March 21 USA: The Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty Welcome to the Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty. Within this website, you will find everything you need to know about the Catholic Churchs involvement in ending the use of the death penalty. While the U.S. Catholic bishops have been calling for an end to the use of the death penalty for 25 years, this new Campaign was launched in March of 2005. The impetus for the Campaign was the anniversary of the 1st comprehensive U.S. Catholic bishops statement on the topic issued in 1980. Since that time, numerous individual bishops and state Catholic conferences have issued similar calls to end the use of the death penalty. This unique website has all of this information and more. For an overview of the current campaign, we urge you to see view our Campaign Brochure. On March 21, the Campaign was formally launched at a press conference held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. At this event, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick , Archbishop of Washington and member of the bishops Committee on Domestic Policy, Mr. John Zogby , President of Zogby International Polling organization, Mr. Bud Welch , father of an Oklahoma City Bombing victim, and Mr. Kirk Bloodsworth , wrongfully convicted death row inmate. (source: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (Email us at [email protected] ) ****************** Statement by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick----Archbishop of Washington March 21, 2005 I'm here today to launch a Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty and to recommit the US Conference of Bishops to that goal. Bishop DiMarzio, the Chair of our Domestic Policy Committee, could not be here so he asked me, as the former Chairman, to tell you how important this campaign is for our Church and for our nation. This holy week is the time Catholics and all Christians are reminded of how Christ died - as a criminal brutally executed. This cause is not new - our bishops' conference has opposed the death penalty for 25 years. But this campaign is new. It brings greater urgency and unity, increased energy and advocacy and a renewed call to our people and to our leaders to end the use of the death penalty in our nation. For us, ending the use of the death penalty is not simply about politics, it is about our faith. We believe human life is a gift from God that is not ours to take away. Our faith commits us to the life and dignity of every human person - first the victims of violent crimes and their families, who deserve our help and protection. Today we will hear from a victim's father, Bud Welch. Our Catholic teaching on the death penalty is both clear and complicated. The Catholic Church has long acknowledged the right of the state to use the death penalty in order to protect society. However, the Church has more and more clearly insisted the state should forgo this right if it has other means to protect society. Pope John Paul II, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Vatican Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, and statements from the U.S. bishops are all clear and consistent that the use of the death penalty ought to be abandoned in our nation because we have alternative ways to protect society. For us this is not about ideology, but respect for life. We cannot teach that killing is wrong by killing. We cannot defend life by taking life. In his encyclical The Gospel of Life, the Holy Father challenges followers of Christ to be "unconditionally pro life." He reminds us that "the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil. This campaign brings together our social justice and pro-life efforts. We are united for action to end the use of the death penalty. This is the plea of Pope John Paul II, the call of Catholic bishops, a challenge for our Church and a task for our nation. This is not just about crime, but also about justice - what kind of society we want to be. The death penalty in our land is deeply flawed - more that 100 people on death row have been exonerated; the death penalty is unfairly applied depending on where a crime is committed, the race of the victim and offender, the quality and costs of defense and other factors. Today we will hear from a person who spent years on death row for a crime he didn't commit. The use of the death penalty really cannot be mended, it must be ended. The death penalty diminishes all of us. Its use ought to be abandoned not only for what it does to those who are executed, but what it does to us as a society. This unprecedented campaign begins with prayer and reflection. It is also about challenge and change, education and action. The Catholic campaign will challenge the temptation to answer violence with violence. It will confront the notion of "an eye for an eye." The Catholic campaign will work to change the debate and decisions on the use of the death penalty; building a constituency for life , not death; calling on our lawmakers to lead, not follow, to defend life, not take it