Greta, here's a couple articles on McVeigh in particular and the death penalty in general that I found interesting. First, there's this article from Sunday's paper:
Letting Go of McVeigh nytimes.com
For most of his life, Reeder thought he knew the answer to that question. But over
the last six years, Reeder, like a handful of other survivors and family members, has
gone on a long and painful journey through anger, hate and the nature of forgiveness.
And he has come to what is, for him, a surprising conclusion: the execution of
Timothy McVeigh is wrong. "It is not about justice -- it is about revenge," Reeder
says forcefully over the din of screaming children in McDonald's. "It's blood lust.
And if I don't stand up now and say this, well, it's just cowardice."
From the little bit of coverage I've read, beyond this article, Mr. Reeder is exceptional in taking this step forward. I'm a little confused as to what emotional sustenance is supposed to be drawn from watching McVeigh go down on schedule, as opposed to a month later, as opposed to him rotting away in some federal supermax forever. For the conspiracy minded, there's always the possibility that he'll say something new after a while, which execution forecloses. Then there's the martyrdom factor, though I wouldn't guess how that big that is among the extreme fringe. They got plenty of martyrs already.
More generally and comprehensively on the death penalty, there was this big article in the Atlantic a couple years ago:
The Wrong Man theatlantic.com
One of my favorite bits:
If a hospital assigned a cosmetic surgeon to perform a
heart-bypass operation, the hospital would be held accountable
when the patient died. But when states make a practice of
appointing cosmetic attorneys to defend indigents, they declare
that justice has been served, regardless of the outcome.
Astonishingly, the Supreme Court has endorsed that position,
ruling that jurisdictions appointing incompetent attorneys bear
virtually no responsibility for the miscarriages that occur. "The
government is not responsible for, and hence not able to
prevent, attorney errors," the Supreme Court ruled in 1984 in
Strickland v. Washington. Who, then, is responsible?
According to the Supreme Court, apparently, the defendant is
responsible. Under its landmark ruling state courts have
typically found no violation of the Sixth Amendment, which
guarantees the assistance of counsel in all criminal prosecutions,
even when lawyers have been addicted to heroin or cocaine
during a trial, have come to court drunk, have conducted no
investigation of their clients' claims, or have been unable to cite
a single relevant capital case. In one death-penalty case a
lawyer presented no evidence during the penalty phase of a
trial and made the following closing argument (quoted in its
entirety): "You are an extremely intelligent jury. You've got that
man's life in your hands. You can take it or not. That's all I
have to say." The defendant was executed. In a Texas case in
which the defense lawyer slept through most of his client's trial,
the judge found no denial of due process. "The right to be
heard," the Supreme Court ruled in 1932, in the famous
Scottsboro Boys case, "would be, in many cases, of little avail
if it did not comprehend the right to be heard by counsel." But
the Texas court didn't think it essential that defense counsel
hear the case, or even be conscious: "The Constitution doesn't
say the lawyer has to be awake," the judge ruled.
It is, of course, appropriate that the right to be represented by an attorney that could actually stay awake during the trial was found inappropriate in Texas, where W set up one smooth running machine on this front. I guess people don't much remember the "Thin Blue Line" case down there, and don't want to know about how many similar cases there might have been that failed to attract enough attention to do any good for other poor guys who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but were of course adequately represented by sleeping attorneys. |
