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Sensation or...?

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INDIANA:

On the vast lawn outside the federal prison where Timothy McVeigh sits on
death row, skinny wooden stakes already mark the spots where the major
television networks will come to chronicle the Oklahoma City bomber's
scheduled execution May 16.

If he listens closely enough in the days before then, McVeigh, 32, might
be able to hear the rap of hammers as crews build sets for the network
anchors who will welcome a worldwide audience to his deathwatch. The sets
are part of what will amount to a temporary public square on the prison
grounds, with designated areas for what are expected to be thousands of
reporters and demonstrators.

As morbid as it sounds, McVeigh's execution is shaping up as the Next Big
Show in a world of 24-hour news cycles, saturation coverage and
heightened competition for ratings and readers. Besides being the
public's revenge on the most notorious mass murderer of our time,
McVeigh's appointment with a lethal injection represents the federal
government's historic return to capital punishment after a 38-year gap.

Americans may not want to watch - and in fact there won't be much to see,
since no cameras and only 24 witnesses will be allowed into the execution
chamber. However, all the big television networks are betting that the
public will tune in anyway.

That's why a media-driven frenzy is underway in this normally placid city
of 60,000 near the Illinois border. Prison officials for whom routine is
virtue have been taken aback by a flood of media requests that could
alter the daily rhythm of the 1,300-inmate U.S. Penitentiary at Terre
Haute, where the U.S. government keeps some of its most dangerous criminals.

TV networks have asked for permission to set up stadium-like lights to
brighten up the prison at night, providing more "definition" to the scene
behind the news anchors. Prison officials have not agreed to that; there
is some concern that such lighting at night would interrupt inmates' sleep.

During the week of the execution, the networks will have golf carts on
prison grounds to ferry supplies and "talent" between reporting locations
and their sets. Portable microwave towers will be built to beam broadcast
signals back to the networks' studios. Networks also have asked that
caterers be given access to the prison grounds to provide their staffs
with 3 meals a day.

Network officials acknowledge that their invasion might be a little
overwhelming to people here, and that it might seem ghoulish to
essentially build TV shows around an execution.

But "it's a huge story," says Marcy McGinnis, a CBS News vice president.
"We have to tell it. It's not distasteful to tell a story that's got
distasteful bits to it."

Not everyone here sees it that way. The anticipation of a nationally
televised deathwatch already is rubbing some the wrong way, especially
those who oppose the death penalty.

"It reminds me of the early days of Rome," says Sister Rita Clare
Gerardot, a member of the Terre Haute-based Sisters of Providence who
ministers to inmates at the prison.

"We're inviting all these people to come and enjoy it as we throw
somebody to the executioner's hand," says Gerardot, who says she has seen
McVeigh behind bars but has not talked with him. "As we get closer to the
date, the spectacle becomes almost sadistic. It blows my mind."

As a news event, there is no disputing the significance of McVeigh's
execution. And even the most vocal death-penalty critics say that
McVeigh, who 6 years ago detonated the bomb that killed 168 people and
destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City, is an effective poster
child for those who support capital punishment.

CBS will send at least 30 people, including Bryant Gumbel, to broadcast
its morning program from the prison grounds. Anchor Dan Rather may host
the network's evening news show from Terre Haute as well.

ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider says the network will be "devoting
extensive resources" to the execution, which he calls "a story that's of
great interest to the American people." It's likely that the network will
break into programming with a live report as the execution approaches.

The exact time of the execution has not been announced, but prison
officials have indicated that it will be during the daytime on May 16.

"If you're Bryant Gumbel, what are you going to do that morning except to
talk about the crime and the punishment?" asks Steve Brill, founder of
the magazine Brill's Content, which examines the media.

Coverage of the McVeigh execution, like that of several school shootings,
the saga of Elian Gonzalez, the trial of O.J. Simpson and other
sensational stories, is likely to show the media at its best and worst,
Brill says. "It'll probably produce more serious discussion about the
death penalty than we've ever had, but it'll also probably produce more
bad taste and more bad discussion about the death penalty than we've ever
had," he says. "That's what you get when you get a lot of coverage."

It 'doesn't seem quite right'

For Terre Haute officials, the McVeigh execution is an economic boon-in-
waiting that no one wants to talk about. The blue-collar city that gained
brief notoriety in the late 1970s when basketball legend Larry Bird
starred for the Indiana State University Sycamores stands to profit
enormously from its role as host to what authorities say could be as many
as 5,000 people who will come here for the execution.

All 227 rooms at the Holiday Inn have been sold out since Jan. 16, the
day McVeigh's execution date was set by a federal judge in Denver. In
subsequent weeks, every hotel and motel room in the city has been booked
for the week beginning May 13.

Real estate agents are offering deals on vacant office space to the
media. Families living near the prison have been getting calls from media
outlets that have dangled money for the temporary use of their homes as
news bureaus. Local restaurants, including The Stables Steakhouse, have
been told by community leaders to brace for hungry crowds.

"I am amazed when I hear the numbers coming here," says Melody Richards,
manager of The Stables. "It all doesn't seem quite right. What do you do?
Run an 'Execution Special?' "

Even so, Richards says the restaurant will be ready. "We could take about
1,000 (diners) per night, if we had to. All we can do is be happy and be
open. Right?"

Mayor Judy Anderson prefers to muzzle any talk of an economic benefit
from the execution. She says that she doesn't know whether there have
been any estimates of how much the community stands to gain, and that if
such projections exist, "I don't want to see them. Keep it away from me.

"Somehow it doesn't seem right for us to have smiles on our faces because
it's great for business," Anderson says. "But it is a fact of life. The
best we can hope for is that people leave here with a good feeling about
how they were treated. We're a place that just happens to be the federal
government's home for death row."

