Why Tim McVeigh's execution was wrong...

Great Debates
161

my thoughts on this thread that’s getting a little too long.

a lot of people have suggested slowly torturing McVeigh, or maybe just chopping off a few limbs. I suggest you check out the 8th amendment. this is one of the ways that we can be said to be a civilized country.

now, I’d like to list my arguments against the death penalty. anyone who cares can take them one by one and nitpick at them.

  1. Chance of killing innocents
  2. State sponsored murder- It’s not ok if McVeigh kills someone, but it’s okay if the government does.

(By the way, I don’t see anyone mentioning the FBI sentencing several Davidians to slow feiry death at Waco. I bet the most punishment from there was a slice in pay in one or two officers.)

now to nitpick at opposing arguments:

  1. The death penalty gives families of the victims a good feeling.

Yeah, and what about the families of the other victim, the one who is being poisoned to death by the government? I suppose since their related to a convicted felon, their emotions don’t count at all.

  1. The death penalty prevents the death of prison gaurds.

How so? If someone is capable of killing a prison gaurd in an attempted escape, isn’t it more likely that they’ll do that in the time before their execution, rather than if they have a chance of getting out of prison and into a normal life?

  1. Prisons are overcrowded.

People wait in prison a long time before their death sentence, so the effect is somewhat the same. Also, consider that we’re not executing people by the boat-load here- I doubt the cell space freed up by one person per year will help overcrowding problems.

  1. Eye for an eye.

The atheist in me is kicking in. The next time someone shoplifts, we allow police officers to take stuff from their home. Someone caught selling drugs? We chop off their hands. Someone caught drunk driving? We put them in a car and slam it into the wall. While we’re at it, let’s eliminate the 8th amendment, the 5th amendment, and, oh, how about 1, 4, 6, 7, and 9?

  1. Get McVeigh out of our hair.

So, having a giant media storm about his execution is going to create less attention then locking him into some remote corner of a federal prison?

162

No, their emotions don’t count. Using family is a scapegoat, he’s an individual and responsible for his actions; not his families emotions.
Families have nothing to do with the crime (and shouldn’t associate themselves with it), it solely lies on the individual. He suffered the consequences; perhaps his family did also but to say the worst shouldn’t happen to someone who killed over 100 people (in spite of being a family member) is inane.

163

0riginally posted by wring: **

If I understand you correctly (and interpreting your prose is not easy), you want me to find you a direct quote from an anti-DP advocate that murder victims are an “embarassment and annoyance”. Sorry wring, that’s hardly a realistic expectation, but if previous examples of sweeping the victims under the rug are not enough for you, consider the anti-DPers disgust with the increasingly popular practice of allowing relatives of victims to testify in the penalty phase of murder trials.
Tune in Court TV sometime to hear the anti-DP legal experts’ contempt and annoyance when confronted with family members who revive the memory of victims.

And no, Dr. L., I don’t consider homicide victims as “anecdotes” or statistics, but as individuals and human beings. My sympathy for killers is somewhat less.

164

Is this your quaint way of saying “well, I just posted my opinion and have nothing to back it up but vague crap”? got it.

165

If that’s how you prefer dodging the point, wring, you may call it anything you choose. But such rudeness…:wink:

Oh, and here’s another case for those who think “life without parole” is the solution. These fine citizens busted out of maximum security. Count up the dead and menaced, but remember, it’s only “anecdotal”.

166

you make an unsupported charge against those who dare to disagree with you, and you think **I’m ** rude and “dodging the point” to call you on it?

(and by the way, your facts are wrong about the link you provided. The 7 in Texas were not in a maximum security prison. try this

But why bother with facts when you are so well served by your half truths and assumptions? )

167

How much sympathy do you have for the wrongly accused? It doesn’t sound like very much. I was just trying to steer the debate away from pathos to a more rational discussion. Demonstrate to me, using real facts and not individual cases, that the death penalty does more good than harm. Is that too much to ask?

168

Yeah, it’s funny that ol’ Jack wants to hang that undeserved albatross around the necks of DP opponents, when he himself has spent several posts whistling past the graveyard. “I know we’ve recently found all these folks on death row who turned out to be innocent, but that’s all of 'em! It must be! There’s not the most remote possibility that there were more, or that we didn’t get to one in time and he was executed! The system works, even though it’s only people outside the system who are pursuing these cases!”

169

Wrong, wring. Connally was and is a maximum security unit. The fact that the escapees (including two convicted murderers) were able to exploit defects in security to escape doesn’t change that fact. History does not justify a belief that “lifers without parole” will not be able to escape.

