Like most irresistible courtroom dramas, tile McVeigh penalty phase has had almost nothing to do with ho criminal justice usually plays out. For starters, it’s been in federal court, where virtually no capital trials take place–murder is typically a state crime. Capital defendants also rarely get topflight lawyers (who have racked up millions in fees, to be paid out of public coffers) or judges; McVeigh’s had both. Racial issues, too, often pollute trials; not so in Denver. Most important, McVeigh has committed the prototypical “crime of the century.” The average killer robs a convenience store with a .88; it’s the Ted Bundys and Susan Smiths who capture the public’s attention and get us howling for blood. Before even hearing the defense’s presentation last week, the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch editorialized that “McVeigh should fry.” A Detroit News columnist hoped he’d catch fire in the chair, writing that “nothing smells better than a well-done mass murderer.” They’re probably disappointed federal law mandates lethal injection.
It’s that kind of passion that makes even opponents of the death penalty wary of saying anything nice–or even nuanced–about McVeigh and his plight. They may be committed abolitionists, but they’re not political fools. “There is some tension dealing with this case,” acknowledges Richard Dieter, head of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. “Some people think we shouldn’t be talking about this one.” However capricious capital punishment may be–only about $00 killers out of 15,000 charged every year wind up on death row–Dieter knows that McVeigh is a 3-D advertisement for execution, Studies of capital juries show that the heinousness of a crime and the absence of remorse are important factors favoring a vote for death.
Despite overwhelming poll numbers, the country is ambivalent about the ultimate penalty: though we want to be tough in principle, we lack the intestinal fortitude to get on with it. America’s 20-year experiment with capital punishment has resulted in 892 executions, but that’s a small fraction of the ever-growing death-row population, which is now more than 3,000. Despite talk of streamlining appeals (they still typically take five to eight years), most condemned prisoners are just inventory in a warehouse. To clear inventory would take two executions a day for seven years. What’s the most frequent cause of death on death row.’? Lethal injection and electrocution are runners-up to “natural causes.” If sentenced to death, McVeigh may be an exception to the trend. As it is, there are only 12 other federal inmates on death row-no room to get lost in. And no judge or U.S. attorney in his right mind is going to let McVeigh’s case languish. The prize is his corpse, not seeing him do humanizing interviews with M9rley or, Barbara.
In the end, everybody’s eagerness to execute him could prove to be McVeigh’s best hope. In 1924, two rich, brilliant Chicago teenagers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, set out to commit the “perfect” crime, just for kicks. They kidnapped little Bobby Franks and bludgeoned him to death. Barely a week later, police were hot on their trail and both confessed. “I have a hanging case,” announced the state’s attorney, and nobody disagreed even when Clarence Darrow agreed to defend Leopold and Loeb. Darrow was the greatest lawyer of his time and a fierce opponent of capital punishment. He pleaded the teenagers guilty, making their sentence the only issue in court. The heart Of Darrow’s case had nothing to do with the details of his clients’ upbringing. Instead, based precisely on the cry for the hangman’s noose, Darrow appealed to mercy and the best of human emotions. Maudlin and melodramatic, he went on for 12 hours. When Darrow was done, the judge wept. Leopold and Loeb got life. Nothing’s impossible.
In the states, death-row populations are booming as sentences get even tougher. Lengthy appeals, however, keep the number of actual executions down. A primer on executions:
Studies show incarceration costs roughly $20,000 per inmate per year ($800,000 if a person lives 40 years in prison). Research also shows a death-penalty ease costs roughly $2 million per execution.
Texas has tied a record it set in 1935 with 20 executions so far this year. The state has scheduled seven more for June.
Of the 38 states that have the death penalty, 11 exempt the mentally retarded from execution.
The lethal-injection chamber at the federal correctional facility in Terre Haute, Ind., has never been used. Here’s how McVeigh would be executed if he ends up here:
The convict is led into the room by corrections officers, who strap the prisoner down, arms stretched in a cross.
An attendant inserts the IV tube into the convict’s arm or, if a vein cannot be found, elsewhere.
Behind this window attendants, usually corrections officers, release the drugs.
The IV tube comes through a small window carrying anesthetic and the potassium chloride that stops the heart.
The federal government has executed 34 prisoners this century on charges ranging from murder on the high seas to conspiracy to commit espionage.
Twelve, all male.
All homicides, divided into five categories: drug crime, kidnapping, robbery, witness killing and killing a federal officer.
Six men executed by electrocution in a Washington, D.C., jail for sab-otage on Aug. 8, 1942. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were both put to death on June 19, 1953, for conspiracy to commit espionage. They were electrocuted at Sing Sing.
1963, with the hanging of Victor Feguer on a kidnapping conviction. He was hanged at Iowa State Penitentiary.
Thirty-four people– 32 men and two women–have been executed, mostly for murder. The majority were white men in their 20s and 30s. How they were put to death:
Electrocution 15 Hanging 12 Gas chamber 7
It has been more than 30 years since the federal government executed a prisoner, but tougher laws from Washington recently helped sentence these 12 to death.
In May 1991 the marijuana grower from Piedmont, Ala. was sentenced to death for hiring a man to kill a police informer.
The three crack dealers were sentenced to death in 1988 for a string of murders designed to expand their territory.
Allegedly a lieutenant in Texas’s Juan Garcia Abrego gang, he was given the death sentence in 1993 because of his connection to the murders of three people in Brownsville.
He was sentenced to death in 1995 after being convicted of kidnapping a female soldier from a Texas military base, then raping and killing her.
In 1995, Hall was given a death sentence for the abduction of a 16-year-old Austin, Texas, girl who was taken to Arkansas and then raped and killed. In 1996, Webster, a co-defendant in the same case, was also sentenced to death.
Davis, a former New Orleans policeman who was convictedas the leader of a drug operation, was sentenced to death in 1996 for ordering a hit on a woman who had filed a police-brutality complaint against him. Hardy, who carried out the murder, was sentenced to death in May 1996.
He was given the death sentence in October 1996 for the murder of a Kansas woman during the robbery of a restaurant.
He was already serving life in prison when he killed a corrections officer. He was sentenced to death in March 1997.
White 48% Black 41% Hispanic 7% Other 4%
South 195 Midwest 38 West 29 Northeast 2 Texas 123