Anderson clearly is concerned about another potential impact of the
execution: violence from sympathizers of McVeigh, who, according to
federal prosecutors, wanted to destroy the government that he blamed for
the deaths in 1993 on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.

Closing schools, government offices

Anderson and other officials have discussed closing local government
offices on execution day, fearing that someone might target a government
building here "to make a violent statement."

"Right now, we're leaning toward closing government offices," Police
Chief Jim Horrall says. "If something's going to happen, we'd rather the
buildings to be empty." Local school officials have already decided to
cancel classes that day for 17,000 students, in part because parents have
expressed concern for the safety of their children.

Sometime in the next month, Horrall expects the FBI to provide local law
enforcement officials an "intelligence report" on groups of demonstrators
who are likely to come here for the execution.

For months, Terre Haute's police force - about 124 officers - has been
involved in crowd-control training. Authorities say the execution's
crowds are likely to represent one of the largest gatherings in the
city's history.

Barring any last-minute intervention - which is unlikely because McVeigh
has given up further appeals of his case - the bomber will be the 1st
person executed by the federal government since 1963.

The federal government rarely has imposed the death penalty, allowing
states to take the lead on the issue. Capital punishment was banned by
the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972, and when the court allowed executions to
resume in 1976, few federal crimes beyond espionage and fatal assaults on
federal facilities were punishable by death.

But since then, Congress has dramatically increased the number of
death-penalty crimes, largely to crack down on drug kingpins.

The U.S. government's move toward resuming executions led authorities to
designate Terre Haute's centrally located, 61-year-old prison to house
the federal death row. An execution chamber where lethal injections can
be performed was built here in 1995.

Horrall acknowledges that local law enforcement officials had hoped there
would be an execution or two before McVeigh's, if for no other reason
than to "get a couple under our belt before the crowds and the television
cameras came for this one."

Juan Garza, of Texas, was to have been executed here on Dec. 12, but
President Clinton, citing concerns about the disproportionate numbers of
racial minorities on death row, postponed the death of the murderer and
marijuana trafficker.

McVeigh's execution is "going to happen," Horrall says. "We have to do
what we have to do. We have to be prepared."

Besides adding security and accommodating the huge media presence, the
preparation has included confronting the community's feelings about being
at ground zero for federal executions.

For four days last week, Terre Haute began that process with community
discussions of the death penalty. Hosted largely by local churches, the
meetings featured guest speakers such as Oklahoma City resident Bud
Welch, whose daughter, Julie, was one of McVeigh's victims.

Speaking against the death penalty

Despite his loss, and to the annoyance of many in his hometown, Welch has
spoken out against executing McVeigh and the death penalty in general.

"As the day (of McVeigh's execution) approaches," says Dave Cox,
spokesman for the Sisters of Providence, "people are recognizing that
they are going to have to confront this major event in some way. We're
hoping this forum will stimulate some dialogue about some deeper issues
people should be considering when something like this happens."

For now, though, much of the anxiety here is about how the media will
portray a community that may not be quite ready for its close-up.

"It will be an interesting exercise for the people here," says Max Jones,
editor of the Terre Haute Tribune-Star. "But I think that whatever
happens may be a bit out of their control."

Jones credits prison Warden Harley Lappin with taking a leading role in
helping to prepare the city for execution crowds. Even so, Jones says
that he doesn't think a lot of residents are going to be happy "when they
see (network) golf carts running around" the prison grounds.

Lappin has declined requests for interviews.

When discussing May 16, some residents here find it too unpleasant to use
the word "execution."

"Nobody really knows quite what to call it," says Veronica McGlothan, a
local meeting planner whose company is providing tables and chairs for
some media outlets, as well as lining up catering services and additional
electrical power sources.

"The confusion about what to call it is a measure of the gravity of
staging something like this. Many are simply referring to it as a media
event. That pretty much describes it, I think."

(source: USA Today)

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Public schools in Terre Haute, Ind., and the surrounding county will
close May 16 because of safety concerns tied to the scheduled execution
of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

"It's the unknown that concerns us," said Ray Azar, who is in charge of
school safety and security there.

Mr. McVeigh, 32, is scheduled for execution at the U.S. Penitentiary in
Terre Haute for the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and injured more
than 500.

Thousands of people -- including reporters and protests -- are expected
to swarm the city on execution day.

Officials said the decision to close was based on worries about traffic
jams and student safety, no because the schools had been threatened.

"We have had no threats. We try to emphasize that," Mr. Azar said last
week. "Obviously, we're always concerned about school safety and
security, especially when you have that number of visitors in the
community from unknown backgrounds and so on.

"We just felt it was prudent for us to make this decision."

The closing affects the 16,000 students in the 3 high schools, 2
alternate schools and 30 others public education facilities in the
consolidate city-county school district.

Classes at Indiana State University -- located in Terre Haute -- will not
be canceled.

Mr. Azar said some bus routes run near the prison, and officials were
concerned that theroutes could not be run May 16.

"We could not be guaranteed that they would be able to get through on
that particular day, and, if they were, it would be very slow going," he
said.

The school district would not have to make up the day is state education
officials agree to a waiver.

Molly Ellingsworth - mother of an 8th-grader at one of the schools
closing for the day - does not agree with the move. She said schools are
only allowing Mr. McVeigh to continue to act as a terrorist by shutting
down the day of his execution.

"It just seems like it is an extenuation of what he did with the bombing
originally," Ms. Ellingsworth said. "He's just controlling the whole
situation and controlling people's lives.

"He's on this big ego trip."

(source: Dallas Morning News)

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Reiner Stensgaard Goldau
Ydbyvej 184
DK	7760	Hurup Thy
Denmark
+45-97-407628
goldau@adslhome.dk

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Page Updated Tue May 1, 2001 10:08am EDT