Four Final Takes on Timothy McVeigh: Last Words

On the eve of Timothy McVeigh's execution, Jungle spoke to the man who convicted him, the man who defended him, and the parents of two of the people he killed. Read their reflections on death and justice.

On May 16, Timothy McVeigh is scheduled to be executed for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

One hundred sixty-eight people were killed in the bombing. Several hundred were injured. On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was convicted of eight counts of murder and three counts of conspiracy in U.S. District Court in Denver. On August 14, 1997, he was sentenced to death. His execution, by lethal injection, is set to take place at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. It is sure to be one of the most talked-about state-sanctioned killings in U.S. history.

With the date approaching, Jungle contributor Jack Hitt interviewed four central figures in the case: the prosecutor who convicted McVeigh; the lawyer who defended him; the mother of one of those killed in Oklahoma City, who supports the death penalty; and the father of another victim, who believes capital punishment is wrong. The four interviews cover the full range of legal, political, moral and personal issues surrounding the death penalty and McVeigh's impending execution. They are, by turns, insightful, surprising, harsh and heartbreaking. They all share a profound sense of tragedy.

The Prosecutor: Joseph Hartzler

Joseph Hartzler was the lead federal prosecutor for the team that convicted Timothy McVeigh on murder and conspiracy charges for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. He applied for the job and was appointed after a nationwide search by then-U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. He has since returned to his regular position as an assistant U.S. attorney in Springfield, Illinois.

What will America learn from McVeigh's execution?
I hope people will appreciate that this kind of attack on democracy will not be tolerated by a civilized society.

Is this the perfect outcome to this crime? Or what would have been the perfect outcome?
There is really no ending anyone can be happy with. But I think Americans saw that there can be justice. Justice with dignity.

Will America be safer after McVeigh is executed?
I don't think the death penalty deters specific individuals. It's as though there is this public event, and each one becomes part of your subconscious. In the future-when anyone begins to step toward that line of violence-I hope a little bell will go off in the back of his head that will tell him that this is very wrong and there will be dire consequences.

Has your thinking about the death penalty changed since the day before the bombing?
My feeling is a little bit like my feeling about abortion. I think it's an unfortunate consequence that has to be used in rare circumstances. That's been my opinion all of my life, except when I was in school in Massachusetts and was against everything.

People talk about achieving closure at such moments. Will you achieve closure?
I achieved closure after we got the guilty verdict and the death penalty. But my role in this is much smaller than that of the victims. I came in, sort of, as a hired gun to do a job. And once my job was accomplished, it was over. I don't want to suggest that I didn't have any emotional attachment. But once my job was done, there was a fair amount of closure.

Do you fear that by executing McVeigh, who some say was motivated by the Waco deaths, we could create an anti-government martyr?
I don't think he'll be a martyr. I don't see any outpouring of support for him. He's too extreme. Not many people in America think you should take lives because of the lives taken at Waco.

What effect do you think the death penalty has on us?
The feeling that justice was served.

What was the most gratifying part of prosecuting McVeigh?
That people who had nothing to do with the prosecution thought the trial-how we presented the case and how we achieved justice in a short period-was so well done.

What was the most troubling part?
Nothing I can think of.

What would you tell a young lawyer or law student whose opinion about the death penalty is different from yours?
That America is a great nation where people can have different opinions. I am delighted that we can have civil discourse on an issue that is so politically charged and talk about it sensibly. Would I try to convert them? No more than I would try to convert them to Lutheranism.

Every defendant needs a prosecutor and a defense attorney. But you chose to work on this case. Why?
I saw this case as one that needed a prosecutor who would be exceedingly fair with the defendant. I remember seeing news coverage of McVeigh coming out of the county jail and people were shouting in the background "Baby killer!" As horrified as I was by the crime, I thought nothing could be worse than to have him railroaded or to have people think that he had been treated unfairly by the government. I thought it was important to show that, even in the face of terror, we still provide defendants with phenomenal constitutional rights and privileges.

When you look back at this case, do you have any second thoughts?
Not really. I'm sure there are some managerial things that I could complain about. There was some evidence we put on just to appease the people who had worked so hard on it. But that's the kind of thing that is almost ridiculous to think about.

