I have been deliberately ignoring the upcoming McVeigh execution. But what are your thoughts? Should it be televised? Is it turning into a circus? Is that okay, or does it bug you? What about the latest allegations that the FBI didn't turn over all the evidence? Discuss.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

Answers

I'm against the death penalty, but mostly because I worry about the racial disparity between sentences given to first degree murderers. It doesn't sound like McVeigh is claiming to be innocent, so it doesn't bother me greatly that he's going to die for killing 160 plus people.

But, damn, I wish the media wouldn't send hordes of people to Indiana to cover the execution. My concern about the circus is that it might incent some other pinhead to kill a bunch more innocent people by terrorism.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

The FBI deal is annoying, and this isn't the first time they've kept evidence from defense attorneys. Leonard Peltier is rotting away in prison because of the FBI.

I still have mixed feelings about the whole McVeigh thing. What he did was horrible, and he should be punished, but I'm not sure that an execution is the best punishment for him. If someone wants to watch him die, that's fine with me. I won't be watching any of it, though.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

I am very much in favor of Timothy McVeigh being dead. MSNBC did a story on him last night, and his attitudes and statements sicken me to the point where I left the room after only a few minutes of hearing his dreck. (He refers to the dead children as "collateral damage" and says the family of the victims should just "get over it".) He's a sick individual and the planet is better off without him.

However, this FBI information does disturb me. Why is it that they just now "found" this information? There had to be people who were aware that these files existed. The timing of this "discovery" seems very suspicious.

I am still convinced that McVeigh is guilty, and I really don't think any of these files will have any information that will change the facts. Honestly, I don't think anything short of a clear photo of someone else driving the truck would ever convince me of his innocence. But his lawyers should be given the time to go through the papers just to make sure.

In the absence of any conclusive evidence to his innocence, I say he has outlived his usefulness to society and should be exterminated as soon as legally possible.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

McVeigh is like a hypothetical question to our society.

No, let me start by saying that the "collateral damage" terminology *is* profoundly upsetting and must have the parents of the dead children at the point of tears even now, and it's one additional crime for him to talk that way and another for the press to give him airtime so everyone hears it.

What I think is, this guy is like an ACLU test case. He killed as many people as a plane crash, shattered the lives of dozens of families. He did it to make an abstract point about his disagreement with certain government actions that did not affect him in any concrete way. He killed people who were just like him in every way. Hell, he even got his paycheck from the Federal government for several years himself. He didn't have a breakdown and act without realizing it. He's not mentally damaged and unable to account for his actions. If there's one person in the last 50 years who deserves the death penalty, this is the poster boy for it.

This case has sort of upset me. I'm strongly anti-death penalty, and used to be anti-abortion (no flames, please, I'm working through the issue -- in the meantime, I promise not to prevent anyone from acting according to her conscience) so it's odd for me to find myself itching to see someone die. I don't have a tidy end for this. McVeigh bothers me a lot.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

Tom, you pretty much nailed why I'm ignoring the execution. I wouldn't say I'm itching to see him die, though. I probably felt that way right after the bombing, as soon as we had a face and a name to go with the crime. But there have been other criminals who elicited the same reaction from me, and my assessment is always the same -- those feelings are natural, but they're human feelings. As a society, we're supposed to have imposed social structures that distance us for those feelings, because overwrought emotional responses aren't a good basis for serious action.

So I'm still opposed to the death penalty, in this case and every other. I think Timothy McVeigh should spend the rest of his life in a very dark, lonely cell.

But I also don't care very much whether he dies. I mean, I think it's a bad thing for us socially, I really do. I think the circus aspect is hideous. But him as a man? Do I care if he's dead? No. I don't. Not at all.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

Beth, you put it better. I'm not really itching to see him die, except a guilty little bit of me. I agree that we're heading in all the wrong direction by having a semi-public execution. If I ran the evening news, I'd have the anchors at their usual desks, and they'd lead with a 30-second report that McVeigh was executed. Then they'd go straight into the other news -- no on-the-street reactions, no pictures of cheering throngs outside the prison, no survivors shaking angry fists or bereaved fathers saying "Got-dang, my only regret is that I couldn't throw the switch myself." Ick.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

I strongly agree - I'm doing my best to ignore it, because I think that 1) he wants to be executed because he sees himself as some sort of martyr and 2) he wants all the press slobbering all over him trying to get inside his head.

