Is State-Sanctioned Killing Any More Sane Than Tim McVeighs Crime?
HOW MANY TIMES do I have to tell you that capital punishment doesn’t work? You think Tim McVeigh ever heard of Gary Gilmore? I expect he did. Think it slowed Tim up at all, convinced him to rent a smaller Ryder truck, buy a couple tons less fertilizer, blow up fewer folks? I don’t believe the certain knowledge that he could be executed for blowing up the federal building in Oklahoma City meant anything either way to Tim McVeigh, because Tim McVeigh is nuts. Everybody who kills somebody is nuts. At least for a little while. At least somewhat. Killing another human being–whether it be murder, act of war, incidental outcome of negligent behavior or public execution–simply isn’t the act of someone with both oars in the water. And the more time you have to spend thinking about it, the crazier you have to be to do it. This flies in the face of legal definitions of sanity, where such definitions apply to capital crimes, but I submit to you that the statutes have it bass-ackwards. Murder tha
