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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Federal prison officials here Friday began the final
preparations for the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh - even
as another death row inmate in Pennsylvania sought unsuccessfully to have
McVeigh's death videotaped in an attempt to prove that capital punishment is
cruel and unusual.
Although he spent Friday in his regular cell on death row, McVeigh now must obtain official approval from the warden at the U.S. penitentiary for any personal visits. And the prison staff was readying a van to move him from his cell block to the new execution facility just outside the main prison building.
There he will remain inside the 9-by-14-foot holding cell until just before 7 a.m. Monday, when he will be dressed in khaki pants, shirt and slip-on shoes and escorted a few steps into the execution chamber.
McVeigh is expected to be moved from his cell to the death house no later than Sunday morning, 24 hours before the execution. Prison officials would not say exactly when he would be moved, citing security concerns.
The 33-year-old former Army soldier from Pendleton, N.Y., who on Thursday dropped his last legal appeals, will be strapped onto a gurney and given three chemical injections - the last of which will stop his heart. He will be the first person put to death by the U.S. government in 38 years.
But until the curtains are opened and witnesses can see McVeigh on the gurney, officials plan to reveal very little information about his final hours.
For instance, they will not discuss his last meal, his instructions on what is to be done with his body, even whether he has spoken by phone or in person with his attorneys, family or friends.
But they did say that they have amended a prisonwide "lock down" so that the rest of the prisoners can watch the National Basketball Association championship series Sunday night.
Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, a federal judge ordered that McVeigh's execution be videotaped, only to have a federal appeals court block the order.
U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill granted the request to videotape the execution at the urging of lawyers in an unrelated case who are trying to show that the federal death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
But the ruling was stayed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia.
The ruling by Cohill involves a federal death penalty case against Joseph Minerd, charged in the pipe-bombing deaths of his ex-girlfriend and her daughter. Minerd was charged under the federal arson and bombing law that also was used in the Oklahoma City bombing case.
Chris Tritico, one of McVeigh's lawyers, said a defense lawyer in the Pennsylvania case contacted him to ask if McVeigh would object to the videotaping. McVeigh agreed to allow it, Tritico said.
In Terre Haute, electric golf carts carrying prison officials and television news producers shuttled about amidst hastily constructed broadcast booths and dozens of television trucks parked bumper to bumper. The last news briefing tent was being erected, and prison officials said the stage for one of the largest media extravaganzas in years - 1,400 people are expected to cover the event - was nearly complete.
For security reasons, government offices in and around Terre Haute will be closed on Monday, and the start of summer school was postponed for a day.
McVeigh has been housed in the federal death row Special Confinement Unit - known as "Dog" unit because it was once the "D" wing of the prison - since July 1999, when he and the 19 other men facing federal death sentences were moved to Terre Haute.
For the transfer to the death house, McVeigh will be shackled at the arms and legs and swiftly moved past the cells of several of the death row inmates he has come to know. He will step outside briefly, then enter a prison van where his view through the windows will be obscured by heavy metal grilles. He will not be visible to any of the 1,300 other prisoners.
This carefully choreographed transfer, in which McVeigh will travel only about 500 yards, has been planned since 1993, practiced repeatedly so everyone knows where to be from the moment McVeigh leaves his cell until guards close the door on his holding cell in the death house.
"There's a team of people who've been formulated for the purpose of this execution," said Dan Dunne, chief spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons. "They've been trained here, we've done mock exercises and we're training this week - just to ensure that everything is done in a coordinated manner."