Timothy McVeigh was convicted of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing and given the death sentence. He has declined appeals and wants his sentence carried out. He doesn’t want to years locked up in prison.
Should the country proceed with his sentence and execute him? I don’t think the country should be in any hurry to carry out the sentence. This man has been convicted of killing men, women and children by the cowardly act of bombing. I can not see why this country should honor his desire to die quickly and make him a martyr among his peers. If this man doesn’t like being locked up, well, let’s leave him locked up for a good long, long time.
Used to be for it. Not anymore. So my vote is no. This in no way lessens what he did. I’m sure there will be a lot of “fry the bastard” type posts.
Live in prison without parole sounds good to me. Let him spend every day imagining the ghosts of the people he killed are calling out to him, asking him why, why, did he have to do what he did. If he is a remorseless sociopath, then just let him grow old in prison.
This is a nitpick, I suppose, but he was found guilty. This doesn’t mean he did it.
Also, even if he did do it, why does that give us license to kill him? By doing this we are condoning his actions by showing that it is ok to kill in “specific” situations. I’m sure he found his reasons as valid as you find yours. It seems cowardly either way.
(a) He’s been convicted, so as far as the legal system is concerned, he did it. (b) If he didn’t do it, wouldn’t he fight like hell through the appeals system? Or at least make the public statement “I didn’t do it”? Fry the bastard.
Yes, it’s okay to kill in specific situations. Self-defense springs to mind, even without getting into the death penalty. And how on earth does frying the bastard send the message that we “condone” his actions? Does he get a certificate of appreciation before they hook up the i.v.?
Well hooray for Tim McVeigh and his ruggedly individual belief system. At least in the belief system endorsed by the criminal justice system, there was a clear warning that if you murder 168 people, you just might be hooked up to Dr. Kevorkian’s machine if you get caught. Fry the bastard.
Assuming that he did it (and I’ve heard nothing compelling to suggest he didn’t), and that the death penalty is acceptable (in other words, let’s not debate the death penalty here, where the question is whether or not his request to be executed should be honoured), execute him with all due speed.
That he has waived his appeals and requested to be executed, suggesting that he prefers death to imprisonment, is immaterial. If you think it matters, try this: maybe he’s counting on people to think this, hoping people will say “oh no! we’re not going to give you what you want! No death penalty for you!”, in which case, he’s avoided the fate that he really wants to avoid.
We can go back and forth forever with psychological what-ifs. The system has given him the death penalty, and he’s not going to fight it. If he thinks that’ll earn him martyrdom, more power to his political delusions that led him to kill 168 people in the first place. It’ll save the taxpayers some money.
I am opposed to the DP and think it should be abolished, only because of the unfortunate occurance of the wrong people getting convicted and sentenced to it. That said…
I believe this mook is deserving of that DP, and since he has, in principle, agreed to the punishment, I think we have to carry it out.
Otherwise, it kinda looks like we only want to execute those who have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the chamber.
I’m pro-death penalty, in fact I think it should be used for more than certain murders (i.e. rape, attempted murder, some assault cases), but I don’t think we should make a martyr of Timothy McVeigh. Locked up for life he has years to make an ass of himself and weaken his cause, dead he will be a rallying point for every extremist militia group out there.
This is simply the old argument about the morality of capital punishment in general. I think we can agree that IF anyone ever deserved to be executed, it’s McVeigh. Let’s not kid ourselves about there being any plausible doubt that he did it, either.
My brother is a police detective, and he says this is in fact a very popular tactic, and that very few of the death-row prisoners who use it end up getting executed.
You know, sometimes for cases like this I kinda wish we were more strict. If you really want to know what I think about murderers, especially one’s like McVeigh: They don’t deserve any kind treatment. None whatsoever. Sometimes I muse that it would be nice to torture the bastards before we execute them, but that’s just in sick humor (I’m not sick enough to seriously believe that).
Anyway, kill him. He has no right to live, and we need to free up the space to temporarily hold the next murderer.
The State: Ha! We’ve caught you and and know we’re going to kill you! How do you like that?
Murderer: I like it just fine, go right ahead.
The State: Ok then we’ll get the lethal injection and…HEY! Wait a minute! What do you mean fine?
Murderer: I mean go ahead and kill me, I want you to.
The State: ??? Well, maybe we don’t want to. Maybe we just don’t feel like killing you right now.
Murderer: Ok, don’t kill me.
The State: Don’t kill you! We caught you and we’re going to kill you! How do you like that?
Murderer: I like it just…(ad infinitum)
Hey. I thought one of the problems when Oklahoma blew up was that everybody, law enforcement and the general public, began by assuming it was Muslims. The investigation started out in the wrong direction. More disturbing, a number of mosques received threatening phone calls.
Could we back off the idea that all bomb throwing nuts are Islamic? Looking at Timothy, obviously they’re not (and also obviously, there’s a risk of people believing all Islamics are bomb throwing nuts.)
I live in Oklahoma. I have friends in OKC who were caught in the debris of the blast. I was an emergency volunteer and in OKC hours after the bombing. I saw what he did and what it did to everyone involved. The victims , the survivors, the families, the rescue workers (God, the nightmares we all had). I agreed with one of the other resuce workers who said, after his third trip into what used to be a daycare center:
“The bastards responsible should be stoned to death with the rubble by the parents of those babies.”