The day approaches for McVeigh. What will you be doing when he dies?
I don't want to sound callous, but I think it might be a bigger deal for some people. I helped accomplish this result, and now it's out of my hands. My life is basically compartmentalized. It's not as if I don't have any lingering thoughts or memories of the experience, but my life goes on to other jobs. I marked May 16 on my calendar, but I plan to be at work. I don't know what hour he will be executed. I suppose it will be in the media and I will know. But that particular hour, I don't think I'll be doing anything special.

What will you be thinking?
I view everything about this case as a reminder of the tragedy of the case. I'll feel that it's dreadfully unfortunate that we ever had to come to this. And I'll be focused on the victims and feel sorry we lost them. Especially the younger people and the children. I'll be thinking about how on May 16, it will be six years and one month since McVeigh took the lives of so many people. And you think about what those six years would have been filled with. The joy and love they would have had. And it almost seems unfair that McVeigh got to enjoy that time. Whether he enjoyed it or not, he got to live. He got to follow news reports. He saw sporting events. He got to live six years longer than any of them got to live and enjoy.

What will McVeigh be thinking?
I'm not a mind reader. My impression of him, though, was that he was fairly proud of what he had accomplished. I think he saw it as some kind of distorted achievement.

What should the rest of us be thinking?
I suppose we should be thinking that this brings to an end a life that in fairness should have been brought to an end on April 18, 1995, the day before the bombing. If we'd had a sniper in place prior to his taking the truck to the Murrah building-if someone had known what he was planning to do-no one in the world would have thought an injustice had been done if they'd taken him out then and there and saved all those lives. Or if he'd encountered a police officer on his way to the Murrah building that morning and for some reason had pulled his gun, and the officer had fired on him and killed him. I think we would all have sighed a sigh of relief.

The Defense Attorney: Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones was selected by the federal government to take Timothy McVeigh's case and he defended McVeigh during both the trial and the sentencing phases. After McVeigh's sentencing and before his appeals, Jones and his client had a public falling-out. McVeigh charged that Jones had "screwed up" his case, while Jones said that McVeigh had become angry and self-destructive. Jones is currently in private practice in Enid, Oklahoma.

What will America learn from McVeigh's execution?
I don't think America will learn anything from the execution itself. It will seem very small and insignificant compared to the totality of the devastation and loss that occurred. There is no way that the one redeems the other.

Is this the perfect outcome to this crime? Or what would have been the perfect outcome?
For the investigation to continue. Clearly there were more than two people involved. [Prior to McVeigh's trial, Jones suggested that different people, in the U.S. and abroad, had conspired in the bombing.] In any case, when there are 168 people dead, the government isn't going to say anything except "We got them all."

Will America be safer after McVeigh is executed?
No. The Oklahoma City bombing was a political act. It was a mass murder, but not a mass murder in the conventional sense. Because it was political in origin, the death penalty will not be a deterrent.

Has your thinking about the death penalty changed since the day before the bombing?
I believe in the death penalty. I think there are circumstances in which it is appropriate. As to this case, it would not be appropriate for me to comment, because I was his lawyer.

People talk about achieving closure at such moments. Will you achieve closure?
For me personally, there may be a form of professional closure but not emotional closure. My own view is not dissimilar from the view uttered by Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird: "Every lawyer," he says to his daughter, Scout, "has at least one case in his lifetime that affects him personally." Well, this one's mine.

Do you fear that by executing McVeigh, who some say was motivated by the Waco deaths, we could create an antigovernment martyr?
I thought there was that possibility, and I argued it to the jury. But it seems the temperament of the country has changed significantly from what it was in 1995. So I think there is less chance. McVeigh does not picture himself as a martyr and would not want anyone else to think of him as a martyr.

What effect do you think the death penalty has on us?
I think some people are so evil, their crimes so atrocious, their chances at redemption so poor, that to not impose the death penalty is tantamount, in a perverse way, to condoning the act.

What was the most gratifying part of defending McVeigh?
The most gratifying moment was when I realized that Judge Matsch was going to be absolutely fair.

