Justice Survives
Timothy McVeigh told his lawyers he is ready to die, and it is all but certain that by the time you read this the law will have obliged him. The greatest mass murderer in American history will have received a lethal injection at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind., more than six years after the truck bomb he detonated in Oklahoma City killed 168 children, women and men and maimed scores of others.
That McVeigh should become the first man executed by the federal government in nearly 40 years speaks less to a swelling lust for the death penalty in this nation than to the heinousness of his crime.
The rage toward McVeigh boils close to the surface.
McVeigh knew the building he targeted housed a day care center for the children of federal employees. He knew it contained a Social Security office and provided other services for the public. He knew, in other words, that hundreds of innocent people would be in the Alfred P. Murrah building on the morning he set the fuse in the rental truck he had turned into an enormous bomb.
If, as you read this, McVeigh is dead, it will mark the end of a tumultuous month, beginning with FBI revelations that more than 4,000 pages of evidence had been misplaced and had not been made available to defense attorneys prior to his trial. In the face of this discovery, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft had no choice but to postpone the execution, originally scheduled for May 16, to allow time to review those documents for evidence that might undermine his conviction.
In the end, there was no real controversy about the McVeigh case. Unlike so many on death row, McVeigh was given every protection and every right provided by our laws. From start to finish, justice was done.
There no doubt will be circus elements around this event. Sadly, the media through which our society shares this and many historic experiences do not instinctively seek out and linger on the most reasoned talking heads.
But regardless of our views on the circus or the ongoing capital punishment debate, here’s what we all need to remember: What has been expected to happen today in Terre Haute is the resolute, diligent action of a law-abiding society, whose elected representatives have for now endorsed execution and whose justice system and fairly chosen jury of peers has ruled, firmly imposing its ultimate punishment on one immoral, unrepentant renegade deemed no longer fit to live among us.
Timothy McVeigh will be remembered in infamy.
More important, what remains cemented in place--and what we should each also remember as we mull our own swirling private reactions--is that our society of laws, compassion and fairness remains intact. Those who value their own personal responsibilities to, and membership in, this unique society should treasure that thought and continuity. Those in this ever-uncertain world who would threaten it should be warned.