away. The Catholic campaign will educate - in our parishes and schools, universities and seminaries. We need to share Catholic teaching with courage and clarity, reaching out to those who teach our children, write our textbooks, form our priests, and preach in our pulpits. This is a work of formation and persuasion, not simply proclamation. The Catholic campaign will act - with continued advocacy in the Congress and state legislatures, in our legal briefs and before the courts. Our advocacy already has contributed to steps forward - for example, Supreme Court decisions citing our briefs in striking down the death penalty for the retarded. This is just a beginning. John Zogby is about to share the results of a remarkable study. It will show a sharp decline in Catholic support for the use of the death penalty. I am gratified, and encouraged, but I am not surprised. I am one of those Catholics who has reflected on and reconsidered my support for the use of the death penalty. I am part of a family with a lot of policemen. Support for the death penalty was part of growing up. However, I am a now teacher and pastor in a Church that puts the defense of human life and dignity at the center of its mission. And I was moved by the call of Pope John Paul II to be "unconditionally pro-life" and his consistent call to resist the use of the death penalty. I've come to believe the death penalty hurts all of us, not just the one being executed. It diminishes and contradicts our respect for all human life and dignity. I'm not a young man. But as a pastor, teacher, and citizen, I hope I will see the day when the nation I love no longer relies on violence to confront violence. I pray I will see the day when we have given up the illusion that we can teach that killing is wrong by killing. ***************************** Statement by Kirk Bloodsworth "My name is Kirk Bloodsworth. In 1993, my capital conviction was the first in the United States to be overturned by DNA evidence. In 1984, I was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 9-year-old Dawn Hamilton in Baltimore, Maryland. I spent 8 years, 11 months and 19 days behind bars before DNA testing proved my innocence. "In that time, my life had been taken from me and destroyed. The Catholic Church provided me with essential support in my time of need, and I converted to Catholicism in 1989, while I was serving time behind bars. I am a deeply spiritual person and continue to embrace the Church. Its values help to guide me as I travel across the country to tell my story. "My family lived through the nightmare of my wrongful conviction with me. My father spent his entire life savings and lost our family home on my case. My mother, who always supported me and believed in my innocence, died five months before my release. She never heard the results of the DNA test. "It took another 10 years after my release in 1993 to clear my name and truly convince people of my innocence. In September 2003, the prosecutor who persuaded 2 juries in Maryland to sentence me to death almost 20 years ago, told me that the DNA testing that exonerated me in 1993 had finally - after years of my urging - been run through the states database and matched the DNA of another man. Last May - May 2004 - that person pled guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment. "I was a former marine with no criminal record, who was nowhere near the scene of the crime, but I was still convicted and sentenced to death for a crime I didnt commit. If it could happen to me, it could happen to anybody. And it does. Since 1973, more than 100 people have been exonerated from death row after being cleared of their charges. More than 150 people have been wrongfully convicted and later freed from prison based on DNA evidence. "Every bit of my story exemplifies the problems in the death penalty system. The same systemic flaws that led to my wrongful conviction, such as mistaken identification, inadequate representation, prosecutorial misconduct, and basic human error, plague the cases of innocent people in prison and on death row. "Today's survey results show Catholics growing concern about our capital punishment system and the potential for the ultimate injustice - the execution of an innocent person. I hope that stories of wrongful convictions, like mine, open up peoples eyes to the importance of making a criminal justice system that is fair and protects the innocent." Kirk Bloodsworth is a Program Officer of The Justice Project (TJP). TJP, a 501(c)(4) organization, works together with The Justice Project Education Fund, a 501 (c)(3) organization, to address unfairness and inaccuracy in the American criminal justice system. ************************* Statement of John Zogby, President and CEO, Zogby International This has been an important and fascinating project. In November, we conducted the largest and most comprehensive study (over 1700 interviews) of Catholic attitudes on the death penalty; we found that support for the use of the death penalty among American Catholics has plunged in the past few years. The intensity