Here’s yet another example of contempt towards both murder victims and our system of justice by an anti-death penalty advocate, in an editorial piece featured in our local paper today. To explain opposition to the DP by Europeans, Rowland Nethaway, editor of the Waco Tribune-Herald (surprise, a Texan), says*

“Hitler’s Nazis and Stalin’s communist henchmen used laws and rigged trials to sentence millions of innocent citizens to death. People who have lived through such atrocities view killing as killing; It’s wrong whether it’s done by a citizen or by the state.”* Note that use of the term “citizen” - Nethaway repeatedly does this in his column, referring to “killing citizens who kill citizens”.
So you have an anti-DP proponent who a) equates our criminal justice system with those of fascist and communist governments, and b) groups victims and murderers together, joining others in his cause who lump killers and their prey into one big grab-bag of victimology. Does Nethaway come right out and say he has disrespect for murder victims? No. Do his words indicate otherwise? Yes.

The chance of someone who is innocent of murder being executed is extremely low (even a fervent anti-DPer earlier in this thread could only describe one (unnamed) case occurring since reinstitution of the death penalty in the '70s), while the odds of a convicted murderer getting out and killing again are much higher (I’ve described numerous cases). Should we use molecular and other technologies to arrive at as great a certainty as possible in executing someone? Of course. But we’ve got to retain the death penalty to protect society from the worst and most evil offenders.

Here’s one more viewpoint* on the subject.

*One inaccuracy to point out in this column - the alleged escape ringleader, George Rivas, is described as a convicted murderer, when I believe his worst crime was kidnaping. The escape party did include two convicted killers.

170

** Cite? In the one I posted it was clear he was not in maximum security.

** What you call ‘contempt’ is an op piece saying ‘killing is wrong’ if a citizen does it or the state. Yep, I can see, that’s just scathing in it’s condemnation of murder victims. When are you going to come up with something remotely close to what you posted? The use of the word ‘citizen’ is to differentiate it from the ‘state’ enforcing a law. Why are you reading something else into it? “equating our system to that of facist/nazi etc”, nope. merely pointing out that in those cases, the ‘state’ manufactured evidence, trampled civil rights of its citizens, and sentenced innocents to death. DP opponents see things like people being released from prison due to actual innocence and we say worry that the same may well be true for those sentenced to death. It is something that we are not willing to allow.

**[nice that you admit that it exists. Now, since you’ve come this far, how can you be so passionate about those victims of an aborant citizen (murderer) and completely lack any concern for the victim of an organized state sanctioned but still wrong act?

171

Fine, then. Tell us, then, exactly, how often is it that convicted murderers escape and kill again. You seem to believe that this happens fairly often, so I’d like to know exactly how often.

Why is it surprising that he’s a Texan? If you write Mr. Nethaway a letter, I’m sure he’d apologize for not living up to your prejudiced expectation that all Texans favor the DP.

172

Simply do a search under “Connally Unit” and “maximum security” and you will find lots of cites that Connally was and is a max security unit. But to save you all that exertion, here’s one link. Connally’s designation is also described in this link, which interestingly also discusses the escape of two men from an Oklahoma maximum security prison, one of whom was doing “life without parole” for raping and murdering an 81-year-old woman.

[nice that you admit that it exists. Now, since you’ve come this far, how can you be so passionate about those victims of an aborant* citizen (murderer) and completely lack any concern for the victim of an organized state sanctioned but still wrong act?**
[/QUOTE]

I’ve never said that an innocent person has never been executed in the U.S., while remarking that anti-DPers were scuffling madly to come up with any proven cases to that effect (especially in recent times with modern criminology methods). But let’s turn that last statement of yours around. How can you be so passionate about the fate of convicted killers and have no concern for the fate of victims and their families?

I will gladly admit to a bias in favor of decent members of society who deserve better than to have their lives ended by scum such as Kenneth McDuff or Gary Graham. Even one innocent life taken because we shy away from the death penalty is one life too many (and as we’ve seen, there are vastly more proven cases of convicted killers repeating their crimes than there are of innocents wrongly executed).

We have vastly different outlooks and sympathies, wring. I don’t see agreement on the horizon.

The bottom line re the OP is that the execution of McVeigh will serve to strengthen public support for the death penalty. That, taken by itself, is a good thing.
***By the way, what’s an “aborant” citizen?

jab, my allusion to it being a surprise that Mr. Nethaway, a Texan should be anti-DP was intended as an ironic statement, given the demonization of all things Texan by segments of the Left. As of a week ago I am no longer a Texan, which should speed my re-acceptance into the Family of Man. :slight_smile:

173

I do care about the fate of victims and their families, but I am not convinced that the death penalty does them any good. Add that to the fact that the DP likely kills innocent people, I fail to see the benefit. Notice that the fate of the real killers does not enter into my reasoning at all?

174

So wait - - one innocent life taken because of X is OK, but one innocent life taken because of Y is bad? How do you reckon that one?

(X being the death penalty, Y being the absence thereof.)

