That Wednesday morning in late April of 1995 began much like any other morning. I woke up too late, rushed around to get ready for work, hearing and seeing no news. I drove the five minutes to work, thinking about the plans for my upcoming birthday party, sat in my cubicle and started up my computer. Shortly afterwards I heard a rumor floating around the office about an explosion in Oklahoma. It seemed to be a while before the facts began to unveil themselves: a government building in Oklahoma City had been bombed.

As the details unfolded over the next hours and days, I shook my head, unwilling to believe my ears. Innocents had been killed and wounded. Nineteen children had been murdered. One hundred and sixty-eight people, whose only crimes were working in a building that was targeted for a madman's extreme and mis-directed anger, died horrible deaths.

This morning, a bright Monday morning in mid-June of 2001, was far from any other morning. The events and preparations of the past years, months, days led up to this morning. Events which culminated in the death of the confessed murderer of those 168 innocent people. The murderer's death in Terre Haute, Indiana was state ordered and sponsored, the first federal prisoner to be excuted in thirty-eight years and the first ever to be excuted in the Terre Haute death house. In the space of fourteen minutes Timothy McVeigh, 33 years old, former Gulf War veteran and decorated soldier, died a quiet, unrepentant death.

The death penalty has been a subject of heated controversy for decades, but it seems no more so than since 1997, when McVeigh was convicted of eleven counts of conspiracy, using a weapon of mass destruction and first-degree murder in the deaths of the eight law enforcement officials who were working in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Eleven days after his conviction McVeigh was sentenced to death. And the circus and debate intensified.

McVeigh appealed his conviction through the courts to no avail until December 2000, when he realized that his appeals would never seriously be heard. It wasn't until early this year when McVeigh confessed to the bombing, and only in the recently published book "American Terrorist". He stated that the bombing was to avenge the 1992 government siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho and the 1993 federal raid of Koresh's compound near Waco, Texas. He never showed remorse. He had said that his only regret was that he did not level the nine-story building.

Like most Americans, I've considered my thoughts and feelings about the death penalty, turned them over and over, tried to reconcile my dismay and disapproval of state-sponsored murder with my need to see McVeigh pay for his horrendous crime. I'll be honest. Many times raw emotion celebrated the fact that McVeigh would not be long for this world. Such a terrible, previously unthinkable act of terrorism deserved the worst possible punishment. In America, that punishment is the death penalty.

But the more rational side of me thought about it, realized that if it's wrong for individual citizens to kill another human being with premeditation, then it is also wrong for the government to kill with premeditation. Murder is murder is murder. Pure and simple. We would be doing it only for vengence, just as McVeigh claimed his act was vengence. We would be no better than the man we were putting to death.

Besides, why should the government give McVeigh what he wanted? In the end he asked to die. He saw himself as a martyr for his warped cause, whatever it really was, and knew that he would be the center of all attention as long as he was sentenced to death. The entire world would be focused on him and his life. And death. What better way for an angry, twisted man to bid farewell to a life and world that disappointed him?

Perhaps he also knew that a life in prison without the possibility of parole would be a far harhser fate then a painless death lying on a gurney. No doubt he would be used and abused in ways that were repugnant to him, faced with eventual irrelevance, and possible death at the hands of his fellow inmates. Certainly not unheard of.

I confess, my primitive instincts would be far more satisfied with that outcome than the slow evaporation of life he experienced this morning.

What of the families of the victims? Many would argue that their feelings, their need for closure, are far more important the the thoughts and emotions of some clerical worker in Los Angeles. Perhaps they're right. But a number of them did not want McVeigh to be put to death, correctly believing that such an act of vengencce would not bring back their loved ones. To kill another person in their names would tarnish the memories of those lost to them forever.

Still others, hoping that this morning's events would bring them closure, watched on closed circuit monitors as McVeigh's life dissipated. Were they looking for remorse in McVeigh's face as the drugs dripped into his veins? Thinking that maybe, as the murderer before them faced his mortality, he would recant and apologize for his horrific actions? If so, they were doomed to disappointment. McVeigh's last view of this world was the ceiling tiles of his death chamber, his last words not spoken by him, but in a 19th century poem read by the warden:

"My head is bloody, but unbowed.

. . . I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul."

It's no wonder they still felt rage, or were surprised at the emptyness, the lack of jubilation in their souls. Perhaps they realized that closure is rarely as simple as watching a man die.

Naturally enough, some online journallers felt moved to write about today:

The Book of Rob - Rob writes an open letter to his little Chubbin.
Baker Street - Michael imagines the ordinary start of an extraordinarily horrible day.
Nova Notes - Al ponders McVeigh's "martyrdom" and arrogance.
John Scalzi's Whatever - John revisits a column he wrote in 1995.
The Diary Thing - Rick tries to understand.

I'm sure there are many more entries out there, but these are the journals I read most often and all are very thoughtful, very moving takes on today's events.