Word: mcveighs
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...Congress, lawmakers just a few years ago rushed to expand the list of crimes punishable by death; now they are cosponsoring the Innocence Protection Act, which sets minimum standards for appointed lawyers in capital cases and requires access to DNA tests. Americans may overwhelmingly support the execution of Timothy McVeigh, but a shift is taking place across the country. A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll shows 63% in favor of the death penalty, down from 80% seven years ago. Other polls show that 80% think innocent people have been executed in the past five years...
...when it goes forward, McVeigh's will be the first federal execution since 1963. Another, that of Juan Raul Garza for three drug-related murders, is set for June. Attorney General John Ashcroft says he sees no need for a moratorium. He wouldn't be the first to change his mind...
Even war criminals usually go to the trouble of claiming some moral justification for their crimes, some moral equivalence with their enemies. Timothy McVeigh argued that the arrogance of the Federal Government, the government that wanted to take his guns and cramp his rights, was so vast and so dangerous that he needed to blow up a building, start a revolution. "I did it for the larger good," he claimed, and if innocent people had to die, well, that's what happens in war. He called the 19 dead children "collateral damage," and bragged that even if he is executed...
...last thing that anyone in the government, anyone in law enforcement and above all any of McVeigh's surviving victims could abide was anything that might give him satisfaction or lend his theories of moral equivalence a veneer of legitimacy. They wanted to take away his platform. Most were ready for him to die, and the execution had the makings of an awful circus: 1,600 reporters were booking rooms in Terre Haute, Ind., for next Wednesday. "Good morning, America, it's time to kill a killer, but first, this is Today." All those cameras, all those talking heads...
Then the FBI revealed that it had suddenly found 3,135 documents about the Oklahoma City bombing investigation that McVeigh's defense lawyers had never seen, and Attorney General John Ashcroft stopped the clock. The problem was not that there were doubts about McVeigh's guilt; he has admitted that. This was not the discovery of some sinister plot, Justice officials insisted--just human error, maybe a computer glitch. But it was another bomb exploding nonetheless. Ashcroft looked drained and solemn as he announced that McVeigh's execution would be postponed for a month so his defense lawyers could review...