of support has declined as well. SLIDE 1 As the chart indicates, in past surveys Catholic support for the death penalty was as high as 68%. In our November survey, we found that less than 1/2 of the Catholic adults in our poll (48%) now support the use of the death penalty, while 47% oppose it. Even more striking, though, is the drop in intensity of support among those Catholics who continue to support the use of the death penalty. Further, the percentage of Catholics who are intensely supportive of the death penalty has been halved, from a high of 40% to 20% in this survey. SLIDE 2 Since the original survey was conducted in November, we decided to get a fresh set of numbers and conducted a follow-up survey this month. And as this slide indicates, it produced virtually identical results. However we found a 10% increase in Catholics who strongly oppose the use of the death penalty (27% to 37%). This may be a growing trend. SLIDE 3 Of particular interest is the finding in both surveys that frequent attendees of Mass are less likely to support the death penalty. Traditionally, this group has been seen as among the most politically conservative cohorts on some issues. In addition, younger Catholics are more opposed the use of the death penalty. And those who attended Catholic colleges also are more opposed to the death penalty. SLIDE 4 In our March survey, we found that almost a third of Catholics (29%) were "once in favor of the use of the death penalty, but now oppose it." The number one reason cited for this change is "religion/belief." SLIDE 5 Unlike the general population, the most popular reasons why Catholics oppose the death penalty are related to "Thou shalt not kill" and "respect for life." They lead over such important concerns as poor legal representation among the condemned, the conviction and sentencing of some innocent people, and racially discriminatory practices on capital murder cases. SLIDE 6 One positive sign and call to action for the bishops' Conference is in our March survey, 2 out of 3 Catholics apparently understand the teaching of the Catholic Church on the death penalty. In our earlier survey, Catholics by a wide margin believe the Pope and the Bishops oppose the use of the death penalty. SLIDE 7 4 out of every 5 Catholics (79%) believe that opposition to the use of the death penalty is "consistent with the defense of human life." This number includes 69% of those who describe themselves as somewhat supportive of the death penalty. Also, just about two of three (63%) Catholics are deeply concerned about what the use of the death penalty "does to us as a people and a country." Again, this includes a majority of those who are somewhat supportive of the death penalty. These results offer promise of persuading more Catholics on the issue. SLIDE 8 For the Bishops' Conference, there is much good news in this research and much to build on. There is also clearly more work to be done in preaching, teaching, and helping Catholics think about and act on the death penalty. This is why I believe the Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty is an important development for the Church and the nation. (source: US Conference of Catholic Bishops) ********************************** "Always to Care, Never to Kill"--Terri Schiavo and the right to life. National Review Online recently had a chance to talk to Robert P. George, the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics, about the Terri Schiavo case and the broader issue of assisted suicide. Professor George has published widely on law, ethics, and philosophy in books, scholarly journals, and, too rarely, in articles for NRO. He previously served as a presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. National Review Online: How should we go about thinking about the circumstances under which it is morally permissible to refuse medical treatment? What principles ought to guide us? Robert P. George: From a moral vantage point, it can be, though it will not always be, permissible to decline treatment - even potentially life-saving treatment - when one's reason for declining the treatment is something other than the belief that one's life, or the life of the person for whom one is making a decision, lacks sufficient value to be worth living. What we must avoid, always and everywhere, is yielding to the temptation to regard some human lives, or the lives of human beings in certain conditions, as lebensunwerten Lebens, lives unworthy of life. Since the life of every human being has inherent worth and dignity, there is no valid category of lebensunwerten Lebens. Any society that supposes that there is such a category has deeply morally compromised itself. As Leon Kass recently reminded us in a powerful address at the Holocaust Museum, it was supposedly enlightened and progressive German academics and medical people who put their nation on the road to shame more than a decade before the Nazis rose to power by promoting a doctrine of eugenics based precisely on the proposition that the lives of some human beings - such as the severely retarded - are unworthy of life. NRO: Just to provide greater clarity to the principle, could you explain how it applies to the cases of the killing of enemy combatants in wartime and of the death penalty? George: Sure. Killing in war - assuming that it is not a genocidal war - is not done on the ground that enemy soldiers have lives unworthy of life. Where a war is just, the killing of combatants on the field of battle is done in self-defense or in the defense of innocent third parties who are victims, or potential victims, of an unjust aggressor. Even where a war is unjust, the reason for killing is typically something like expanding a nation's borders, gaining wealth, or avenging a perceived historical wrong. The exception again is a genocidal war, where members of certain groups are targeted for extermination because their enemies regard them as unfit to live. The Nazis killed - murdered - thousands of handicapped people and millions of Jews precisely because they regarded them as unfit to live. German soldiers - some of whom were Nazis, some of whom weren't - killed hundreds of thousands of British and American soldiers in battle, not because they regarded them as lebensunwerten Lebens, but in the cause of territorial expansion and world domination. Now let's consider the death penalty. Its supporters typically do not claim that the death-row inmate has a life unworthy of life. That isn't their justification for capital punishment. Their claim, rather, is that the individual convicted of a capital murder should be executed because that is what justice requires as payment for his heinous crime. Their justification for the death penalty is retributive. (Of course, they may also believe that the application of the death penalty will prevent the murderer in question from repeating his crimes and perhaps also deter others.) They may fully recognize the inherent dignity and value of every human life, including the life of the murderer himself, yet believe that by wantonly taking the life of another human being the murderer has forfeited his own right to life. Some supporters of the application of the death penalty in the case of Karla Faye Tucker acknowledged that she had repented of her crime and reformed herself. They certainly did not regard her as unfit to live. Indeed, they believed that, if spared, she would probably devote her life to good causes. Yet they believed that retributive justice demanded her execution. Of course, opponents of the death penalty, such as the pope, say that a due respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every human life, including the life of a murderer, forbids the death penalty except in circumstances in which it is the only way to prevent a particular murder from killing yet again. But the dispute between its supporters (in most cases) and opponents is about the moral implications of the principle that human worth and dignity are inherent. It is not a dispute about whether the principle is valid and ought to govern our deliberation about when, if ever, killing is morally permissible. NRO: To what extent do these principles depend on sectarian religious belief? George: Not at all. At the same time, they are in harmony with the teachings of the Jewish and Christian traditions. These traditions proclaim the inherent worth and dignity of every human being as a creature made in the very image of God - imago dei. In our own culture, the Catholic Church has played a leading, albeit far from exclusive, role in defending these principles when they have come under attack by proponents of abortion and euthanasia. But the Church herself has not put these ideas forward as matters of special revelation. The Church's own teaching is that they are matters of natural law that all people of good will can understand and for which every mature individual in possession of his faculties can be held responsible. They're knowable by the light or reason and conscience even apart from the teaching of the Bible or the magisterium of the Church. NRO: What's the role for public authority in enforcing these norms? George: First, it is to ensure that no laws are premised on the proposition that some lives are lebensunwerten Leben. And not only must public authorities refrain from acting on any such premise, they should protect people from being victimized by other individuals, or by institutions, who would treat some lives as unworthy of life. The police always have the right and, where it is within their power, the duty to prevent suicide - except now in Oregon under certain circumstances. Even where attempted suicide is not punished as a crime, it is decriminalized rather than, strictly speaking, legalized. It is not given the status of a legal right, except again in Oregon. When the police find a guy perched at the edge of a bridge getting ready to jump, their job is to stop him and prevent him from going through with it if they can. They are not merely supposed to try to ascertain whether he has carefully thought things through and made a rational decision to do away with himself, or if he's in a fit mental