Word: mcveigh
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...McVeigh's case is just so clean. "The danger is [when] somebody says, 'If ever there was a case for the death penalty, this is the case,'" says Bright. "The problem is that we never limit it to that case. We have more than 3,000 people on death row, many without lawyers, and the overwhelming majority are not the Timothy McVeighs or Ted Bundys or John Wayne Gacys." Simply put, the most powerful argument against the death penalty is that it is dispensed by a justice system that favors some defendants over others. In February, the American Bar Association...
...McVeigh's case gives the country a chance to confront more clearly the issue of why America, alone among Western democracies, puts people to death. Is capital punishment meant to benefit society or provide comfort to the victimized? On the question of whether capital punishment deters crime, McVeigh doesn't shed much light; there's no deterrence value in executing a zealot (true believers, after all, want to die for the cause). But deterrence is always murky; there's no proof capital punishment discourages crime by anyone other than the criminals who get executed. Death-penalty proponent Glenn Lammi, chief...
Every year about 300 people receive the death sentence in this country and about 35 leave death row--usually with the aid of electricity or an intravenous drip. Most of the arrivals and all the departures since 1976 have been state cases. If McVeigh gets the death penalty, he will be only the 13th federal prisoner sent to death row since 1976. None of the others have yet been executed, a reminder that those aching for McVeigh's death had better stay patient...
...lower levels of the federal judiciary have steadily narrowed the methods of appeal. In 1984 and 1986, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that defendants were not entitled to special appeals reviews and that striking jurors from capital cases because they oppose the death penalty was constitutional. In McVeigh's trial, blast survivors who oppose capital punishment were barred by the prosecution from taking the stand during the penalty phase. Congress got into the act with the 1988 and 1994 crime bills, which included the first modern federal death-penalty statute and extended the death penalty to more than...
...guilty verdict they had awaited for two years, an Oklahoma City survivor said last week, "wasn't enough." Would the death penalty be enough? For a crime this extreme, can anything be enough? The survivors know that "closure" is a cruel hoax, that the hole McVeigh created in their lives can't be filled by court proceedings, verdicts, even executions. Perhaps that is why a surprising number of them emerged this week to say they oppose death for McVeigh and believe they will heal faster if he is spared. No research indicates that survivors are more "satisfied" or that their...