Execution request is not appropriate
Death of McVeigh turns into a spectacle, draws too many people to watch

April 19, 1995, 9:02 a.m. This is one of those dates and times that we, as Americans, will always remember and know exactly where we were and what we were doing. This is the day that the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. It was also the day that many Americans realized our biggest enemy may not always live in another country, but instead right across the street.

Six years later, the nation will try and finally put this unthinkable crime behind us when the government executes a man convicted of the horrendous and deadly bombing.

Timothy McVeigh, one of the most hated men in the country, will die from lethal injection May 16 in Terre Haute, Ind.
Lethal injection. What a nice, quiet and peaceful way to die. Unlike the way all of his victims died on that fateful day in the spring of 1995.

McVeigh, who has been in federal prison since he was convicted of the deadliest act of terrorism on U.S. soil, dropped all of his appeals in December and asked for a quick execution.

A quick execution? Are you kidding? A man kills 168 innocent people and injured more than 500 people, and he wants to tell us when he wants to die. What has our country come to?

Nevertheless, the government has set a date, and the last hope that McVeigh has now is to wait and see if President Bush will grant him clemency, which he won’t do if he knows what’s good for him.

Once the date was set, the government sent out 1,100 letters to the bombing survivors and to the victims’ families asking them if they would want to attend the execution. Two hundred and fifty people said they would.

Two hundred and fifty people. That’s seems like a lot of people when it comes to wanting to watch an execution, but if you think of how many people were invited to watch, it really isn’t that many, is it?

The problem lies with the fact that the number of people who would like to watch the execution. Since there are so many people who would like to attend, the government has to figure out where they will all sit.

The execution room at the federal prison holds only eight people. That’s just 242 seats too small. The government’s possible solution to the problem is to put the execution on a closed-circuit television, and let the audience watch from another room.

Now I realize that for many of the victims to get on with their lives they need to know that McVeigh is dead, but do they really need to see it live and in person? Eight hundred and fifty people who were invited to attend didn’t think so.

It’s weird to think the government actually “invited” people to watch the execution. Is an execution something that you can really “invite” somebody to watch?

It’s like the government is throwing a party with popcorn and soda to let us know they have finally gotten rid of this man. Or the government might be throwing this big “party” with a big crowd to let us know they still know how to carry out a federal execution, especially since they have not “achieved” one since 1963.

McVeigh needs to die for his crime, but should it be carried out in front of so many people? Should he be allowed to tell us when he would like to die? I don’t think so.

Assistant News Editor Hemi Ahluwalia is a junior broadcast journalism major from Stephenville.
She can be reached at (h.ahluwalia@student.tcu.edu).

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