state to decide. They are supposed to prevent the suicide because the law refuses to honor even a person's own judgment that his is a life unworthy of life. NRO: Back to the question of declining medical care - George: We know of course that there are lots of legitimate reasons for declining medical care. Often it's burdensome in nature; often it interferes with other opportunities that one might have, the opportunity for example to spend the remaining time one has, even if it will be shorter, in the embrace of one's family in the home rather than in an institution; sometimes it's the daunting expense that is involved. These can be morally legitimate reasons for declining medical care even where treatment could extend life a bit. But at the same time, we know that our decision as a society to recognize a right to refuse treatment, though it is the morally and prudentially correct decision in my view, will open certain limited opportunities for abuse. There will be circumstances in which people who want to do away with themselves will be able to accomplish the goal by exercising the right to decline life-saving medical care. And there will, alas, be circumstances in which some people, exercising so-called substituted judgment, make unjustified "choices for death" - to use the language of euthanasia advocate Ronald Dworkin - of people for whom they are supposed to be caring. It is important to see, however, that the law does not validate such choices. It treats abuses as unfortunate but unavoidable side-effects that must be tolerated and cannot prudently be eliminated without sacrificing important values and objectives. There is nothing odd about this. In many areas of law, possible abuses must be tolerated as side effects of honoring important values. We know, for example, that some criminals and their attorneys will abuse the procedural protections that our society affords to persons accused of crimes to escape just punishment. Yet we rightly consider certain protections to be essential to the system of justice. Now this, by the way, the Supreme Court actually managed to recognize in the assisted-suicide cases, when the justices unanimously rejected a right to assisted suicide while at the same time accepting the traditional common-law understanding that people have a right to decline even potentially life saving medical treatments. What the Court said is you can't deny people pain-killing narcotics even if a side-effect of the pain-killing narcotics is the shortening of life. That's entirely consistent with the moral norms I am explaining and defending, and which the Judaeo-Christian tradition endorses. NRO: As you know, there's some question about what Terri Schiavo's wishes were or would be now. How much should turn on this question? George: It is the wrong question. It is pointless to ask whether Terri Schiavo had somehow formed a conditional intention to have herself starved to death if eventually she found herself in a brain-damaged condition. What's really going on here -and I don't think we can afford to kid ourselves about this - is that Terri's husband has decided that hers is a life not worth having. In his opinion, her continued existence is nothing but a burden - a burden to herself, to him, to society. He has presumed to decide that his wife is better off dead. Even if we were to credit Michael Schiavo's account of his conversation with Terri before her injury - which I am not inclined to do - it is a mistake to assume that people can make decisions in advance about whether to have themselves starved to death if they eventually find themselves disabled. That's why living wills have proven to be so often unreliable. One does not know how one will actually feel, or how one will feel about one's life and the prospect of death, or whether one will retain a desire to live despite a mental or physical disability, when one is not actually in that condition and when one is envisaging it from the perspective of more or less robust health. Consider the case of a beautiful young woman - an actress or fashion model perhaps - who is severely burned in a fire. Prior to actually finding herself in such a condition, she might have supposed - and even said, if the subject had come up in a conversation - that she would rather be dead than live with her face grotesquely disfigured. But no one would be surprised if in the actual event she did not try to kill herself by starvation or some other means, and did not want to die. In any event, it is clear that the only reason for Michael Schiavo's decision is that he considers Terri's quality of life to be so poor that he wants her to be dead. He claims that she would want that too, which I don't grant, but even if he's right about that, we should treat her like anyone else who wants to commit suicide. We rescue, we care. We affirm the inherent value of the life of every human being. Our governing principle should be always to care, never to kill. NRO: What are the proper limits of the federal government's authority here? George: I don't see that any just authority of the state of