back to Niagara Falls Reporter archive
The simple truth is that murder is abhorrent. Taking the life of another human being--save mercy killing--is the basest interruption to sense and logic, delivering a stunningly emotional assault on those left behind. The suffering is immeasurable, the grief inexplicable. As a people, we loathe the act and condemn those who commit such atrocities. Yet there are those who forsake the authority of character to incite, with a kind of moral authority, the violence of justice.
The sickly, voyeuristic hypocrites in our country--among them, nearly 300 individuals who suffered greatly in the loss of spouses, children, relatives, friends in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing--are willing, if not eager, to bear witness to murder all over again. This time, of the perpetrator, the media-portrayed stoic and remorseless Timothy McVeigh. The medium--save the 10 lottery winners who will witness the execution on site at the Terre Haute, Ind., federal prison--diminishes the chilling reality, keeping his execution much more at a distance, and the sinister act of killing in the league of everyday television viewing. The impact is not one of closure--nor is it one justifiable by citing McVeigh's willingness to die. The savage and disgusting tale of the United States' murder of McVeigh will be passed down from generation to generation among those family members who watch the Pendleton native slip from consciousness into nothingness, the story of how closure was won for the tragedy inflicted upon them without their consent.
The legality of capital punishment is a ringing endorsement for the victims of the victims to become spectators issued tickets by the government, the price of admission their suffering. They are willing participants in the horrors at which they themselves wag their indicting fingers. It has always struck a nerve with me that in a country where murder is so condemned--is illegal and considered the gravest of offenses against humanity--we issue that sentence upon others to prove a point.
And just what point would that be? That the law is above itself? Murder by the common, free man is not the same as murder by the state, or murder by the nation of the convicted and incarcerated? The pain of loss undoubtedly will linger long after McVeigh becomes one with the earth in death, or is received in holy homecoming. Those whose loved ones were stolen from them will loathe him not one bit less dead than alive. Closure comes from within, comes from time and struggle--fierce though it may be--of the person who is hurting to get out.
Capital punishment affords temporal security in which a barbarous act can serve to alleviate anger and supplant it, in a desperate moment, with relief.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft--in allowing a closed-circuit television viewing of the execution--has engaged fully the public's need to, in theory, fry the bastard. In bars, at the workplace, at the ballpark, individuals can be heard pontificating about his fate--I listened to one man who was giddy at the thought of wringing his neck with his bare hands. This kind of hypocrisy is appalling--particularly juxtaposed with the image of families of the victims gathered under an elm tree at the bombing site on April 19 of this year, singing "Let There Be Peace On Earth."
Safety comes in numbers--and the numbers of crime statistics, of murder, show we're far from safety. Still, this genuine outpouring of sorrow and grief mystifies very few and helps us forget that the very individuals convening under a tree and singing of peace are violent offenders of a different kind. Violence--even masquerading as civility--breeds violence. Since January, when
McVeigh's deadline for appeals passed, news of his execution has reached Hollywood proportions--the media would seem to have nothing better to do, and pardon the expression, than beat the issue to death. Conservatives who rally against violence on television call witnessing an execution justice and closure, and we the people who find this kind of justification obscene are asked to find solace in knowing the families of the victims will be rescued from their long-enough-suffered misery.
Entrepreneurs of this freak show are fiending to sell their wares in Terre Haute--T-shirts and buttons commemorating the execution, scheduled for June 11. His execution has unraveled as a salacious spectacle. The residual effects of which I hope will be profound shame. Hostile, contemptuous rallying will not elicit remorse from McVeigh. This is not a celebratory event, yet it has all the makings of one. As if his death might prevent further tragedy in the country, might preclude aspiring terrorists from executing evil upon the unsuspecting.
One man gone does not rectify--or restore to infinitely excellent health--a country full of wicked contenders. If killing is glorified, if fame is so easily achieved in a country apparently starving for a scapegoat--the ultimate culprit elevated to iconic status--and its media fanatical about aiding the public in understanding his tendencies, someone out there is desperate to make history just like McVeigh.
How many know McVeigh's name? And how many can recount one name of one victim?
History, as they say, repeats itself, and in this era of desensitization, you can bet on a much grander scale. The velocity of this situation is terminal, fatal to the respect of mankind. In proclaiming so profanely and publicly our disgust for McVeigh, we are sanctioning replication of the very act he committed. Let us not forget that the Internet company Entertainment Network Inc. tried, and failed, to broadcast via the World Wide Web McVeigh's execution.
And let us not forget, also, that the very justice system that sees death as justifiable "punishment"--the U.S. Supreme Court--also found that broadcasting his execution would confuse the government's interest in "not sensationalizing and preserving the solemnity" of his death. It has been suggested in the print media that the execution--which in fantasy calls to mind something much more maniacal and macabre than putting a man permanently to sleep by lethal injection--ultimately will be so anti-climactic that viewers will walk away dissatisfied. Which suggests an expectation exists of satisfaction. Which, in my opinion, makes viewers of the execution as irreverent as McVeigh was toward deliberate human extermination.
One man for 168 men, women and children would seem paltry compensation. But we're not in the business of compensation, now are we. Or are we?
Executing McVeigh will not return the lives of the 168 people who were killed. Executing McVeigh will not erase from public memory the everlasting image of a man seemingly smitten with his act of cruelty. It's not justice. It's revenge. And just because the law says it's right doesn't make it so.