| Bomb survivors praise plans for execution on TV Prison issues McVeigh protocol 04/13/2001 By Michelle Mittelstadt / The Dallas Morning News
Bombing survivors and relatives of the 168 people killed in the attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building will be able to observe an audio and video feed of the May 16 execution beamed from federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind., to an as-yet-undetermined site in Oklahoma City.
"The Oklahoma City survivors may be the largest group of crime victims in our history," Mr. Ashcroft said. "The Department of Justice must make special provisions to assist the needs of the survivors and the victims' families."
In other developments, the Justice Department:
• Announced a ban on in-person interviews with Mr. McVeigh and all other federal death row inmates under a new policy that sharply restricts media access.
• Issued a detailed execution protocol that will govern a condemned inmate's final days.
Mr. Ashcroft's decision to heed survivors' request for a closed-circuit telecast was welcomed in Oklahoma City.
"This will be the best for everybody, and I'm very pleased about it," said Dr. Paul Heath, a retired VA psychologist who survived the bombing. Mr. Heath, who hired a lawyer and petitioned the Justice Department to allow the broadcast, plans to be there.
Although some states have provided closed-circuit execution telecasts for victims and relatives, this marks the first time the federal government will do so.
The Justice Department, which is being sued by an Internet company that wants to provide a pay-per-view broadcast of the May 16 McVeigh execution, will use advanced encryption technology to keep the transmission from being intercepted.
In advance of the first federal execution since 1963, the attorney general unveiled new procedures that restrict media access to Mr. McVeigh and the 20 other inmates on federal death row, banning television and in-person interviews.
"As an American who cares about our culture, I want to restrict a mass murderer's access to the public podium," Mr. Ashcroft said. "I do not want anyone to be able to purchase access to the podium of America with the blood of 168 innocent victims."
Federal death row inmates will continue to get one 15-minute telephone call each day, which they can use to talk to reporters, officials said. They also can exchange letters with the media.
WASHINGTON – Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday that he decided to permit the closed-circuit telecast of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's execution next month to help victims of the 1995 blast "close this chapter in their lives."
As for Mr. McVeigh's execution and future death sentences, the Justice Department provided a 56-page execution protocol that outlines in minute detail the steps the Bureau of Prisons will take.
Just a month after the McVeigh execution, South Texas drug boss Juan Raul Garza is to be put to death.
The protocol spells out the condemned inmate's final days, from his final meal to the clothing he will wear to his death, and how prison officials intend to deal with witnesses, demonstrators and reporters.
There is much interest in the McVeigh execution, stoked by the enormity of his crime and because it marks the first time the federal government will have carried out a death sentence since Victor Feguer was hanged in Iowa 38 years ago.
More than 1,400 journalists are expected in Terre Haute, and prison officials have made plans to allow pro- and anti-death penalty demonstrators onto prison grounds.
A week before the execution, Mr. McVeigh's access to outsiders will be limited to his family, attorneys and spiritual advisers, with no further interviews allowed.
On the final day, at 6 a.m. Dallas time, an hour before his execution, "restraint team" members will enter the cell and strip-search him. He then will be clothed in khaki pants, a shirt and slip-on shoes. He will be secured with restraints, including leg irons, and escorted to the execution chamber.
In the chamber, ambulatory restraints will be removed and Mr. McVeigh will be placed on a table, restrained and have IVs inserted. At that point, the drapes cloaking the death chamber from the witness rooms will be opened.
Mr. McVeigh will be allowed to make a "reasonably brief" final statement. Procedures are in place to cut off the microphone if he goes beyond the time allotted, officials said.
After the final words, warden Harley Lappin then will read the death order. Absent any final intervention by the courts, the lethal mix will be administered by IVs: sodium pentothal to induce unconsciousness, pancuronium bromide to halt respiration, and potassium chloride to stop the heartbeat.
The protocol, which was years in the making and resulted from consultation with state execution officials, governs how death will be pronounced and the body removed. It even stipulates how the death chamber will be cleaned (by a staff trained in infectious disease preventive practices) after the execution.
|
