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attitudes, let alone rules, can be said to have been formulated
at the dinner seminar, these would be they:
1. Nobody
is saying that Timothy McVeigh is the wrong guy. There is no outstanding
legal appeal in his case, save from the inventive mind of abolitionists,
and what they would say is one or another form of: Capital punishment
is wrong, and therefore shouldn't be inflicted on anybody. Anybody
includes, though just barely, Timothy McVeigh.
2. That his
upcoming execution (May 16) sets a few records is interesting for
data collectors, but not, really, for moralists. The last public
execution was in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky, at the expense of
one Rainey Bethea. The hanging was public, the spectators numerous
(approximately 15,000); and the public reaction was such as to end
public executions. The presiding official (he didn't want to be
called a hangman, because he winced at pulling the trigger: He made
other people do that), had officiated at 70 other executions, not
so many in contrast with the hangman at Nuremberg who had done over
400. The other record is that there have been no federal executions
since 1963. They were dragged to a near halt by the Supreme Court,
which however relicensed them, under specified circumstances, in
Furman v. Georgia, 1972.
3. If public
executions are de facto and in most states de jure outlawed, how
is it that this one will be viewed by so many? Well, the jurisdiction
is federal, and the situation is pretty well unique, and one hopes
will never be matched: 168 victims. Now the tradition is long-lived
that next of kin of victims may appear as witnesses at an execution.
Why? Because they want whatever satisfaction is to be got from seeing
effective retribution — they see the killer killed. And then
there is the touch of formality. Even as a doctor is there to record
a death, and a marshal to sign a redundant death certificate, actually
to see the killer die gives punctuational satisfaction to some people
who want more merely than to read about it.
4. Are there
special circumstances, then, in the matter of Terre Haute, Indiana?
Yes. The facility there provides room for about 30 witnesses. When
word got out that ten survivors and relatives of victims might arrange
to witness the act, authorities were stunned to come upon 250 requests.
Obviously these needed either to be denied, or to be obliged after
making special arrangements.
Such special
arrangements were of course doable in the age of closed-circuit
television. Many kinfolk wish to be nearer to the site of death,
and will travel to Terre Haute. Their arrival there becomes a public
problem only in respect of arranging the television circuits to
wherever they are. There will, of course, be the investigative reporter's
anxiety to tap into the scene, for possible viewing by a larger
audience. Federal authorities intend to make this difficult, but
may not altogether succeed.
5. If the
larger public gets to view the scene, how much psychological damage
is done? Is it to be compared with a snuff film? A snuff film is
a movie of someone willing to be killed for whatever mysterious
satisfaction he takes from it, satisfactions usually reserved for
unborn babies. Snuff films are illegal in the United States because
you can't have somebody be killed without somebody acting out the
role of killer, and that is illegal. (Whether it should be illegal
to import a snuff film is something even the ACLU is undecided on.)
It simply isn't clear whether a contraband airing of the McVeigh
scene would bring down the hounds of justice. Mike Wallace survived
airing one of Kevorkian's killings.
6. Have we
learned anything about McVeigh that advances our perpetual search
for causes of aberrant behavior? He says about himself that he was
animated primarily by the fate of the Branch Davidians who were
unquestionably victims of reckless federal action by Miss Reno's
commandos. On the question whether his sensibilities are normal,
some note was taken of the interview he gave two weeks ago in which,
confronted with the number of day-care children killed by his bomb,
he expressed only curiosity (mild) that the question should have
been raised, not that the children were killed.
The consensus
of the seminar was that we did not object to those who put in to
view the execution, though most of us would not, in similar circumstances,
have asked to be present.
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