Florida is being displaced by the effort of Congress to ensure that Terri's right to life is honored and that civil rights claims on her behalf are given a hearing in the federal courts. By "just authority of the state of Florida," I mean the authority of the people of Florida to make laws through their elected representatives, subject to the provisions of the state constitution and the Constitution of the United States. I am not impressed by appeals to "federalism" to protect the decisions of state court judges who usurp the authority of democratically constituted state legislative bodies by interpreting statutes beyond recognition or by invalidating state laws or the actions of state officials in the absence of any remotely plausible argument rooted in the text, logic, structure, or historical understanding of the state or federal constitution. The fact is that, under color of law, Michael Schiavo is seeking to deprive Terri of sustenance because of her disability. Under federal civil-rights statutes, this raises a substantial issue. It cannot be waved away by invoking states' rights. The federalism argument is more plausible in the case of Oregon's assisted-suicide law than it is in Terri Schiavo's case. It wasn't some judge in Oregon who manufactured a right to assisted suicide or claimed to find it hiding in a penumbra. I think the people of Oregon made an unwise, indeed, tragic, decision, but it was a decision made by the democratically constituted people of Oregon. Whether or not there are legitimate grounds for the federal government to override that decision, the federalism argument for not overriding it is far weightier and more serious than it is when trotted out as a reason to keep Congress from acting to prevent Terri Schiavo's being starved to death at the command of her husband. The other thing that Congress is being accused of is interfering in a family decision. Now look: Terri Schiavo has been abandoned by her husband. Michael Schiavo took a vow to be faithful to Terri "in sickness and in health, forsaking all others, 'til death do us part." But he has not been faithful; he has not forsaken all others. He has set himself up in a marriage in all-but-name with someone else, a woman with whom he already has two children. He has disrespected Terri and, indeed, forsaken her. Now he is seeking to bring about her death by starvation. Notice something wrong with this picture? Terri's parents and siblings, by contrast, have never abandoned her. They are prepared to shoulder all the burdens, including the financial burdens, of caring for her. They want to provide the therapy that many medical people who have observed Terri, whether at the bedside or by videotape, believe can help her. No one expects a full recovery, but it may be possible for her to make genuine progress. That possibility will be foreclosed, however, if she is killed by deliberate starvation before it can begin. (source: National Review) ***************** Court won't hear case over Bush judicial nomination The Supreme Court, dodging a charged dispute over judicial nominations, declined today to consider whether President Bush overstepped his bounds in naming a federal judge while Congress was on a short break. The court refused to hear a trio of cases challenging the "recess appointment" of William Pryor to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year. The appeals argued that Pryor's temporary appointment was an end-run around the Senate's right to confirm or reject judicial nominees. The justices' move avoids a contentious issue on the eve of a widely speculated vacancy on the court. If they had intervened, it would have set up a constitutional showdown over White House powers at a time when ailing Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist is considered a strong prospect to step down this term. The Constitution gives presidents authority to fill vacancies for a year or 2 during a Senate "recess." At issue was whether a "recess" means whenever the Senate is not meeting, such as during short intra-session breaks, or only during the Senate's annual adjournment at year's end. In a statement accompanying the cert denial, Justice John Paul Stevens emphasized the court did not necessarily reject the case because the appeal lacked merit. He suggested justices might be interested in hearing the case later when the appeals have run their full course in the lower courts. "It would be a mistake to assume that our disposition of this petition constitutes a decision on the merits of whether the president has the constitutional authority to fill future (judicial) vacancies, such as vacancies on this court," Stevens wrote. Earlier this month, Bush renominated Pryor, whose term is scheduled to expire at the end of the year, for a lifetime appointment on the 11th Circuit. "The president asserts the power to make 'recess appointments' of judges during any break of the Senate - including, literally, even a break for lunch," wrote Thomas Goldstein, a Washington attorney representing Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., in