Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 6, 1995 TAG: 9507060050
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: M.J. ANDERSEN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
We had read that he refused to communicate with investigators, except to signal that he regarded himself as a prisoner of war. He was the fanatic we needed, to explain the senseless bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City two months ago.
But Timothy McVeigh's lawyers recently released pictures and videotape that showed a different man: a smiling young person in khakis, at ease, friendly, laughing with his lawyers. The sight was repellent, in a way the images of the stern and shackled defendant never were. Why is this?
Certainly, there is natural disgust at the sight of an accused killer enjoying the very life of which he is suspected of depriving others. But in this case, there was more.
McVeigh's lawyer, Stephen Jones, said, ``The principal purpose is to present our client as he really is.''
How is he, really. Do we know?
Every accused person in the United States has the right to a fair trial. But a fair trial is based on evidence, not on the defendant's image. This is the O.J. defense all over again: Look at this nice guy. (Roll the tape, please.) How could he possibly have?
TV is the court of public opinion, and nowadays, every high-profile case is tried in it - never mind the decades of effort that legal scholars, lawyers and judges have devoted to refining the nation's criminal procedures. Lawyers know it; juries know it. How will the people see this? What verdict do they want?
Americans are experts in making up their minds about people they do not know. They practice on Oprah and Geraldo. In the people's court, we like you or we don't. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Just don't give us anything too complicated.
The people's court has influenced events at least since the Nixon-Kennedy debates. In front of the camera, Richard Nixon looked like a hunted animal. Jack Kennedy looked like a movie star, and was elected president.
What is perhaps most dismaying about these new images of McVeigh is that they deprive us of a villain who seemed equal to the weight of the crime. All those people murdered - blown to bits, crushed or buried alive.
It seemed, when we saw the man in the orange jump suit, that here was a likely explanation. There was something wrong with this man. He was different; not like us. His aimless intensity had taken him down a path of wrong thinking in which error capped error, and 167 people ended up paying.
But Timothy McVeigh seemed like anybody - maybe the guy on Ricki Lake who turns on the charm as he tries to justify his affairs, or his unwillingness to commit.
The new images collapse evil into something portable, and average - something you can almost see the point of, even if you don't quite agree. It's just a guy who did this, the images say. Just some guy.
There will be a new wave of sympathy for McVeigh, beginning, probably, with the right-wing militias and extending to ordinary folk who have not spent much time building the skills of critical thinking. They believe in crazy conspiracies, are skeptical about things they should trust, and trust cockeyed notions toward which they should be skeptical.
And who can blame them? Their view of the world, like most Americans', is constantly manipulated by TV, which they basically have no faith in. McVeigh is the anti-hero made for our times - for people who feel overwhelmed by a system grown too complex, and in which the truth is finally just too difficult to sort out.
The government is about to go on trial in this case. So is reality. Those parts will be easy; suspicions and accusations will fly. (Did the government frame this guy? Did his friends?) Trying McVeigh and his fellow accused, Terry Nichols, on the other hand, will make the labors of Hercules look like light work.
Without the people's court of TV, the real court would have a better shot at justice. And while we cannot in a free society control what cameras do outside the courtroom, we can do something about their presence inside. Cameras transform a laborious truth-seeking enterprise into entertainment. And that inevitably means a narrative that follows a standard story line: The good (and handsome) man wrongly accused; the bad seed who unleashes incalculable evil.
But most lives do not fit a standard narrative. And courts do not exist to deliver a good tale. They should stop being used for this purpose.
Timothy McVeigh looked almost sweet. A Newsweek interviewer found him disarming, smart, approachable and relaxed. McVeigh told the interviewer he had felt ``horrified'' when shown images of the children killed in the bombing; ``It's a very tragic thing.''
Some would say it's worse than that. And that is precisely why this young man has no business appealing to the people's court, and should be tried the old-fashioned way.
M.J. Andersen is a Providence (R.I.) Journal editorial writer and columnist.
- Knight-Ridder Tribune
by CNB