Bullshit. Lock the bastard away and let him live out a few decades in a dark cell somewhere where he never, ever gets to talk to anyone but the jailor who brings him his meals and lets just never mention his name again. If the press must talk about something regarding this, how about talking about the people he killed? Not their deaths, but who they were. They weren't collateral damage - they were people.

The older I get the more opposed I am to the death penalty, and the more I realize it hasn't got a thing to do with mercy. Anyone honestly deserving of it is getting off too easy by simply dying and getting away from the years of thinking about it that the families of their victims will have to do.

-- Anonymous, May 11, 2001

Lynda B said: "I strongly agree - I'm doing my best to ignore it, because I think that 1) he wants to be executed because he sees himself as some sort of martyr and 2) he wants all the press slobbering all over him trying to get inside his head."

And I agree with that. It pleases the bastard too damned much to orchestrate his own death -- let HIM deal with it. Every day. For the rest of this life.

Actually, I don't think he'd suffer particularly, from what I can tell. He's very proud of himself, and I guess he could simply be proud of himself for the next 80 years.

But here's my prob -- first of all, I live in Dallas and I've heard that more "conspiracy" books of ANY type are sold in Dallas than any other city on earth, per capita. So consider me already influenced by the conspiracy bug.

But I told a friend yesterday that I didn't want to see McVeigh die because I think he'll take too many secrets with him. Too many names, primarily. Because I no more think he and Terry Nichols were the only ones in on this than I think Oswald acted alone.

And my friend was surprised. She TOTALLY believes that McVeigh did it, and nobody else was involved.

I'm shocked. I mean, totally shocked.

So tell me -- who is more typical, my friend, who thinks McVeigh did it (more or less) alone, and there's nobody else to catch?

Or me -- who is convinced there he has co-conspirators who are hiding in the shadows?

Pooks

-- Anonymous, May 12, 2001

The Guardian has a very interesting article in which friends and relatives of victims give their feelings about the execution:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/mcveigh/story/0,7369,489201,00.html

-- Anonymous, May 13, 2001

my feelings on the matter are far too complicated to be put on this message board. I wrote about it here, but I warn you it's long and it's probably not gonna tell you what you want to hear.

-- Anonymous, May 15, 2001

Actually, David -- I have no problem with what you said. Well- written. Thanks for sharing.

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

Do I believe that Tim McVeigh went beyond the accepted social framework to get his "abstract point" across, yes...

Do I believe that he is evil? No. Do I think that what he did is even that suprising? No. Has our country done worse as a means to its ends? Yes.

Do I think that this is just another case of the media blowing a situation up to astronomical proportions in the name of profit and intrigue? Most definitly...

Am I pro-death penalty? No, I feel that it is actually more cruel to leave someone in prison for the rest of their long life than to kill them. But I feel that society is playing into McVeighs' little vision in a way that is all too pleasant for him.

I believe that McVeigh turned this worlds own tactics back upon itself, and that's what pisses so many people off...

-- Anonymous, May 17, 2001

I'm not in a big hurry to see him executed, but it's clear he did it and since I believe in the death penalty, I'm for it.

It is a circus, but given the magnitude of the crime, how could it not be?

If it were televised, I'll admit it: I'd watch.

-- Anonymous, May 18, 2001

I don't believe in the examplarity of capital punishment and the fact that Mc Veigh demands it is an evidence that he's areally sick person with no other horizon than violence and retaliation.Idon't think that with getting rid of him society will get rid of the questions such individuals raise:how can people become so monstruously inhuman ? Is it not an act to conceal the reality of his presonal dismay at realizing what he's been able to do through hate ? I wouldn't consider myself civilized if I let myself go to the same extremes as the integists...

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2001

David, I too really like what you wrote. Very, very good. Before I read your piece, I was going to draw the divergent parallel between how when the government or a corporation refers to those inadventantly killed, they are still collateral damage. (My most recent example was in Kosovo.)

I think it takes more a person to rise above the inevitable intense dislike for the crime a person committs... even one that takes the life of a loved one. There is much greater grace in that than in killing. Again, like you said, we're teaching society killing is okay or not okay, depending on who is doing it in whose name.

I know all the racial arguements against the death penalty; I know the arguements for families of victims & victimizers; I know the increased legal costs of criminal appeals for those on death row. At its very core, execution is a basal instinct rather than an intellectual arguement.

By executing prisoners, regardless of guilt, we take the focus off rehabilitation for the crime (to whatever extent) and instead focus on "justice" to society that will not beget justice in the least.

-from grace, living in Harris County, Texas (if Harris County were a state, it would be the #1 state, ahead of Texas, in executions.)

-- Anonymous, May 21, 2001