Next month Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to be put to death for his part in the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed over 160 people. In a recently published book, he freely admitted his own guilt and even defends what he did. This would appear to be a good test case for the debate over capital punishment. The question might be put this way: Are there crimes so horrendous that the only civilized response is for the state to say that the persons involved should be put to death?

At approximately 9:02 am on April 19, a car bomb went off, destroying the Alfred

Murrah Federal Building. Anyone within a thirty-mile radius of the building felt the shock of the blast and some were even faced with injuries of their own. “The actual bomb left a crater twenty feet long and eight feet deep outside the Federal building.” (Isaza 15) McVeigh was suspected from the very beginning and when the FBI researched his background, they found that as a child he was shy and frequently picked on. Classmates even went as far as sarcastically voting him “most talkative.” However, he changed substantially over the years. “He became extremely right-winged after the incident at Waco, Texas, where dozens were killed during a federal raid on the Branch Davidian Compound. It was no coincidence that the bombing fell on the two year anniversary of this event.” (Gleick 46) The Oklahoma City bombing seems to be a case of revenge for McVeigh. Therefore, many believe that we should not further the cycle of revenge by sentencing him to death, and they strongly support their opinion with a number of other ideas.

As time goes on, the death penalty is becoming more and more of an unrealistic form of punishment. It has not yet been proven to keep people from committing crimes as serious as first-degree murder, nor does it make our society feel any safer than it normally would. However, statistics have proven that the costs for the process of sentencing a person to death far exceeds the costs of holding an offender under long-term prison confinement. Also, those who attempt to persuade the families of victims towards enforcing the death penalty often end up with a haunting conscience that will remain embedded within them for years. Revenge is not always as sweet as it may sound. Finally, “man i

Some topics in this essay:
Justice Initiative, Reconciliation MVFR, Oklahoma City, , Federal Building, death penalty, Davidian Compound, Bryan Stevenson, Waco Texas, Timothy McVeigh, Pat Bane, capital punishment, death row, support death penalty, federal building, oklahoma city, feel safer, support death, common argument, first-degree murder, cycle violence, murrah federal building,