Word: ashcroft
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...McVeigh's pending execution, and Attorney General John Ashcroft's guidelines for its limited broadcast (only via closed-circuit signal to victims and survivors in Oklahoma City) have raised a plethora of questions entwining freedom of the press and the cold hard facts of capital punishment. None are readily answered...
...weeks ago, John Ashcroft announced a carefully designed viewing protocol for the execution: Given the scope of McVeigh's crime, 10 witnesses (rather than the usual eight) will join a few members of the press in watching McVeigh die. The execution will be shown live via closed-circuit television to a group of several hundred survivors and victims' family members gathered in Oklahoma City. The transmission and those who watch it will be carefully monitored (even cell phones will not be permitted) in an attempt to stave off entrepreneurs intent on hijacking the signal. Only those considered...
...Like many Americans, including Ashcroft, Pease argues that McVeigh has already gained enough from his terrorist act. And now, Pease says, the television networks see it as their chance to gain - even at the expense of the national peace of mind. "I can understand that maybe the families of the victims want to see that he is really dead. But for the rest of us, it seems to me that if the execution were reported quietly at the bottom of page 4, it would serve exactly the same purpose. America needs to put closure on this terrible event. But this...
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 the night. 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...