LIVE FROM THE DEATH HOUSE…
Convicted Okalahoma city bomber Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to die by lethal injection this May 16. He has said he doesn’t want any more appeals and doesn’t want anyone fighting to save his life.
What he does want is to be executed on live television.
We’re not talking closed-circuit here, which officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, are trying to arrange so that some of the survivors and family members of victims—some 250 people in all—can be granted their wish to see McVeigh die. Your average death chamber, you see, only has room for about twenty-five people, with only eight slots allotted for folks appearing on behalf of the victim. No one really planned to deal with this many victims.
McVeigh, however, wants his last farewell to be broadcast nationwide. It just isn’t fair, he argues in a letter to an Oklahoma newspaper, for only a few people to see him take his last breaths. Just a question of equal access, you see. It’s not an ego thing. He’s not trying to manipulate the media. Really.
Now, I’m not going to take this opportunity to debate the merits of the death penalty. I will observe that, if you’re going to have a death penalty, this is your guy.
Even though McVeigh’s attorney says he doesn’t plan to push the TV issue by filing court papers, the proposal has already ignited controversy. Oddly enough, some death penalty opponents are actually in favor of the idea. They think, that televised executions will turn people against the death penalty. Frankly, this is beyond naïve. I think it’d be more like: "Wow. Cool. Hey, hand me the remote, it’s time for Sports Center." Some folks say that it’s important that such a serious governmental act not be done "in secret," as if we might execute the wrong guy if Sam Donaldson and Ted Kopell weren’t looking on. Then of course, there are the advocates of "closure", who insist that we all need "closure" on this horrible chapter in our history and that seeing McVeigh die will do it for us. One thing nobody has said is that they wouldn’t broadcast the killing of Tim McVeigh if it were offered.
To his credit, the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons has said that a nationwide broadcast isn’t going to happen. But there’s always the nightmare scenario that some clever hacker will find a way to tap into the closed-circuit feed to the families. Possibly some TV technician whose Mom needs an operation will take a few hundred thousand from a tabloid to make a bootleg videotape. If that happens, what will the networks do?
They’ll run it. Of course they’ll run it. The one thing any news organization fears more than anything is that someone else will have a picture or a story they don’t have. So, while all the networks will deplore the leak, someone will be the first to crack, probably Fox. Then the story will be that somebody showed an execution. After that, the race will be on.
You know how they’d do it: First the somber musical theme, with lots of kettledrums to let us know we’re watching a Big Important Event. Then the slow fade in on the show’s logo (done of course, in an appropriately dignified typeface): "America Achieves Closure: The McVeigh Execution." More kettledrums. Then Dan Rather looking into the camera in that grave, ultra-pompous way that makes you wonder if his face would crack if he smiled. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to hour three of our pre-execution show. In this hour leading up to the showing of the videotape, we’ll have a roundtable discussion with Alan Dershowitz, George Stephanapolous, and Dr. Joyce Brothers debating the effectiveness of the death penalty. We’ll be right back." Then they’d break for the new Britney Spears Pepsi commercial. After all, no one is going to turn down advertising space on the most-watched event in TV history.
I say, if it’s going to be on TV, let’s do it right. Let’s go back to the olden days when executions were truly public events, held right there in the village square, with peddlers selling snacks, jugglers and troubadours picking up a few extra coppers, and pickpockets honoring their colleague up there on the chopping block by lifting every purse they could get their remaining fingers on. Let Regis Philbin host, so we can call the show "The Final Answer." O.J. Simpson could do the color commentary (I hear he needs the money to finance the search for the real killers). Oprah Winfrey can interview the victims’ families for the real tear-jerking moments. Then, after the execution, we can all watch the new Britney Spears Pepsi commercial. Closure is all well and good, but this is a business here.
Dusty Rhoades lives in Carthage, practices law in Aberdeen, and isn’t even really sure what closure is, but if everybody else is getting it, he wants some too.
OUR GRACIOUS HOST (BOOKS-N-BYTES)
COPYRIGHT 2001 BY JERRY D. RHOADES, JR.