April 12, 2001
(WASHINGTON) – Attorney General John Ashcroft has decided that survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing and the families of those who died can watch the execution of Timothy McVeigh over closed-circuit television.
McVeigh is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on May 16 in the first federal execution in decades. He has admitted setting off the blast that killed 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
About 250 people have said they want to see the execution but only a few can be accommodated at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. The television hookup will be in Oklahoma City.
A similar arrangement was used for McVeigh’s trial, which was moved to Colorado because of the overwhelming publicity in Oklahoma.