief of staff. It came after officials at the prison had already begun preparing for Mr. Garza's execution by lethal injection. "In issuing this stay, I have not decided that the death penalty should not be imposed in this case, in which heinous crimes were proved," Mr. Clinton said. "Nor have I decided to halt all executions in the federal system. "I have simply concluded that the examination of possible racial and regional bias should be completed before the United States goes forward with an execution in a case that may implicate the very questions raised by the Justice Department's continuing study. In this area, there is no room for error." Mr. Clinton ordered the Justice Department to complete its review by the end of April, leaving more than a month before Mr. Garza's new execution date for the next president to consider the issue. Mr. Garza's lawyers, Greg Wiercioch and Bruce W. Gilchrist, filed a clemency petition with the president in September. The inmate has admitted to three drug-related killings but argues that he faces death largely because the crime occurred in Texas, one of the leading states in federal death penalty cases, and because he is Mexican-American. Reacting to Mr. Clinton's decision last night, Mr. Wiercioch said, "I'm relieved that the president acknowledged the serious problems with the federal death penalty and prevented an unconscionable act from being undertaken next Tuesday. But I'm disappointed that the president did not commute his sentence" to life imrisonment. Federal prosecutors say Mr. Garza, 44, led a drug-running operation that smuggled tons of marijuana from Mexico. He was convicted in 1993 in Brownsville, Tex., of committing one murder and ordering two others. The victims were Erasmo de la Fuente, Gilberto Matos and Thomas Albert Rumbo, associates of Mr. Garza. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/08/national/08DEAT.html Senator Feingold's
Speaks Out Mr. President, I rise with regret to mark another milestone in the history of our system of justice. This morning's papers report that yesterday the state of Texas carried out its 39th execution, the most of any state since 1862, when the military hanged 39 Native Americans in one day in Minnesota. This evening, Texas is scheduled to surpass that record with its 40th execution. This is a regrettable record. This year, as of yesterday, states in America have executed 82 people. We have reached a sad state of affairs when this Country executes nearly 100 people every year. In 1998, only China and the Congo executed more people a year than did the United States. And we have reached an inequitable state of affairs when nearly half of the executions this year * 39 out of the 82 to date * were carried out in just one state. The state with the next most executions this year, Oklahoma, has had 11 executions. Southern states have carried out nearly 9 out of 10 executions that have taken place this year. Across the street, the building that holds the Supreme Court of the United States has emblazoned across its pediment the words "Equal Justice Under Law." In a Nation that prides itself in that equal justice, how can we abide a system where nearly half of the executions are carried out in just one state? Finally, I rise to mark the another milestone. On Tuesday of next week, the Federal Government is scheduled to reenter the grim business of execution. For nearly 40 years, no one has been executed in the name of the people of the United States. That is set to change next Tuesday. In the light of the demonstrated evidence of regional and racial disparity in the application of this most final punishment, I call on the President to stay that execution. I call on the President to impose a moratorium on federal executions and establish a blue ribbon commission to examine the fairness of the system of capital punishment in America. In September, the Department of Justice released a report on the federal death penalty system. That report found that whether the federal system sends people to death row appears to be related to the federal district in which they are prosecuted or the color of their skin. After the Justice Department released the report, White House spokesman Jake Siewert confirmed the President's view that "these numbers are troubling" and that more information must be gathered to determine "more about how the system works and what's behind those numbers," including "why minorities in some geographic districts are disproportionately represented." We do not yet know why our federal system produces racially and geographically lopsided results. We need a systematic review. Many are joining in asking the President for a moratorium on executions. Their ranks include, among so many others, Lloyd Cutler, the esteemed former adviser to Presidents Carter and Clinton; Julian Bond, Chairman of the NAACP; and the Reverend Joseph Lowrey, chair of the Black Leadership Forum and President emeritus of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Yes, justice demands that crimes be punished. But if we demand justice, we must administer justice fairly. Before we reach the milestone of reinstituting Federal executions, let us pause to evaluate the fairness of our Nation's machinery of death. Mr. President, let this be a milestone that we choose not to reach, next week. God willing, let this be a milestone that we choose not to reach, if ever, for some time to come. Mr. President, I yield the floor. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Statement Of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold President Clinton was right to delay the first federal execution in 37 years, and I'm hopeful this means he recognizes that there are problems with our federal government's current administration of the death penalty. A stay for only one inmate, of course, does not completely address the systemic flaws in the federal system. A moratorium on all federal executions is the only full and fair response to a system that appears to be plagued with possible racial and regional disparities. I will continue the fight and intend to re-introduce my legislation next year calling for a moratorium on federal executions and the creation of an independent commission to review the system. But, tonight I am especially grateful for the President's courage and leadership on this matter. Transcript of McVeigh's Competency Hearing INDIANA: |