On April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City, a federal American building was the target of a terrorist attack. Timothy McVeigh perpetrated the explosion in which 168 people perished. Although he was suppose to be executed by lethal injection on May 16, 2001 at 7 a.m., his death was postponed to June 11, 2001.
During a talk last week entitled Executing Timothy McVeigh: Madness, images and the American State, former Concordia professor, Catherine Mavrikakis, presented her analysis on how the U.S. government used the law to “stage the image of the staging of death” by only allowing a select few to view and witness McVeigh’s execution. In 1963, there was a ban on the universal broadcast of execution because at the time, the government believed fascination with the event would prompt people to misuse the images.
Mavrikakis argued the images of McVeigh’s execution were not presented to inform the selected people (victims and family) that justice was served but rather to make the spectators of the execution become its witnesses.
According to the Universit
