I was on the treadmill when the government committed homicide in my
name. And in yours.
The truth is that I had no intention of bearing witness to Timothy
McVeigh's death. Enough is enough. I would no more watch an execution than I
would watch the reality TV show where dozens of rats scurry over the bodies of
contestants. It isn't the ''fear
factor,'' but rather a refusal to become a voyeur and an accomplice.
Nevertheless, when the news broke into my rhythmic morning routine, I
stopped in my tracks. There was, for a few minutes at least, a solemnity about
death itself that demanded attention.
The pool reporters came out to chronicle the last moments of his life.
They talked about his silence, his open eyes, his haircut. They read the poem
and, of course, gave all the details of the remote-control injection that made
his death so antiseptic and his executioner so invisible.
Thus ended the case of the United States vs. Timothy McVeigh. Or,
rather Us vs. Him.
Make no mistake. McVeigh will not be missed. Few will mourn the man
Janet Reno bluntly called ''a miserable little coward.'' The world will not be
diminished by his absence. But will we be diminished by his homicide? By
homicide in our name?
On the day before the execution, there was a front-page photo of a
woman carrying a sign that read: ''Don't Kill for Me!'' At first I was
confused. Was this young mother an Oklahoma City survivor? No, she was just a
citizen protesting the fact that the first federal execution in four decades
was officially committed of, by and for the people - even her.
It's easy to forget our role because we are so distanced now from the
act of execution itself. In Afghanistan, when an entire community comes out to
stone an adulteress to death, we see it as barbaric. When we read how earlier
societies publicly crucified and guillotined and hanged, we call it
uncivilized.
But we deliver lethal injections in prisons with witnesses watching
through dark glass and closed-circuit TV. The emotion is as cool and cleansed
of personal responsibility as an air-conditioned theater.
The closest most of us have come to the death penalty is registering
our opinion through polls. An easy up or down. In the days surrounding the
McVeigh execution, we did that in the chat rooms and on the microphones:
''Justice is served.'' ''The execution won't change anything.'' ''An eye for
an eye.'' ''Murder is still murder.''
In many places these moral debates were embellished with psychology.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said the execution could help victims and
bereaved families ''meet their need to close this chapter in their lives.''
McVeigh's lawyer noted grimly, ''We have made killing a part of the healing
process.''
Yet those closest to the death penalty may become the most ambivalent.
Even the families of victims. By his own count, Bud Welch, the bereaved father
who came slowly to oppose the death penalty, says that fewer than half the
families wanted McVeigh to be executed. Of
the 1,000 family members invited to watch the execution on closed-circuit
TV,
only 232 came. Their reactions ranged from ''relief'' to ''it was too
easy''
to ''it isn't going to bring back my nephew.''
What about those who stayed away? Pat Reeder, who lost his wife, said
''I don't believe witnessing the execution of another human being can be good
for the human heart or soul.'' And Welch himself said, ''we took a human out
of a cage and killed him. I've yet to hear a good reason for this.''
Don't kill for me? Don't kill for them? As Jennifer Bishop, who heads
Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, says, ''I want a T-shirt that
says closure is a myth.''
For my own part, I wish that Timothy McVeigh had grown old and ignored
in prison. There was no way to give him what he deserved. Not even death
matched his crime.
Carol Steiker, who teaches criminal law at Harvard, says, ''To give
people
what
they deserve means we should torture the torturer, rape the rapist. Why don't
we do that? We don't want to be the kind of people who can torture people.''
What about being people who kill, however antiseptically?
Some say that the public support for McVeigh's execution is a blip in
the long, slow decline of support for the death penalty. Maybe so. But to take
''capital'' out of our quiver of ''punishment'' we have to acknowledge what we
are doing and what it does to us. Don't kill for me.
Meanwhile, on June 19, another federal execution will take place in the
same sterile room. Will anyone even remember where they were when Juan Raul
Garza dies in our name?
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper
Company.
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