Timothy McVeigh

He was reportedly upset with the government about the Waco, Texas deaths of the Branch Davidians and the killing of the wife and kid of Randy Weaver by government agents. Timothy chose the Murrah building because it housed several government offices.

Here's a timeline of McVeigh's court trials and tribulations:

• August 10, 1995: McVeigh was indicted on 11 counts, including eight counts of murder.

• June 2, 1997: McVeigh was convicted on all 11 counts.

• June 13, 1997: The jury in the trial sentenced McVeigh to the death penalty.

• August 14, 1997: Judge Matsch upholds the sentence of death. McVeigh is placed on death row.

• September 8, 1998: The 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the death sentence. Death sentences are automatically appealed to the circuit court.

• March 8, 1999: The US Supreme Court denys the request to hold a hearing on the case.

• March 6, 2000: The second round of appeals are filed in federal court, in part asking for a new trial.

• October 12, 2000: Judge Matsch denies request for a new trial.

• December 7, 2000: McVeigh drops all appeals, requests that an execution be scheduled within 120 days.

• June 11, 2001: McVeigh died by lethal injection at 7:14 a.m. CDT at the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, the first federal execution since 1963. McVeigh left a handwritten statement quoting Invictus, a 19th century poem by British poet William Ernest Henley. It ends with the lines "I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul."

In January 1998, Judge Stanley Sporkin ruled that the Navy could not throw McVeigh out; the Navy originally appealed this case, but in June McVeigh and the Navy reached a settlement where McVeigh would retire from the Navy in August 1998 and the Navy would pay his $90,000 in legal fees.

Sources: Articles at http://news.cnet.com/news/0,10000,0-1005-200-325481,00.html and McVeigh's web page: http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/9241/

In a letter to FOX News just prior to April 27, 2001, 19 days before his scheduled execution by lethal injection, Timothy McVeigh wrote that prior to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, he had considered other acts of retribution, among them the assassination of then-Attorney General Janet Reno, stating that doing so would make "her accept 'full responsibility' in deed, not just word."

In addition, McVeigh stated that as retaliation for the US involvement in the fire that killed more than 80 followers of David Koresh near Waco, Texas, two years prior to the bombing, he had considered the assassination of Federal Judge Walter Smith, and the assassination of Lon Horiuchi, an FBI sniper in the 51-day standoff at Waco.

McVeigh's own words:

"I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government."

Timothy McVeigh died May 16th, 2001, at 7 AM CDT, the first federal prisoner to be killed willfully by the government in thirty-eight years.

From this position I honestly don't see why McVeigh is more, as some seem to assert, deserving of the death penalty than any other murderer. Because he killed more people? Surely no coherent moral argument can be made for quantitative assessment of human lives. Because he is unrepentant? Give the man time. Your average death row convict can have up to 25 years in which to reinvent himself and find God, whereas McVeigh is probably one of the most swiftly tried and sentenced people this century - his trial lasted only a fraction of the time the OJ trial took to sort through, despite the obvious difference in the number of victims and the enormous scope of forensic evidence.

Timothy McVeigh is sane. That's why people hate him. He's not an oedipally obsessed psychotic oddball. He has academic prowess, demonstrable courage and stamina, the ability to work whithin the American system to high results, a loving circle of family and friends. He also happens to believe that US wartime tactics can bear being turned inwards for a change. This puts him a on a unique footing with the public - he is a mass murderer with whom it would have been possible in time to develop a meaningful dialogue. This is why everyone is in such a hurry to kill him - they don't want to see their own reflection in him, or hear their own beliefs echoed back through the medium of his mind.

This is of course also why no meaningful protest has emerged around the question of his excecution. The complacency of the American public during the last election is not conducive of serious and vocal debate on the issue, especially with a pro-death penalty President at the helm (it would have been a political boon for Bush, in fact, if any body tried to portray McVeigh and his death as anything less than justified - public feeling was so powerful in favour of the excecution that he and the rest of the pro-death lobby would have been riding the waves of righteousness for months). In this political and public climate, even anti-death penalty activists have reservations about publicly pointing out that the Oklahoma City bombing is a perverted extension of something their own tax money has been put to repeatedly and continually over the last 50 years.

Tim McVeigh will go down in history as someone who went through patriotic indoctrination and out the other side. He will be remembered as a revolutionary - bloody, merciless, misguided, but possessing ideological integrity and strength of conviction. There are two ways his personal story can go from here - out of the public conciousness and into the thesis papers of history graduates, or out into the realm of t-shirts and wall posters, shoulder to shoulder with that most recognisable of badly remembered revolutionaries, Che Guevara. The second option, being the more likely, is a shame and a pity. Society, denied the aforementioned meaningful dialogue with this oh so enigmatic zealot, will co-opt him into a pop culture icon and a catch phrase on the lips of white supremacists and disgruntled libertarians.