Time Magazine

By MARGARET CARLSON 

Last Thursday 250 vic­tims of Timothy McVeigh’s bomb – some who sur­vived the blast, oth­ers who lost loved ones to it – were grant­ed their request to wit­ness his exe­cu­tion on closed-cir­cuit tele­vi­sion. In announc­ing this depar­ture from nor­mal pro­ce­dure, Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke of the need ​“to close this chap­ter in their lives” and empha­sized ​“the mag­ni­tude of this case.” (There are too many mourn­ers, giv­en the 168 killed, to fit into the prison observation room.)

Ashcroft is right to grant the sur­vivors any­thing they think will help them through thenight. But there’s a ques­tion whether this exe­cu­tion will be a last mile­stone in their hell­ish jour­ney or yet anoth­er trau­ma to absorb. Will pub­lic wit­ness deliv­er a moment of cathar­sis, restore a mea­sure of equi­lib­ri­um to a shat­tered uni­verse? Or is it one last way for McVeigh to vic­tim­ize them? Many of the sur­vivors obvi­ous­ly hope for a clo­sure that has so far elud­ed them, for a mirac­u­lous lift­ing of their grief. But they have their expec­ta­tions in check. ​“In the ear­ly stages I want­ed to see the exe­cu­tion because I was hop­ing to hear ​‘I’m sor­ry’ from McVeigh,” says Tom Kight, who is rais­ing his eight-year-old grand­daugh­ter after his step­daugh­ter’s death. ​“But from what I gath­er there will be no remorse. The exe­cu­tion is just an end to one part of this. It’s not clo­sure.” Priscilla Salyers, who was crit­i­cal­ly wound­ed, is watch­ing not as ​“part of a heal­ing process” but in sol­i­dar­i­ty with fellow victims.

Bud Welch, who lost his 23-year-old daugh­ter to McVeigh, has decid­ed to stay home. He once talked to a Texas cou­ple who told him that if they had it to do over again they would­n’t wit­ness the death of the man who killed their son. ​“There is noth­ing good about watch­ing a human take their last breath,” Welch says, ​“that is going to give you any peace.”

No one can be cer­tain whether wit­ness­ing will help the sur­vivors. But we can be sure that it helps McVeigh. He behaves as if the unex­am­ined death is not worth dying. He needs a spec­ta­cle to con­firm his sense of mar­tyr­dom. Indeed, his attor­ney told reporters that McVeigh’s desire for an audi­ence was an argu­ment in favor of grant­i­ng his request for a pub­lic broad­cast, when it should be an argu­ment against. McVeigh will be the first con­demned killer to get not only a last meal and last words but also a last pho­to op. Other moves to deprive him of the atten­tion he craves – for­bid­ding jail­house inter­views, lim­it­ing phone calls – are futile in light of the tele­cast. Cynthia Ferrell Ashwood, who lost her sis­ter, hopes for a boy­cott, believ­ing it would pun­ish McVeigh more. ​“I would like him to die very much alone, which is how my sis­ter died. It won’t hurt him for me to watch him die. It will just please him.”

The last pub­lic hang­ing took place in 1937 in front of the cour­t­house in Galena, Mo., where 500 onlook­ers scram­bled for pieces of the rope used to hang Roscoe Jackson, who mur­dered a trav­el­ing sales­man. Thirty-five years after that spec­ta­cle, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was banned in America. Since its rein­state­ment in 1976, the death penal­ty has been san­i­tized and clos­et­ed. The rope in the town square begat Old Sparky, which begat lethal injec­tion, both admin­is­tered behind tall prison walls. Bringing exe­cu­tions back out into the open – not closed-cir­cuit TV but TV – is a leap most often advo­cat­ed by those who want to do away with them. They believe that cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would lose the sup­port of a civ­i­lized soci­ety if peo­ple actu­al­ly saw the state com­mit the act for which it seeks ret­ri­bu­tion. Perhaps we should have our exe­cu­tions broad­cast as wide­ly as the Super Bowl.

Closure for vic­tims is one of the few argu­ments left to pro­po­nents of the death penal­ty. Studies show that it is not a deter­rent, that it is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly imposed on the poor and some­times mis­tak­en­ly so. Alongside manda­to­ry life with­out parole, it may not even be the ulti­mate pun­ish­ment. Is death worse than a life spent shack­led in a cell? The only sure thing about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment is that it is cost effective.

So we await tales from those who return from the view­ing room, where most of us, grate­ful­ly, will nev­er go. I would­n’t want to be the reporter hav­ing to put a micro­phone in the face of one of the moth­ers com­ing out of that bleak, name­less room in Oklahoma City. But some­where along the way I’d like to know: Did you find a com­pen­sat­ing grace in McVeigh’s death, some sliv­er of seren­i­ty that elud­ed you before? Are you wis­er, are you lighter, is there one less drop of grief in your ocean of sor­row? Perhaps some crimes are too hor­ren­dous to be for­giv­en. Only ret­ri­bu­tion will do, and just­ly so. You can help us. We need to know.