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| McVEIGH EXECUTED | |
 June 11, 2001  |
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Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh is executed in Terre Haute, Indiana. Kwame Holman reports.
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JIM LEHRER: Timothy McVeigh was executed this morning. The Oklahoma City bomber received a lethal injection of three drugs at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. His lawyers said McVeigh died with no regrets for killing 168 people with a truck bomb in 1995. Kwame Holman reports the day in Terre Haute. |
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| Protests, vigils and media coverage | ||||||||||||||||||||
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KWAME HOLMAN: This morning, police and media crews outnumbered demonstrators outside the penitentiary where 33-year-old Timothy James McVeigh was executed. The convicted and self-confessed Oklahoma City bomber became the first federal prisoner to be put to death since 1963. About 100 death penalty supporters gathered quietly in an area cordoned off for them outside the prison gates. A few hundred yards away, about the same number of death penalty opponents staged a 168-minute silent vigil, one for each of those killed in the attack. McVeigh spent his final hours in a nine-by-fourteen-foot isolation cell. According to a prison spokesman, he watched television, slept, and ate two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Soon after 7:00 Central Time, McVeigh was strapped to a gurney in the execution room. Ten journalists, four people chosen by McVeigh, and an undisclosed number of government officials watched through clear glass. Ten people, survivors of the blast and family members of victims, witnessed the execution from behind tinted glass, unseen by McVeigh. Prison officials administered a lethal combination of drugs: The sedative sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide to depress his breathing, and potassium chloride to stop his heart. About a half hour later, the prison warden delivered the official word. WARDEN HARLEY LAPPIN, U.S. Federal Penitentiary: The court order to execute inmate Timothy James McVeigh has been fulfilled. Pursuant to the sentence of the United States District Court in the District of Colorado, Timothy James McVeigh has been executed by lethal injection. He was pronounced dead at 7:14 A.M. Central Daylight Time. McVeigh's body will be released to a representative of his family. Inmate McVeigh was calm throughout the entire process. He cooperated entirely during the time he was restrained in the execution holding cell to the time he walked into the execution room. He stepped up onto a small step and sat down on the table. We then positioned himself... He then positioned himself for us to apply the restraints. He cooperated throughout this entire process. KWAME HOLMAN: McVeigh chose not to make a statement. Instead, he hand-copied a 19th century poem called "Invictus." After the execution, one of the media witnesses read from the poem, which includes these final lines. BYRON PITTS, CBS News: "It matters not how straight the gate how charged with punishment the scroll I am the master of my fate I am the captain of my soul." |
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| Witness reports | ||||||||||||||||||||
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KWAME HOLMAN: Other reporters gave their observations. SHEPARD SMITH, Fox News Channel: We were standing at a glass window about 18 inches from his feet. He was wearing sneakers. You could see that. There were sheets up to here and folded over. His hands were down. He looked straight at the ceiling. When the curtains opened, to his left were his representatives. He sat up as much as he could in that chair and looked toward his window and nodded his head like that. REX HUPPKE, The Associated Press: Then he looked at the media and kind of bounced his head towards each one of us. And then he looked over to, it would be his right, towards the victim witness room, which was a tinted glass pane. He couldn't see into it, but he looked over. Not real dramatic, but he sort of squinted a little bit like he was trying to see through the tinted glass. At 7:10, they announced that the first drug had been administered. At that point he was still conscious, it seemed. His eyes were open and blinking a little bit. Very slowly his eyes stopped moving, and his head was really perfectly lined up. He wasn't to one side or the other. He was very, very rigid and straight up and down. The eyes just sort of started to slowly move back just a little bit. The second drug was administered at 7:11. Then at that point was where we saw some of the... Not really spasms, exactly, but you saw a couple heavy breaths, and then that was by and large it. There was a little stomach movement. And at 7:15, they announced that the final drug had been administered. And then, well, at... Yeah, I'm sorry, 7:13. Then at 7:14, the warden came on through the speaker again and announced that he had died. CROCKER STEPHENSON, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: The other thing I'd like to add is how remarkably subtle the process was in which he slipped from life to death. There was no point in which he looked as if he had turned a corner other than as the process went on, his skin became increasingly yellow. But there was no sign of suffering. There was no sign of discomfort. There was no sign of fear. LINDA CAVANAUGH, KFOR-TV, Oklahoma City: And at that point, the U.S. Marshal and the warden physically went up to the curtains and closed them. Before, they had mechanically opened at the beginning. When it was over, they each went to a separate curtain and physically closed them, and we were led out. We were led into the execution chamber only minutes before it was scheduled to start. We were in there less than a minute after it was over. KWAME HOLMAN: McVeigh's body was to be cremated and his ashes scattered at an undisclosed location. After the execution, McVeigh's attorney, Robert Nigh, spoke against the death penalty. ROBERT NIGH, McVeigh Attorney: To the survivors in Oklahoma City who have had the courage to come out against capital punishment in spite of the tremendous pain that they have suffered, I say thank you. To the victims in Oklahoma City, I say that I am sorry that I could not successfully help Tim to express words of reconciliation that he did not perceive to be dishonest. I do not fault them at all for looking forward to this day or for taking some sense of relief from it. But if killing Tim McVeigh does not bring peace or closure to them, I suggest to you that it is our fault. We have told them that we would help them heal their wounds in this way. We have taken it upon ourselves to promise to extract vengeance for them. We have made killing a part of the healing process. |
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| The president's reaction | ||||||||||||||||||||
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KWAME HOLMAN: In Europe, where most countries banned the death penalty, there were demonstrations against McVeigh's execution. The German government issued a statement of opposition. President Bush heads to Europe tonight. This morning, he spoke about the execution in the White House briefing room. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: This morning, the United States of America carried out the severest sentence for the gravest of crimes. The victims of the Oklahoma City bombing have been given not vengeance, but justice. And one young man met the fate he chose for himself six years ago. For the survivors of the crime and for the families of the dead, the pain goes on. The final punishment of the guilty cannot alone bring peace to the innocent. It cannot recover the loss or balance the scales, and it is not meant to do so. Today, every living person who was hurt by the evil done in Oklahoma City can rest in the knowledge that there has been a reckoning. At every point from the morning of April 19, 1995, to this hour, we have seen the good that overcomes evil. We saw it in the rescuers who saved and suffered with the victims. We have seen it in a community that has grieved and held close the memory of the lost. We have seen it in the work of detectives, marshals, and police. And we have seen it in the courts. Due process ruled. The case was proved. The verdict was calmly reached. And the rights of the accused were protected and observed to the full, and to the end. Under the laws of our country, the matter is concluded. Life and history bring tragedies, and often they cannot be explained. But they can be redeemed. They are redeemed by dispensing justice, though eternal justice is not ours to deliver. By remembering those who grieve, including Timothy McVeigh's mother, father, and sisters, and by trusting in purposes greater than our own, may God in his mercy grant peace to all, to the lives that were taken six years ago, to the lives that go on, and to the life that ended today. |
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