Death draws a crowd

Public remains fascinated with executions

By Garrick Utley
CNN

The executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg stirred intense emotions in the Cold War era. While some Americans favored putting the convicted spies to death, others insisted the couple was the victim of anti-Semitism.

(CNN) -- It is a familiar scene.

Inside the walls of the prison the condemned man awaits his execution.

Outside, reporters gather and wait for the news that the most notorious, vilified murderer in the nation has met the fate imposed by judge and jury. Anchors and commentators broadcast live from the scene to a nationwide audience, which has followed the story from the day of the crime to this moment of the ultimate punishment.

The day is not June 11, 2001 and the man awaiting execution is not Timothy McVeigh.

It is April 2, 1936. At Trenton State Prison in New Jersey, Bruno Hauptmann is electrocuted for the kidnapping and murder of the child of Charles Lindbergh. These events, 65 years ago, rival the crime and death sentence of McVeigh in their hold on the public imagination. But then, executions have always possessed a power of morbid attraction, no matter what a person's view of capital punishment might be.

Why?

Because an execution touches our most basic human emotions-life and the taking of life.

Because an execution is the only time and place -- outside of war -- where the taking of a life is legalized. The law has given us moral permission to follow (if not see) a killing.

The American public closely followed the final minutes of the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as they walked to the electric chair at New York's Sing Sing Prison in 1953 although they had not killed anyone. They had been condemned for passing nuclear weapons secrets to the Soviet Union.

More recently, we could hear the pleas on prime-time television from convicted murderer Karla Faye Tucker as she awaited her execution in Texas in 1998. Tucker, who had become a Christian while in prison, pleaded with then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush during her appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live" to spare her life. He did not.

The English writer Samuel Johnson observed that "when a man knows he is to be hanged it concentrates the mind wonderfully."

That was a couple of centuries ago. Little has changed.

We can only imagine how McVeigh's mind is concentrated. We know how the media's and the public's attention will be concentrated on a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. And we know why.

Back to top