175

** From the Texas Department of Corrections web site, description of the Connoly facility: here

{Administrative Seg. is used when a prisoner is either a risk (temporary usually) to themselves or others - ie they’ve been fighting or have been threatened. AdSegs are common.} The designation that the prisoners had was sufficiently low to allow them in a low level supervision work assignment (ie civilian supervisors), not general practice for those in a maximum security environment. They were able to escape because of this low level security arrangement.

RE: “**By the way, what’s an “aborant” citizen?” I referred to those who murder as ‘aborant’, legally, they’re still citizens (usually), but they certainly wouldn’t be the expected norm.

176

If there was a 1:1 ratio between killings of innocent people by released/pardoned/paroled/escaped murderers (Y) and executions of innocents by the state (X), you’d have a point. But to repeat yet again, Y hugely outnumbers X. You can pad the totals on your side by throwing in cases reversed on legal technicalities or (as you did previously) citing a case where the alleged wrongly accused never even was tried for murder, much less sentenced to death, but it won’t add up. Just one grievous instance like the Tison case vastly overshadows any real data you can point to.

As to max vs. non-max security, wring, either all those other sources (including state officials) are wrong, or things changed at Connally in the past year. The point remains that the killers got out, and killed again.

177

It matters quite a bit since we (DP foes) contend that life w/o parole in a secure enviornment is preferred and serves the same public safety concerns. The site I provided stated that the info was accurate as of June 2000. Re: why would state officials say ‘max’? Are you joking? Do you really think that given the results, they’d want to admit that their classification system was flawed? that they’d had folks in medium security when they should have been in max? Plus, unless you work in the system, you don’t really understand the differing levels as well.

So, back on point. Prison systems have different levels. What I suggest is that there be a specific level ‘life w/o parole’. Currently in a ‘maximum’ security prison, you would have a mix (as you did in the Texas break and the OK break you linked to) of folks who will be out some day, and others who don’t have a chance (other than through an appeal/pardon). I believe those two groups should be separated, and appropriate precautions taken.

As far as ‘appropriate’ precautions - there’s not been any escape from the death rows/supermax prisons that I’m aware of. The very, very, very few escapes from assigned “maximum” (as opposed to the Texas case where some officials chose that word, but it’s clear that they were not being held in a maximum security method (civilians are not left ‘in charge’ of maximum security prisoners). And then, we’d avoid the possability of executing an innocent person.

178

Please do not make it necessary for me to repeat this again. Please tell us just how great a risk we are taking by imprisoning murderers for life instead of executing them. I want an exact number.

Here is a list of articles detailing wrongful convictions in capital cases. One of them is Gary Graham.

179

Woah, there, hoss! You have a cite for that, right? You actually have a cite for the number of innocent people executed? If you do, you appear to be privy to information nobody else has. If you say it’s “zero,” you’re basing an assumption on a false premise.

You think anyone is stupid enough to believe that, because the anti-DP side can’t produce names, that innocent executees don’t exist? By that logic, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is empty. (ObIrony: The unknown soldier from Vietnam was identified through DNA testing.)

You think you can just assume them away because we don’t currently know which executees were innocent and which ones were not?

Pad the totals? Some of those people were days or hours away from execution. And some of those “legal technicalities” included the fact that the person didn’t commit the fucking crime. If that’s a “legal technicality,” I’d hate to see what you consider “reasonable doubt.” I guess we can place you in the Antonin Scalia camp, when he states that actual innocence is not a sufficient reason to halt a legally-ordered execution.

180

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by wring *
**

This incident may enlighten you.
If you truly believe you know just how prisons can prevent convicted killers from escaping, you have a lucrative career in store - just contact corrections officials with your solutions. Or you can keep repeating that mantra about life without parole as though that ensured public safety, ignoring once again the Oklahoma case I cited where a “lifer without parole” convicted of raping and murdering an elderly woman escaped.

jab, if the number of confirmed cases cited in this thread of escaped/pardoned/paroled/released killers who repeated their crimes does not impress you, there’s nothing more I can say. Perhaps you, like pldennison, would prefer to fixate on phantom innocents like Gary Graham, guilty of a rape and robbery spree in addition to murder. The fact that you don’t like the jury’s verdict doesn’t alter his guilt.
And pl, that’s a very telling admission about not having names or any idea about what innocents may have been executed. It reinforces the argument that anti-DPers are trafficking heavily in suspicions, what ifs and could bes (with time out for shouting “Racism!”). You’d prefer to go on wailing about phantoms while ignoring the carnage for which there is absolutely no doubt (I refer you again to just one case, that of Kenneth McDuff, released from death row by action of the Supreme Court, and his subsequent train of murders that led to his being resentenced to death and executed, finally).

I’m sure we all feel that our convictions are a matter of conscience. But I suggest you actually pause to consider the information provided to you, and ponder again why your allegiance and sympathies are so heavily with convicted killers, instead of with their victims, families of victims, and society at large.

Over and out.