To be fair, Ice and Guin, even if the US did abolish the death penalty for ordinary crimes (which I also wish we would do) and take ourselves off that list, McVeigh might still be executed; I’m not sure, but I think that the terrorist act he was guilty of was probably not covered by “ordinary crime” categories.
Sometimes I’m very afraid.
To think that the country I love finds it perfectly reasonable to kill its own citizens just for revenge.
That the citizens my country likes to kill for revenge are disporportionatly poor and minority.
That some of my neighbors are actually drooling with vindictiveness, wishing there was more blood involved.
Kimstu, McVeigh was tried in federal court and convicted of “using a weapon of mass destruction” and the murder of eight federal agents. This is an “ordinary” crime (with respect to those who died) because it was murder. Interestingly enough, he was not tried in Oklahoma for the other 160 deaths. That will be the fate of the associate once his federal sentence is up.
It’s to be the first federal execition since 1963. Still doesn’t make it that extraordinary – just two different systems in your country, federal and state.
Extraordinary crimes are treason, crimes in wartime etc. Unfortunately, there are like as not quite a few countries prepared to kill those they consider traitor to the cause.
For those who want a bit more reading on the topic of the death penalty in America: http://www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/AMR510201998
Ah. Thanks, Ice.
Well, okay, as long as they had to watch him every day until he died.
Although we’d better shut up. Someone from the FOX programming department may be lurking.
Am I for it? Definitely! Would I watch it? Probably not. I don’t think putting McVeigh to sleep is a suitable punishment. He gave up the right to live when he killed 168 innocent people. Since some people should not be in society and you cannot guarentee they won’t escape from prison like Ted Bundy did to kill again, what can you do with them?
I would like to be in Oklahoma City on the day of McVeigh’s execution.
To quote Tom Paxton’s “Bring Back The Chair”
The present rules could use revision.
Make the obvious decision.
Put it all on television.
Let’s bring back the chair.
Slap a little make-up to them.
As the juices sizzle through them,
Geraldo Rivera could interview them.
Let’s bring back the chair.
(Actually, it was originally Howard Cosell).
IMHO, no execution should ever be televised.
Actually, it was 168 people, only 8 of whom he’s been tried of killing.
A quote from a book due out this week (week of 4/3/2001):
I guess he’s actually admitting to the bombing now, which would’ve saved millions of dollars prosecuting the bastard had he confessed in the first place. That was probably his strategy: he wants to die a martyr to all those other sick puppies out there like him. Waco begets Oklahoma City begets Columbine High begets … He wouldn’t’ve been sentenced to death if he’d confessed.
His real sentence should’ve been life imprisonment, with his cell decorated with a wallpaper image of the fireman carrying out the fatally injured, blood-covered baby.
I’m reading American Terrorist right now. Although I do not for a second believe that McVeigh’s execution should be televised–he just wants another 15 minutes for his despicable ideology–I would happily make popcorn and cheer his demise if it were.
Absolutely none of my objections to capital punishment apply in McVeigh’s case. There’s no question he did it, he had a more than adequate defense, and the man unquestionably poses a continuing threat to society. In those circumstances, I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying he should be executed, and I am not squeamish about the results of my beliefs on this subject.
I am in favor of the death penalty.
Do I think McVeigh should be executed? No.
Why? Because he wants it.
While he was still fighting conviction I wanted him to die, because he didn’t want it. Now I want him to live. No TV, books/magazines/computer access, no visitors, nothing. Meals, a simple bed, a toilet, and a bath maybe twice a week. That’s it. Until he dies.
It should not be televised. If it is, I will not watch.
And isn’t it state-assisted suicide if the subject asks for it? Why grant him his request and not those who are terminally ill and in great pain? What’s the difference?
168 bodies and a capital murder conviction.
I don’t think I’d watch, simply because there’d be no point to it. I wouldn’t derive any personal satisfaction from SEEING his death. Knowing that he was dead would be enough.
I DO think that the death penalty IS a deterent because, so far, no one who has been executed has ever come back and killed someone. I also think that its a very humane punishment. I can’t think of anything crueler psychologically than to lock a person up for the rest of his/her life in a small space, with limited opportunities for contact with the outside world. Sort of like what they do to calves to make veal, isn’t it?
I also don’t think that McVeigh’s execution is going to turn him into a martyr for the simple fact that most of the wacko’s out there realize that he screwed up big time. Had he picked a building that was unoccupied, he might have picked up more support. He didn’t. He picked a building filled with people, most especially, babies. Had he blown up an unoccupied IRS building on the weekend, he might have gotten some support.
