Should we be allowed to see the McVeigh execution?

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a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0117/hentoff.shtml">GASP

Village Voice April 19, 2001

by Nat Hentoff

Why Can’t We See McVeigh Die? The State Closes Our Eyes as It Kills

Timothy McVeigh decided to end all his appeals after his conviction for the horrendous Oklahoma bombing. He has made plain he has no remorse for the 168 victims. As for the 19 children among them, McVeigh says they were "collateral damage."

There are no colder crimes than those driven by ideology. (See Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon or, of course, the Holocaust.)

McVeigh did have one terminal request. In a letter published in the Daily Oklahoman, he asked for a "public execution." His lawyer, Rob Nigh Jr., told the newspaper that McVeigh "is in favor of public scrutiny of government action—including his own execution."

Added Nigh: "If it is our collective judgment that capital punishment is a reasonable response to crime, we need to come to grips with what it actually is."

The Federal Bureau of Prisons rejected McVeigh's last wish, and Attorney General John Ashcroft vehemently concurred.

On April 13, in a lead editorial, "Witnesses to an Execution," The New York Times agreed with John Ashcroft's other decision to permit "a live, encrypted, closed-circuit telecast" of the execution to be viewed only by families of the victims. There will be no recording of the telecast. Ashcroft has ordered that the showing be "instantaneous and contemporaneous." No one else will ever be able to see McVeigh killed by the state.

When he was in prison, Oscar Wilde, though not under a death sentence himself, said that the days when he was aware that doomed prisoners were being led to the scaffold terrified him more than any others. By then, executions in England were held in secret, the last public hanging having taken place in 1868.

"They do well to hide their hell," Wilde wrote.

The New York Times firmly believes that we should be spared actually seeing the killing of McVeigh that is done in our name. "Mr. Ashcroft," the editorial said, "was surely right to bar televising the execution for the general public. . . . The very act of permitting television cameras for general public broadcast would make a cruel and unusual spectacle of the legally mandated sentence." In other words, the Times, in its concern for our sensitivities, says we would be subject to "cruel and unusual punishment" if we were to hear McVeigh's last gasp.

But the Eighth Amendment to the Bill of Rights forbids inflicting "cruel and unusual punishments" on prisoners, not the general public. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan often told me of his hope that this country would eventually become civilized enough to abolish the "cruel and unusual punishment" that will be administered to McVeigh on May 16.

The New York Times is opposed to capital punishment. What it fears is that "by publicly televising Mr. McVeigh's execution, broadcasters would be showing the very kind of act—the taking of human life—for which Mr. McVeigh is being executed."

That is precisely the reason we the people should see the state taking this human life.

However, The New York Times insists that "the telecast would appeal to the basest instincts of the viewing public, and would inevitably coarsen our society."

What coarsens our society is the state taking human life in secret.

In July of last year, U.S. District Judge Vaughan Walker of the Northern District of California ruled—in an important First Amendment decision—that the news media should be permitted to witness executions from "the moment the condemned enters the execution chamber through to, and including, the time the condemned is declared dead."

Until then the few reporters allowed in the death chamber could not see the entire procedure. Corrections officials argued that the execution process is lengthy and would expose the identities of all those involved in the killings.

Judge Walker also referred to the Constitution's Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual punishment." He emphasized that a "punishment satisfies the Constitution only if it is compatible with the evolving standards of decency which mark the progress of a maturing society."

Therefore, the judge continued, "The public's perception of the amount of suffering endured by the condemned—and the duration of the execution—is necessary in determining whether a particular execution protocol is acceptable under this evolutionary standard."

In the case before him, Judge Walker was restricted to ruling on whether the media—the public's surrogate in the death chamber—should be able to witness the killing.

But Judge Walker—not being able to benefit from the subsequent advice of The New York Times—went on to wonder whether knowing what happens from the time a condemned man or woman first steps into the chamber until his or her last breath could lead "a majority of the public to decide that no method of execution is acceptable."

After all, we the people believe in open government. And since executions are performed in the name of the public, why should we depend only on indirect information provided by media surrogates? We should be permitted to see what actually takes place, step by step, when our government kills under a law that we could change. N=JUSTIFY>As Justice Brennan said, an execution is "truly an awesome punishment." If the editorial writers of The New York Times feel they would be "coarsened" by seeing the state kill, they need not watch.

We the people have been able to stomach television's horrific images of victims gruesomely mutilated in wars—and some of those deaths have been caused by us. Should those telecasts also be prohibited?

As Albert Camus said: "One must kill publicly or confess that one does not feel authorized to kill." He was referring to the state; and in this democracy, it is we who authorize these state killings—without the state allowing us to see them.

Is the state afraid we might become too civilized?



-- (Paracelsus@Pb.Au), April 20, 2001

Answers

a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0117/hentoff.shtml">GASP

Seems like there are at least four ways to consider this.

1)- oppose the death sentence and also oppose public access to viewing the execution (favored by the New York Times)

2)-oppose the death sentence but support the public access to viewing the execution, (favored by Nat Hentoff)

3)-support the execution and oppose the public access (favored by Mr Paracelsus and other right-thinking alchemists)

4)-support the execution and support the public access (favored by vendors of popcorn?)

-- (Paracelsus@Pb.Au), April 20, 2001.


Paracelsus,

Out of curiosity,why do you think you would be right in denying the popcorn vendor's right to view the killing? The popcorn vendor surely has paid for the killing as well as you have.

I find it ridiculous that there are those that espouse some sort of moral high ground in not wanting the killing viewed.If it is too heinous to watch maybe it is something that shouldn't be done.

My personal opinion regarding McVeighs execution is that it should be shown on public access channels,absolutely free.I'll buy my own popcorn.Those who do not wish to watch don't have to.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), April 20, 2001.


Personally I would NOT want to view anyones death. To each his/her own.

For those who do I belive the movie FACES OF DEATH should suffice, I heard it was gross enough.

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), April 20, 2001.


Exactly what is there to see? This will be a lethal injection. They put him to sleep and he'll die quietly and peacefully, unlike his "collateral damage" victims. I would have preferred the electric chair, or better yet, just let him live so that Bubba can make him a love slave.

-- (nothing@to.see), April 20, 2001.

Personally I would NOT want to view anyones death. To each his/her own.

For those who do I belive the movie FACES OF DEATH should suffice, I heard it was gross enough.

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), April 20, 2001. -----------------------

Can't be any worse than what we see on TV and in the movie theaters everyda, and since the history of the tube and films. So I say, show the McVey execution and pass me the popcorn and beer.

-- skyfire (skyfire@onfire.fire), April 20, 2001.



"I would have preferred the electric chair, or better yet, just let him live so that Bubba can make him a love slave."

Problem here is, McVey just might take a liken to Bubba, and they'll become soul-mates for ever! I say, juice McVey up and let this story end!

-- sky fire (skyfire@onfire.fire), April 20, 2001.


To each his/her own. I just think that by allowing this to be aired, IF they did, would lead up to some pretty sickER shit than we see now.

Just mho.

-- sumer (shh@aol.con), April 22, 2001.


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