April 13, 2001

Witnesses to an Execution

itnesses to an Execution

In a press conference yesterday, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the execution of Timothy McVeigh on May 16 in Terre Haute, Ind., would be televised via a live, encrypted, closed- circuit telecast. It will be shown in an unnamed facility in Oklahoma City for families of the victims who were killed in the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building. The telecast will not be recorded. Instead it will be, as Mr. Ashcroft put it, "instantaneous and contemporaneous," leaving no permanent record for others to view.

This is a warrantable solution to a basic logistical problem — the sheer number of direct victims of Mr. McVeigh's crime. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, which allows the families of victims to witness an execution, has increased the number of such witnesses allowed at the prison in Terre Haute to 10. But it was impractical to accommodate on-site all interested relatives of the 168 people who died in Oklahoma City, and many of them would be hard pressed to make the journey to another state in any case. Thus Mr. Ashcroft made the sensible decision to allow the execution to be transmitted on closed- circuit television to this group.

There is no telling what emotions the survivors and victims' families will feel when they watch that telecast. There is no knowing whether seeing Mr. McVeigh's death will satisfy those who want revenge or bring closure to those who are seeking it. That is for them to understand as best they can.

Mr. Ashcroft was surely right to bar televising the execution for the general public. Under most circumstances, we believe such decisions belong in the hands of the news media, not the government. In this situation, however, the very act of permitting television cameras for general public broadcast would make a cruel and unusual spectacle of the legally mandated sentence. Such broadcasts would be different in kind from those parts of the legal process — including court trials — that should be regularly televised. Mr. McVeigh has said he would like his execution to be broadcast, but it is the standards of a civilized society that should govern, not his opinion.

This page opposes the death penalty for many reasons, most of which need no rehearsal here. But by publicly televising Mr. McVeigh's execution, broadcasters would be showing the very kind of act — the taking of a human life — for which Mr. McVeigh is being executed. The telecast would appeal to the basest instincts of the viewing public, and would inevitably coarsen our society.

The government stopped conducting public executions in the early 20th century for much the same reason that it will use lethal injections rather than more brutal technologies to kill Timothy McVeigh — to reinforce the distinction between a lynching and a soberly considered act of duly authorized justice. The last federal execution occurred in 1963, and the Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972. But now, under a subsequently enacted death penalty statute, we are drifting backward and resuming federal executions by putting to death Mr. McVeigh. It is essential to drift backward no further by making the execution a public spectacle.

As a rule, this page supports the goal of ensuring media access — including camera access — to newsworthy events, a principle that, to some people, might justify televising this execution. We believe, however, that in the extraordinary case of Mr. McVeigh's execution the public interest will be well served by the presence of 10 media witnesses who will be in the federal prison in Terre Haute along with the family members, although without television cameras. What might be gained by publicly televising this man's death would be very hard to balance against its ultimate cultural cost.