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A case of the punishment fitting the crimeThe execution of Timothy McVeigh was not an event that should have been televised, although one survey showed that 15 percent of Americans thought it was. Why anyone would want to spend a few minutes on a Monday morning to watch someone die is a mystery. Of course, there is an exception. If you are a relative or friend of one of the 168 people who died in the bomb blast in Oklahoma City six years ago, you might have wanted to witness the demise of the person who killed your friend or relative. Personally, I'm kind of up in the air about capital punishment. There is little proof that the threat of being executed is a deterrent, especially in the case of someone like McVeigh whose life was so tortured that he could plan such a terrible thing. And there is the possibility of executing the wrong person. Of course, there is an exception. If you are a relative or friend of one of the 168 people who died in Oklahoma City six years ago, you might have strong feelings that capital punishment was the way to go in this case. Kay Fulton of Red Wing, Minn., held a photo of her brother, Paul Ice, a Customs Service agent, against the window of the death chamber window as McVeigh was put to death Monday morning. "I would like to think that he [McVeigh] felt some kind of dread, facing his own mortality," Fulton was quoted as saying in a Star Tribune story. Who among us can blame Fulton, or the other witnesses crowded into a small room, for feeling that way and saying those words? What would we feel? Predictably, there was much criticism of the execution of McVeigh. Whatever the Council of Europe is, it called the execution "sad, pathetic and wrong." A French daily newspaper ran a cartoon of Americans sitting in a stadium watching the execution, wearing glasses to see better. A letter in the Star Tribune on Tuesday praised the newspaper for an editorial last week in opposition to capital punishment. "Nor do we teach that killing is wrong by killing people," said the final sentence of that letter. In Minnesota, if polls are to be believed, 57 percent of the people favor the death penalty for murderers, compared to 73 percent in a similar poll taken five years ago. The death penalty has been brought up in the Minnesota Legislature, with some bills aimed at legalizing it failing. The concern for many is that McVeigh was murdered, just as he admitted murdering those 168 people, calling the death of some of them "collateral damage." OK, then. If those people see McVeigh's death as a murder, what would they have done with McVeigh? Would they suggest just leaving him in a cell the rest of his natural life, letting his twisted mind expound publicly on what he did? Or would they exact some other form of punishment? Former Minneapolis police chief Tony Bouza, who called McVeigh a "poster boy for execution," also said that "the one statistical certainty is that executed people have never committed another crime." During my own unscientific survey locally a couple days ago, one person said, "They should take him [McVeigh] out in the woods in Minnesota, tie him to a tree, and let the mosquitoes have their way with him for a few weeks and then execute him." Someone a few feet away said that would be a horrible thing to do and that McVeigh should spend the rest of his days in prison. It's impossible to put yourself in the shoes of a relative or friend of someone murdered by McVeigh, such as Kay Fulton from Red Wing. It's impossible to know how those people felt before the execution, or how they feel now that McVeigh is dead. But I'm reminded of a song I heard at a very young age from the musical, "The Mikado." If I remember right, The Lord High Executioner sings, "Let The Punishment Fit The Crime." And that's what happened Monday when Timothy McVeigh was executed. Princeton Union-Eagle |