So long as McVeigh is alive, there is a chance (however remote), that he could escape. If he gets out, he WILL kill someone. Possibly LOTS of people. By executing him, you remove that possibility and the possibility that he might kill someone WHILE IN PRISON. I say kill him and broadcast it if you want. It won’t stop anyone else from killing people, but it WILL stop McVeigh, and to my mind, its a more humane punishment than spending the next 40 years in a box.
It was a series of videos that came out in the mid-1980s (one of my classmates brought volume five into Health class during our “Death and Dying” section as a joke) featuring a series of live and still images of people who have just died one way or another. Don’t ask me how the FoD creators get their hands on this sh*t in the first place. Due to the underground popularity of the series, I seriously doubt that any televised execution would be a learning tool but rather some people’s idea of entertainment.
As for the death penalty detering crime due to the “This can happen to you” factor, isn’t that expecting an AWFUL lot of rational thought from someone who would even concider committing an irrational act? And how many criminals, whatever the crime, really believe they’re going to get caught?!?!
Lastly, I agree with everyone who said McVeigh should be made to live when he wants to die. And I’m afraid he wants this televised so he can make one last grand statement at some point to help set himself up as a martyr [sp?] or some such thing. Heck, after Jeffery Dahmer [sp?] was killed, I saw T-shirts praising him in the same store that sold Charles Manson shirts.
I really see no good coming from this.
Patty
No.
Would you want to watch his victims die?
I don’t see how watching anyone die would be of any constructive interest at all.
Of course, it’ll be all over the news that day, causing some women to call in complaining of their sopa operas being missed.
I wouldn’t watch, nor would I want it televised. I would place extra weight on the opinions of those who have lost loved ones in the explosion – what do they want? That seems to me to be the most important issue here, along with “Don’t let it happen again.”
I understand the idea of “humane punishment.” We don’t want to encourage our culture to sink so low as to derive entertainment value from martyrdom, even if our culture is pretty close to that level already. We’ve got to stop giving this guy publicity.
Should he die? I think so. Either that, or rot unhappily in a cell.
I would rather die than live the rest of my life in jail.
It seems he really wants publicity, and apparently, he’s going to get it.
I wouldn’t watch, but I would predict that a lot of people would watch and tell people that that didn’t watch, or that they didn’t really intend to watch but did. All these sensationalistic TV shows get people hooked, especially those Fox shows, “World’s Most Insane Police Chases”, “Who Wants to Admit They’re a Whore?”…maybe they could add in a twist and have home viewers vote on the manner of death…“27% are for crucifixion, 12% want his innards chewed out by pit bulls, etc.” or have several death row inmates play a “Weakest Link” type game…all the losers get fried, the winner gets married to Darva Conger.
Personally, I’m opposed to the death penalty, but hey, death makes great theater…just look at the ancient Romans and their spectacles where lots of people would die and the crowd would go bonkers, high-fiving each other with every decapitation. And it’s also a (sad but true) fact that at some lynchings in America’s Deep South, vendors would set up stands to sell food and drink to the rowdy crowds.
When evil is the answer to evil, evil always wins…that’s how Tim McVeigh dug himself into a prison of hate, because he believed that an “eye for an eye” was true justice, and he responded to a perceived evil with a monstrous act of evil. Jesus said that an eye for an eye is not the way to go and called us to a higher moral standard, and Martin Luther King noted that the problem with an eye for an eye is that everyone becomes blind. But the old “eye for an eye equals justice” habit is a tough one to break, and there are many ways to rationalize evil as the answer to evil. Maybe Jesus and MLK were just a bit too naive–after all, they were killed for what they believed.
I wouldn’t watch. I’m for the death penalty in cases like this, but I don’t need to see it. I don’t think we need to blur the lines between justice and entertainment, and a big party of me worries that someone might take the idea of televised executions as being an incentive to commit crimes. There are people out there who would do anything for their 15 minutes of fame, including die on TV for it.
Wow. Didn’t know this one had been resurrected.
A couple of months of reflection have made me realize that watching his execution would not be good. Not for me, anyway.
I sometimes find myself wishing they’d do it some other way than lethal injection, though. Seems more like euthanasia than execution, in this case.
Didn’t someone facing the death penalty opt for hanging, not all that long ago?