the cases. "That unprecedented conception of the recess appointments power obviously vitiates the cardinal authority of the Senate to pass on the president's nominees," he stated. Bush administration lawyer Paul Clement countered that it has been long-standing practice for presidents of both parties to make recess appointments, including 12 Supreme Court justices, anytime the Senate is not meeting. "A recess appointment power that could be freely invoked during a one-day inter-session recess, but would be categorically barred during a 3-month intra-session recess, would be 'irrational,'" Clement wrote, noting that intra-session recesses often are one month or more. Bush named Pryor, a former Alabama attorney general, to the 11th Circuit during a Presidents' Day recess last February, after the Senate refused twice to bring his nomination to a floor vote. The 11th Circuit serves Alabama, Florida and Georgia. His nomination had languished in 2003 as abortion rights advocates fought Pryor over his criticism of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. Pryor also was lambasted for filing a Supreme Court brief that compared homosexual acts to incest and pedophilia. Kennedy and other Democrats said the recess appointment during the 11-day break was improper, arguing that Congress would have to meet everyday to avoid presidential power grabs. But Pryor's colleagues on the 11th Circuit ruled 10-2 last fall that it was constitutional. "We are not persuaded that the president acted beyond his authority in this case: both the words of the Constitution and the history of the nation support the president's authority," wrote Chief Judge J.L. Edmondson, a Reagan appointee. Pryor, who is scheduled to remain on the 11th Circuit until the end of this year, removed himself from the case. If the Supreme Court had accepted the appeal, it would have put in doubt dozens of criminal and civil cases in which Pryor participated. In addition to Pryor, Bush used a recess appointment last year to install Charles Pickering of Mississippi to an appeals court, another nomination Senate Democrats had blocked. Pickering announced in December that he would not seek the nomination for a permanent seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans; Bush re-nominated Pryor for a lifetime seat last month. The cases are Miller v. United States, 04-38, Franklin v. United States, 04-5858, and Evans v. Stephens, 04-828. (source: Associated Press) OKLAHOMA: The Forgiving For many it became a kind of redemptive tableau: the bloodied child in the protective arms of a fireman, pulled from the wreckage of the bombed Alfred P Murrah Federal Building. Within 24 hours Baylee Almon, in her white socks and yellow vest, and Captain Chris Fields, giving the tragedy some kind of nobility, had become the universal image of the Oklahoma bombing. The picture, captured by an amateur photographer, defined a monumental moment in American history. It became an unspoken eulogy. It enshrined the past. But the image doesn't tell the whole truth. Out of the frame, a policeman in civilian clothes was shouting that he had a critical infant before passing her to Fields. Fields took Baylee to an ambulance across the street, while the policeman returned to the building. "The first thing I did was check for breathing and circulation," says Fields, when we meet in Oklahoma, "any signs of life. And there were none." In the picture she looks unconscious. But Baylee was dead. She never really stood a chance. Given over to the clutches of pure physics, the first wave of super-hot gas hit the building at 7,000 miles an hour. Fields, whose own son was 3 years old at the time, thought to himself: "Man, somebody's world is ready to fall apart and collapse today." For Aren Almon Kok, Baylee's mother, the Oklahoma bombing gradually blocked out the light in her life. Baylee had turned one year old on April 18, 1995. On April 19, at 9.02am, Gulf War veteran Timothy McVeigh exploded a 4,800-pound cocktail of fertiliser and fuel oil, detonated remotely, in a rented truck beside the Murrah building. Baylee was enrolled in pre-school at America's Kids, the day-care centre on the 2nd floor of the building. There were little cut-out hands and flowers in the window. Within seconds the bomb, planted in hatred of the government, had completely rearranged the physical nature of the building and the people within it. The bomb had no favourites: it killed every race, age and gender. It killed solid people, the kind who stuck to their lunch hours, worked towards their pensions, who never caused a fuss. There were 168 dead, including 19 children, 15 of whom were in the day-care centre. 