No, you’re right. There wouldn’t be. But every damned year on April 19th, Barbara Walters or some other dumbass would be there interviewing him for television again.
He’d write more.
He’d have a following of nutballs on the outside that just got bigger and scarier every time he was on the cover of something.
Several hundred people would continue to be tormented every year that fungus was alive and their child was not.
I’m usually pretty easy going about people doing with their lives what they want as long as it doesn’t violate the law “Harm no one.” but this is something I do feel strongly about. That fuck deserves to die. The only thing not right about the situation is that he gets a painless death. He wants to be a martyr, then, by God, he should get a martyr’s slow and painful death.
I dunno, I’d hate to deny any creative person his muse.
Especially after reading that interesting Carl Orff piece in last Sunday’s NY Times Arts & Leisure section. Orff wrote tunes that set Nazi toes to tappin’, and I know we’ve got lots of Carmina Burana fans right here on this very Board.
In a hundred years, who’ll care that the composition is called the “Stalinist Purge Mazurka,” as long as it has aesthetic viability? Beethoven originally dedicated his Third Symphony to Napoleon, and they’re playing it in Italy and Russia today.
Why have the execution planned and scheduled? Here’s an idea, once they’ve been sentenced to death, let them continue living on Death Row. One day, while walking to the shower, heading to the laundry or just sitting in his rack BLAM! (or BBZZZZAAAPPPPP!!), he’s dead.
Why give him warning, why give this piece of shit time to prepare and idiots time to plead for his safe continuance of breathing.
Fuck him. We should dress him up like the soldier he thinks he is and drop him on the streets of Somalia, let them drag his ass around for a while.
What I don’t understand about death penalty advocates is why they consider being put to sleep such a terrible punishment. I knew someone once who strongly believed that Nazi war criminals, for instance, should have been on display for the public (in Hannibal Lecter cells) as long as they lived. I would have thought something like that would have more appeal to haters of McVeigh than a chance for him to roll the dice again, so to speak.
Urban myth: Some prisoners who are apparently executed by lethal injection are in fact “zombified”. They are sold by the government to their victims’ friends and families to be tortured over a long period of time or maybe used in medical experiments. The “lethal” injection acts very much the way Haitian zombie drugs do: the “executees” only appear to be dead and are able to be revived.
G. Nome, that UL sounds like a sci-fi short story I read a little while ago; the families of horrific crimes were delivered a clone of the perp to murder any way they liked (and they were not given a choice in this - the clone was delivered, and they had to deliver a corpse within a certain time period).[/hijack]
The thing that gets me is that this fuck WANTS to be executed. So why should we give him what he wants? Make him LIVE, because he does not want to, and think about what he did.
Mark my words-he will be made a martyr of, the way some people have made a martyr of David Koresh and Joseph McCarthy.
Do you think that keeping him alive he’s going to suddenly wake up with day with remorse?
Not bloody likely.
According to everything I’ve read, he’s haveing a high old time being locked up, in no small part because he gets to lay claim to rights that his victims don’t. Hell, he has a book out, he’s been interviewed by the best in the business, he’s had his articles published in major magazines, women are sending him love letters and nude pictures. He has never had this much attention in his life and he’s loving it.
Yeah, keeping him alive is really gonna teach him.
Eve blaming Ashcroft for something that happened under Reno’s (and I don’t think its her fault-just pointing it out) watch is pathetic. As much as I hate that child killing fuck, mistakes like this, although seemingly innocent, are why I’m against the death penalty. Its to permanent a punishmant for an imperfect system.
Arden Ranger, try beating T.McVeigh in effigy. Ashcroft did what any A.G. would do. And I dare say Reno would have done the same.
Nah. You don’t want to hear some of the things that have been done to effigies of that souless pig fucker.
Concerning the newly rediscovered files, the general consensus in Oklahoma is that, yes, coming forward like this was something to be proud of the FBI for and it makes them look honest, but somebody had better lose their job over it.
Featherlou: I thought human clones would still have individual consciousnesses. The fact that they are identical copies of other human beings doesn’t mean their memories and experiences will be the same - or could be the same. If I’m right that SF story is particulary horrible.
