Will This *Never* End? (More from McVeigh)

From today’s New York Times. [sub]Subscription required to view[/sub]

No, goddammit! No! No! No!

Everyday this souless fuck draws breath is an affront to hundreds of people in Oklahoma. Myself included.

The article goes on to say that out of the 1,000 documents he’s looked at, that baby murdering fucknut has only identified, nine, nine, that could have helped his defense. Not that it would have a made a lick of difference in his well deserved sentencing.

And yet, he wants to put the Federal Government on trial. For fraud!

Gah!

Oh, I’m too mad to even rant coherently at this hour.

Didn’t he, like, confess or something?

This story was carried in the Sunday papers here, which I’ve unfortunately thrown out.

The legal opinion seemed to be that he will indeed get a 30 day stay, if only because the government wants to leave no room for any accusation that his rights are being denied.

More disturbing was the implication that if his action against the government is successful, his sentence could be commuted (effectively on the basis of a technicality).

There’s a document online (I’ll track it down tomorrow,I found it through one of my son’s forensic science bookmarks) which is a government report into the FBI’s handling of the whole bombing investigation. There’s stuff in that report which would make you cringe, and I’ve always been surprised McVeigh didn’t seek to use it. Maybe martyrdom doesn’t seem so attractive to him these days.

This is the original report to which I referred in my post above. While searching for it, I noticed there have been others since then. I’ll check them out in the morning.

Sorry, that link’s to the Executive Summary, here is the link to thw whole report.

Y’know, even if he does manage to weasel out of execution, we all know that some fanatical nut is gonna snipe his ass (a la Lee Harvey Oswald). And the people assigned to escort him are going to say, “Oops, sorry, we were a bit too slow to get him into the armored van…”

On the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt to wait a year, if we can spend the time showing the Government that not handing over more than five thousand documents after a judge orders you to disclose everything you have is a fucking big no-no! Let’s face facts, kiddies-if a private citizen had done what the Feddies had done, not only would the case be thrown out, but that citizen would be put in jail on fraud and contempt charges. no matter how guilty McVeigh is, the ends never justify the means. Can you imagine what would happen if you were on trial for murder, and the prosecution was allowed to withhold evidence on the basis that they didn’t feel the info would help you?

We owe it to our selves to do this by the book, to Play Fair, and not violate his right to due process in any way. No one is so dispicable that they do not deserve the benefit of due process. If the system does not work for a case like this why should we expect it to work for anyone?

I am so mad that the FBI would withold those documents that I cannot properly express my anger not even in the pit. I feel certain that it is their fault that the whole affair is not over.

I do feel sorry for the survivors and the family of the dead, but that in no way means that we should not see this to a proper end instead to just roasting the guy while questions remain unaswered.

Well said, Czarcasm.

Arden Ranger, while I understand your bloodlust, do you really want to see McVeigh executed when it can’t be said the government bent over backward to treat him fairly? After all, the right to a fair trial is one of the basic American freedoms nutjobs like McVeigh claim are being trampled upon by the Feds.

Nobody wants McVeigh to become a martyr to the cause. If we dot every I and cross every T before executing him, he’s more likely to remain what he is: a pathetic nutjob.

(That said, I do want it noted here that I oppose capital punishment. But even if he got life in prison, I’d want him to get it via due process.)

I hate this. Dammit, this was so preventable. Now this diseased pustule on humanity’s ass will have to be coddled, if only to mitigate the damage the Feds have caused.

I’ve ranted on this before, so I’ll be restrained this time.

<sad> McVeigh must be allowed time to try and run his agenda once more. I hope he fails, I pray he fails, but we must let him try. It’s the only option if you want to avoid giving the forces of evil hatred even more ammunition that they already have. The failure on the part of the FBI has given him this right, and in honesty, we must let him have his try, if only for a while. We, as a nation, via our officials, have failed to live up to our obligation to ourselves, and the result is that we must suffer for it. Anything else would be dishonest and cowardly. One hopes, at least, that by doing the honorable thing, that we can show to those sitting on the fence that seperates society from the paranoid fear and hatred of the fringe that society isn’t so grim as it’s been presented. </sad>

Meanwhile, I’m weeping. Literally.

[hijack]
I personally think that they should execute him on the anniversary of the bombing. Seems like that would help with closure for the families. Of course, if they do that, they’ll have to wait until next year.
[/hijack]

Folks, there’s a lot more to this than you’ve seen. I just finished reading Stephen Jones’ book Others Unknown on the ( topichttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586480987/qid=991747686/sr=1-1/ref=sc_b_1/104-6212052-0203153 )

According to him, the FBI has been dragging its feet, obfuscating, and sitting on evidence since the beginning.
This is not your typical conspiracy theory book – Stephen Jones was Tim McVeigh’s appointed Head Counsel for his trial. He knows what was going on, and he comes off as a very honest and respectable individual. And it’s clear he was really ticked off at the government for its handling of the case.

I’m sure McVeigh deserves the hate that’s being thrown at him. But the point of Jones’ book is that you shouldn’t let this blind you to the fact that we have by no means gotten to the bottom of this.

As I write, Terry Nichols is seeking a new trial. Read this book and tell me you think that Nichols got anything like he deserved.

I don’t for minute believe the FBI intentionaly withheld anything. Maybe that’s me being naive but the fucker has confessed, several times in several interviews and in that goddamned book that was recently released, the title which escapes me right me since it was something I had no intention of reading.