What was the most troubling part?
The complete irresponsibility of the Dallas Morning News when it published a purported confession based on records stolen from our office. Which occurred about thirty days before the trial and destroyed any chance of a fair trial. [The Dallas Morning News maintains that the documents were obtained legally.]

What would you tell a young lawyer or law student whose opinion about the death penalty is different from yours?
That the death penalty should never be sought or imposed lightly. And it can't be surrounded by a lynching atmosphere. In too many places, it is. One can always make an argument for human life, as we did in Tim's case. Even after the jury found him guilty of, in effect, mass murder, we put some thirty-odd people on the stand during the sentencing phase-family, teachers, coworkers, friends, neighbors, people he had baby-sat for, officers, enlisted men, casual acquaintances. There were a lot of redeeming things to say about Tim McVeigh, and we tried to say them all.

Every defendant needs a prosecutor and a defense attorney. But you chose to take this case. Why?
I had been involved in a similar controversy twenty-five years before. I had been fired from my law firm for defending a University of Oklahoma student who'd been arrested for carrying a Vietcong flag at an ROTC demonstration on the day of the Kent State incident in which four students had been killed. I was the thirteenth lawyer he had gone to. The others had turned him down flat. He had a good defense. I thought it was no big deal. Now, twenty-five years later, here I was, economically successful. I had a good practice. Senior warden in the Episcopal Church. Nominee for the United States Senate. I'd been a special counsel to the Oklahoma governor. I had many corporate clients. If I stepped away from it with all that, it would have meant my entire life was a living lie. It's a lawyer's obligation to take on controversial cases and unpopular causes. I don't suggest you do it all the time. If you do, you're just seen as a maverick. But there does come a time when you are asked to take that sort of case when you must say yes or you dishonor the profession and weaken our constitutional guarantees.

When you look back at this case, do you have any second thoughts?
The government was very skillful. I know good work when I see it, and they basically substituted emotion for fact. That's what did us in. Now certainly they had some evidence. But they didn't think the evidence was that strong or they wouldn't have adopted the strategy they did. When Judge Matsch wouldn't let them readopt the same strategy in the Terry Nichols case, there was an entirely different result. I don't think anybody realized how huge a part of the government case emotion was. Even after the trial, the government put on presentations about the prosecution, and they played a tape of the opening statement. I mean, an opening statement is not evidence. The reason they play that tape is because it was a strong and effective appeal to emotion. They argued emotion. We argued facts. Emotion trumps facts.

The day approaches for McVeigh. What will you be doing when he dies?
I will just be alone.

What will you be thinking?
I have a much different view of Tim McVeigh than most people have. I have spent hundreds of hours with him. I have read thousands of articles about him. I had psychologists evaluate him. I interviewed schoolteachers and family members who knew him. I read letters he had written. And the characterization of him as a loner, a meth hound, a neo-Nazi, a racist: None of those is true. They are crude caricatures that one might see at a grocery-store checkout. Is he a killer? Well, clearly he's a killer. He joined the army and killed his country's enemies in Operation Desert Storm, for which he won the Bronze Star and the Army Commendation Medal. Beyond that? I can't answer that question because it would be professionally inappropriate. But personally I understand where Tim McVeigh is coming from. I never saw him as a monster. I never saw him as an evil person, though he was convicted of a monstrous evil. But there is a distinction. The distinction is that Mr. McVeigh may have thought-and I emphasize "may"-that he was acting to prevent a greater evil: the greater evil being more incidents like Ruby Ridge and Waco. In a sense, some people will see him as a latter-day John Brown, alerting the nation to a government that, as Mr. McVeigh saw it, got away with murder. Or, if you don't like the word "murder," then reckless indifference to human life-and then tried to hide it. That does not condone or excuse what happened in Oklahoma City, but it attempts to explain it.

What will McVeigh be thinking?
Mr. McVeigh is not, and never was, a coward, so he would not fear death. I would expect him to be as stoic as he was when he was in battle and faced death. I should imagine he would be thinking of his family.

What should the rest of us be thinking?
I don't think we should think of Tim McVeigh but rather of the terrible circumstances of the bombing, the innocent lives lost and the underlying causes of it.