Chinese people attribute their low crime rate to the way they deal with criminals. They publically humiliate them. I saw a documentary once in which a Chinese woman who had embezzled some money was treated in that way. The look of shame, despair, and depression on her face was hard to forget. I think Westerners who are hardliners when it comes to crime prevention know that system works too well - they are almost scared of it. They keep with the three strikes and you’re out stuff and the long prison sentences because, personally, they find the public humiliation thing too unpleasant to contemplate. I wouldn’t mind visiting a zoo of heinous criminals as long as they were truly guilty. It would be like a museum with plaques on the outside of the cells enscribed with their crimes. You would be able to go and see prisoners like McVeigh at feeding time and maybe throw them something “tasty”.
That sf story was horrible, in a lot of ways, but still thought-provoking. Some people really enjoyed killing their clone-criminal, others did it out of duty, and other didn’t want anything to do with “an eye for an eye” type justice.
The idea of public humiliation is an interesting one; maybe this is the solution to youth-crimes. When I was a youth, I couldn’t think of a worse thing that could happen to me than being publicly embarrassed.
Was the clone more like a Bladerunner replicant in that it had pre-programmed memories? The only way two human clones could be absolutely indentical would be if their minds were identical and the brains would have to be robotic for that to be the case wouldn’t it? They would have to be like computer hard drives. People have different experiences and build up different neural networks in the brain. If you were cloned right now your copy would grow up in the 21st century whereas you grew up in the 20th. Stuff like that would surely make the idea of a criminal clone unrealistic. I’m sure all that is old news to you though. I’m only saying this because Timothy McVeigh could easily have had a twin. I wonder if any famous criminals have, in fact, had twins? I don’t think that has ever been a Straight Dope question.
Have you ever considered the idea of generic personality types that cross racial boundaries? My idea is based on examples I can no longer remember so it’s sort of ridiculous trying to talk about it. But years ago, I know, there were two male American television stars, one black and one white who seemed to have the same “underlying essence” about them. Their physical appearances had some weird likeness as well but it wasn’t overt. An example I can give, but one which is not very satisfactory, is the Oscar winning Mexican actor Benicio Del Torro (spelling?) and French Stewart from Third Rock From the Sun. This idea may be construable as racist (it’s about categorising and typing) but I see it as the opposite of that.
Arden, I’m usually Mr. Joey 1st Ammendment. This time? FUCK THAT SHIT. ANYONE who is convicted of a felony deserves to be cut off from the very twisted spotlight that may very well have spurned them on to commit their heinous crime. The very LAST thing I want to see is an inside-the-prison-walls interview. Thank fucking god I’ve never been asked to shoot one. Shot in over a dozen prisons, but never for that reason. <<shudder>>
You lose so many rights when incarcerated, SURELY the right to free publicity ought to be right up there at the top of the list. You are supposed to languish in anonymity, suffering in some small way compared to the dead victims, paying inside your own skull. Doing t.v. interviews DOESN’T fall under that category.
Do the time, suffer for your evils, die a brutal death. You wanna play god with someone else’s life, then you get to pay the bill when it’s presented with your own.
Funny how as I get older, I’m less tolerant of mass murderers. Why is that?
Besides mass murder, hasn’t Mcveigh also committed treason? If anyone loses their right to free speech, shouldn’t it be someone who commits treason?
Also, from Greta van Susteren’s letter to the Unabomber:
“I would like to focus on, among other things, the issue of whether a mental illness defense should be forced on a legally competently accused.”
“Legally competently accused”???!!!???
Is that an example of grammar gone to seed, or what?
Sorry, just couldn’t let that one go by…
No treason. He was found guility on 11 counts of murder (for the FBI agents) and conspiracy.
The murder of the Federal agents took precedence in some way I can’t remember clearly over the others.
If he had been tried for the civilian murders and they didn’t bring down a guilty verdict there was the fear he couldn’t be punished at all. But getting the Fed conviction guaranteed he could still be tried by Oklahoma if we so chose, which was decided against later.