Out of sight, out of mind

On May 16 Timothy McVeigh, convicted murderer of 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, will be executed. In an effort to accommodate those who lost family and friends in the bombing, McVeigh's death will be broadcast on closed-circuit television to the victims' loved ones who want to witness the execution. McVeigh, however, has argued that his death should be televised nationally and not limited to a select group in Oklahoma.

McVeigh's motive for nationwide coverage may be his own martyrdom among those anti-government radicals who glorify the 1995 attack. Unfortunately, his death will serve that twisted aim no matter the scope of the broadcast. And yet his execution and those of other death row inmates should be televised, not just for the benefit of the convicted or those connected to their victims but to call the attention of all Americans to a national practice deserving our full awareness.

Although execution may be our government's most abhorrent act, the practice has continued at a brisk pace since the Supreme Court allowed it to be reinstated 25 years ago. As a legal institution the death penalty merits the measure of attention we give to other government processes (Congressional debate, police work, court cases, presidential inaugurals). But as an action that ends life it deserves still greater scrutiny.

Our nation currently keeps executions neatly tucked away from public view. We hear about them and the disproportionate number of black men killed, but we are never confronted by the reality of the death penalty's biases and finality. This seclusion only entrenches a flawed system by easing our minds and reducing social discomfort over its continued use. Still, opponents and supporters of capital punishment have often shied from exposing the process nationally.

Asked about the possibility of televising McVeigh's execution, commentator Cokie Roberts, an opponent of the death penalty, replied, "Society is barbarous enough . . . I can't imagine we would do anything that medieval." But is it more barbarous for our government to kill in public or to snuff lives behind closed doors, where we are spared the unease of watching institutionalized violence? When cruelty is cloaked from view it becomes that much easier to tolerate it or forget it altogether.

On the other side of the debate many supporters of the death penalty also want it kept from a public audience. This is curious since by publicizing the consequence of committing capital crimes we would maximize the deterrent impact — if there were any — of executions. But recently on ABC's "This Week," George Will GS '68 argued that televising an execution would violate the "solemnity of taking a life." On the contrary, the broadcast would only violate our government's antiseptic treatment of the death penalty, opening its brutality up to mass scrutiny and outrage. The fact that today's guillotine — the electric chair or lethal injection machine — takes lives without shedding blood makes the act no more austere than an execution in any other time or place.

Recent evidence shows that over two-thirds of capital cases are reversed because of serious errors. One out of eight persons sentenced to death is later found innocent and exonerated. And last year the Republican Governor of Illinois, George Ryan, enacted a state-wide moratorium on capital punishment. Still, this embattled practice may persist for some time. It will no doubt last beyond the term of a president who oversaw 150 executions in his previous post and smiled about his state's zeal for capital punishment during a presidential debate.

Until our elected leaders join their peers in the other Western democracies and abolish the death penalty, all Americans, whether we consider the death penalty "barbarous" or "solemn," must share responsibility for this troubling institution. We need to face this part of our political system just as we watch Congress on C-SPAN or police officers on "COPS." Executions should be televised on a non-commercial network akin to C-SPAN. As CNN legal analyst Gretta Van Susteren has articulated, "We need to be confronted by the sentence we impose. It's a barbaric procedure. We shouldn't hide it and pretend it doesn't exist."

When televising executions, the death row inmate should have final say on whether to broadcast. Valuing his or her privacy ensures that the publicizing of his or her death does not increase the cruelty of the act itself. We may find that most men and women convicted of capital crimes would want a public audience bearing witness to their punishment. Then, by transparently displaying this violent, racially-biased and ineffective system, we will dismantle the veneer of civility and modern justice that perpetuates our country's executions. Jason Brownlee is a politics major from Raleigh, NC. He can be reached at brownlee@princeton.edu.