Isn’t Stephen Jones the lawyer that McVeigh himself doesn’t want to have anything to do with anymore? The one that maintains the existence of a John Doe #2 despite the fact that McVeigh repeatedly stated that no such person exists, and if he did, Jones would be pushing up daisies right now instead of continuing to make money off this mess?

I’ve said before that I was surprised at the severity of Nichols’s sentence when it was handed down. Yes, he did deserve something for his part in it but I felt life in prison was a knee jerk reaction. His part did not add up to the same severity as, say, Manson who is also serving a life sentence for his crimes. Terry Nicholas just, IMO, didn’t carry the same level of guilt and if those documents can help him lighten that a little, more power to him.

Nothing in the documents meets the standards set forth by Brady v. Maryland, which says that prosecutors must turn over to a defendant any information favorable to a criminal case. From what I understand they mostly concern the alleged John Doe #2 and leads that were called in that never panned out.

Nothing will change the guilt of McVeigh. He’s confessed! There’s no reason to draw this out.

Sorry, Arden, but there is: If we don’t do what’s honorable, we’ll be just as bad as McVeigh claims we are. Then he’d go down as even more of a martyr the the hate-mongers than he already is. Having already screwed-up, it’s necessary that the DOJ & Court demonstrate ostentatious concern for McVeigh’s due process, lest the evil bastards out there use this as further ammunition. I’d rather hurt a bit longer, and lance this boil properly.

Sometimes, Doing It Right hurts.

You might be right, but it doesn’t seem that Jones is exactly an infallible source. I’ve read Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck’s American Terrorist, which presents thing’s from McVeigh’s perspective, and is based on a series of interviews with him. McVeigh bashes Jones throughout the book, and dismissed him as his lawyer, because of Jones’ dogged attempts in trying to prove that there was a conspiracy in the OKC bombing despite McVeigh’s own insistence there wasn’t.

Anyway, to bring this somewhat back on topic, IMHO McVeigh is doing this not because he thinks there’s one iota of possibility he’ll have his conviction overturned, but simply as a means to further embarass the government. And y’know what? I say we let him. This is, frankly, one of the largest crimes in our nation’s history, and for us to execute McVeigh before absolutely every last criminal and legal doubt has been resolved would be to do a terrible disservice not only to the victims and their families, but to future generations of Americans.

Would you believe I previewed this twice?

::walks off, muttering to himself::

Arden Ranger:

I was going to post a rant against AR’s shockingly cavalier attitude (she can’t even be bothered to learn the title of a book she refuses to read, but which raises the concerns she dismisses above). But I wanted to make sure I was on firm Constitutional grounds first, so I consulted the Bill of Rights.

Son of a gun! Check out the Fifth Amendment:

My apologies. Go on and execute McVeigh.

I eagerly await the day when all this legal wrangling is over and they pull the switch on Mr. McVeigh.

:rolleyes:

Oh, yeah. Like I’m the only person on the face of the planet that thinks he should fry.

There’s nothing cavalier about it. I was there when they pulled bodies out of the debris, when family members were identifying their loved ones and when friends of mine were having nightmares because they were in buildings close enough to be damaged by the blast. I’m here in Oklahoma where I see the results of what he did every fucking day.

No, I’m not going to read American Terrorist. Ever. I don’t believe he should have had his ego fed by getting to talk to sensation seeking reporters while he’s been in prison, much less write a fucking book.

Everything must be handled painstakingly exactly before he goes. I consider the shitstorm that would have happened if he’d been executed on schedule, had the FBI sat on its hands just a wee bit longer, and I shudder. We’ve been very lucky there haven’t been copycat bombings by the “inspired” as yet; the more of a martyr he comes, the greater the chance of them.

In my world, the death penalty as such wouldn’t exist. There would be life imprisonment with a twist. There are a class of “supermax” prisons that get some bleeding hearts up in arms because the prisoners are supposedly in solitary for much of the day. Amplify that. Put them in a cell. It doesn’t have to be small, really it should be about apartment sized. No television, no net access, no books. Writing materials, why not; any output from it will be destroyed unread. Healthy, balanced meals will be routinely and automtically delivered. Zero human contact; the cells will be soundproofed, isolated from others so they can pound on the walls all day if they’d like, no one will hear. No modern medical care. They will be fed healthy meals; if they start suffering appendicitis, they’ll probably end up dying from it. If they cut themselves somehow and don’t keep sanitary, infections may eventually do them in. Better people than them have been dying like that until only very recently in history.

When the sentence is complete, due process completed, and that door closes, they are alone, period and forever. Barbara Walters will never be along to give them an interview to twist the knife in the victims for ratings sake. They will write no bestselling books. Playboy shall not interview them. No one will. The inside of their own skull, every breath of every day with no distractions, for the rest of their lives.

I don’t much believe in “closure”; I think it’s a term that’s effectively meaningless but people pretend it has some because they first heard it used on an after-school special that made them weepy. The surviving victims will have painful memories, which will at times rise up. And when they do, they can reflect, “I am breathing open air. I can right this minute pick up the phone and talk with my family, my friends. I can freely go to visit them. I can read a book of my choice. And right this very instant, the agent of my pain is sitting in a cell, staring at the door with less and less hope and the dawning realization that that is all there will ever be, until his breath runs out with the passage of time.”

That, to me, would be “closure”. Lethal injection, high voltage, the short sharp crack of a neck snapping in the noose, those are too good and too expensive even compared against the cost of simply warehousing for the monsters hiding in human skin among us.