McVeigh: Killing a Killer

I think Timothy McVeigh needs to prepare himself to meet God. That’s his judge. --Lyle Cousins, the husband of a woman killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, reacts to jury decision to condemn the convicted bomber to death.

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So Timothy McVeigh is going to get his. Good for America. Now he will become a hero to his cause. Now those paranoid souls who believe Big Government has become too powerful, too invasive, will have something quite tangible to fret about. Soon the militia members will be able to bend on camouflaged knee at his grave, as they do already for the dead of Waco. Let’s schedule the execution for April 19, to keep the circle unbroken.

McVeigh, of course, wasn’t just pamphleting town hall about black helicopters. He slaughtered 168 people, many of them babies. It was, a federal prosecutor argued, “the crime that the death penalty was designed for.” Still, the question of his punishment has been much on the minds of Americans, the stuff of talk show debates and dueling magazine covers.

Should He Die? asked Time.

Should He Die? asked Newsweek.

Related questions come to mind now, in the hour after the death verdict was delivered in a Denver courtroom: Why did Jesus, as the Gospels have it, plead from the cross for the forgiveness of his killers? What was meant by the catechismal phrase “an all-merciful God”? If McVeigh asks God to forgive him, what will God do?

How do you know?

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McVeigh did not seem distraught in court Friday. He waved to jurors and family alike, mouthing the words “it’s OK.” He no doubt imagines himself a modern-day Nathan Hale, regretting he has but one life to give. No, this punishment will be inflicted more on the mother and father of the killer than on the killer himself. McVeigh, executed by injection, goes to sleep and never wakes up. His parents never sleep the same again.

His family will suffer, just as the families of McVeigh’s victims suffered. Not that, in either instance, they did anything to deserve it. One pities the jurors, who were led to do to McVeigh’s parents precisely what he did to those families in Oklahoma. Perhaps, it’s been argued, this will give mourning Oklahomans “closure.” Writing in Time, Bud Welch, who lost his 23-year-old daughter in the Murrah building, argued the other way:

To me the death penalty is vengeance, and vengeance doesn’t really help anyone in the healing process. Of course, our first reaction is to strike back. But if we permit ourselves to think through our feelings, we might get to a different place. I was taught that even the souls of dastardly criminals should be saved. I think it is necessary, even for the soul of Timothy McVeigh.

Indeed, for those who believe in a Beyond, the punishment of McVeigh by a painless death should give pause. Doesn’t the Bible warn of death that comes like a thief in the night, preying on the unprepared? Won’t McVeigh have the advantage of knowing the precise minute of his departure, and thus be free to undergo the ritual preparations, to make his peace through the death chamber chaplains, to petition God for forgiveness? Under that system of beliefs, isn’t it ironically possible McVeigh’s got a better crack at heaven than some of his victims? They never had a chance to say their prayers.

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And what about the alternative, life without parole? Surely it inflicts more pain and demonstrates adequately enough the authority of the government. But justice delayed, respond capital punishment proponents, is justice denied. I noticed they were not chanting this the other day in Santa Ana, where Geronimo Pratt made bail after serving 27 years because of an arguably trumped-up prosecution. Pratt, by the way, was lucky he was sentenced during the last death penalty hiatus: He might not have lived long enough to see “justice” corrected.

It’s been argued, quite accurately, that if McVeigh was not fit for death, nobody ever will be. For opponents of the death penalty, this fact alone should make his case one of utmost importance. McVeigh offers them a shortcut on the path toward joining the world’s democracies in cheating the gallows: Stop his execution and every attempt that follows will be, to understate, greatly complicated.

At the same time, they might resist the temptation to grade atrocities. If the death penalty is morally defensible in one capital case, it is morally defensible in all. Put another way, the tears of a South-Central mother for her gunned-down teenager are as bitter and as valid as those of someone who lost kin in a bombed-out federal building.

At issue here is the punishment, not the crime. Death penalty supporters certainly will grasp the need to see this one through to the finish, and fast. Their grim cause depends on McVeigh’s death, which is why he never had much of a chance to avoid the so-called ultimate sentence all along.