10 years on and the bitterness, says Aren, has receded and the pain diluted. Even the photographs on the wall gather more dust now than grief. Yet, despite her considered and dignified demeanour, she looks like she might implode. She starts speaking calmly before looking hard at the floor. She sighs. She cries a little. She cries some more. Then she is silent, and the silence telegraphs around the room her abject loss. "She would be 11 now," says Aren, without animation, "going into sixth grade. That's what I think about, who my daughter would have become. That's what makes me truly sad." Aren, who sits heavily on the edge of her sofa, lives in a two-storey house in Midwest City, outside Oklahoma City. A large American flag flutters outside, dominating the front lawn, which is neatly tended. The large back lawn is fenced off in order that her 2 children - Bella, 7, and Broox, 4 - don't stray too far from her or their father, Stan Kok, whom she married over a year after the bombing. Baylee's father, a young marine, left Aren before their child was born. She had met him at the Oklahoma State Fair while taking a shot on the Pirate Ship ride. A few months later she was pregnant; at first she'd mistaken it for appendicitis. But when she called to tell her boyfriend, she was accused of trapping him, so she settled into the life of a single mother, moving into an apartment beside the Murrah federal building and enrolling Baylee in the day-care centre. Then McVeigh struck. By the time Aren had found her daughter in a nearby hospital, her life was already falling apart. The evening after the bombing, Aren stayed awake most of the night at her grandmother's house. Her own apartment had been blasted apart. The only thing that remained hanging on the walls was a smiling portrait of Baylee. The following day she would be haunted by another image. She first saw the picture of her daughter with Chris Fields in the Daily Oklahoman newspaper. Although much of the child's face was obscured, she knew it was Baylee and, at first, was shocked by it. But she liked the picture, the way the fireman held her daughter, the way he cradled her. The way a circle of intimacy had developed around them. So she set out to meet him. "I met Chris about two days later," she says, her body motionless like the trunk of a fallen tree. "We talk about a lot of things, but never about what happened. We just never." Over the following weeks and months Aren and Chris met regularly. It became a communal rite of passage. Chris, who was 31 at the time, would stop whatever he was doing if she called, to comfort her. Mostly he found her depressed and shattered from all the medication she was taking. "I was sick to the stomach when I heard Aren wanted to see me," he says. "I was afraid she was going to scream at us for not doing enough. But all she wanted to do was thank us for getting her baby out." Aren was just 22 at the time. "I can't think of anyone who could have handled it as well as she did." One of the hardest things for Aren became seeing the photograph of her daughter in shops, reproduced on T-shirts, lapel pins, belt buckles and even key-rings. Only 11 people were visually identifiable after the bombing, but she had to see her daughter dead every day. The image was everywhere, defining the infant although she never had the chance to define herself. "She was my daughter and I was not consulted. But we had no rights to the picture because when you die your rights are relinquished. I met the photographer once, and he told me the Lord tells him how to use the picture. The Lord told him to make money off my suffering." Aren went to court to try to limit the use of the image and lost. The photographer won the Pulitzer Prize for his picture. Other victims began to resent the photograph. In interviews they reminded people that Aren's daughter wasn't the only child lost in the bombing. Despite the condolence letters and the donations - around $50,000 helped her get a new apartment and car - she doubled her medication. Even back then she often imagined what it would be like 10 years from her daughter's death; if someone would be wearing a T-shirt with Baylee's faded face on it. "I went through all kinds of emotions," she says, her body shaking. "I think it helped that I was so young. I didn't have the anger that a lot of people had. All I wanted was for everyone to look at me and think that Baylee would have grown up to be a good person. There was anger, but I didn't want to let it out." Just 90 minutes after the bombing, 33-year-old Timothy McVeigh was pulled over by police for driving without a licence plate. Shortly before he was due to be released on April 21, McVeigh was recognised as a bombing suspect and charged with the bombing. When McVeigh's ex-army friend Terry Nichols discovered he was also wanted for questioning, he handed himself in to police and was later charged with involvement in the bombing. The motive for the attack was apparently retaliation against the US government for the bloody end to the siege near Waco, Texas, in which 82 members of the Branch Davidian religious sect died. The Oklahoma bomb exploded exactly 2 years to the day after the final assault at Waco. McVeigh was convicted of federal conspiracy and murder charges, and was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, in Indiana. Nichols, 49, was sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for his role in the worst act of US domestic terrorism. He was spared the death penalty when the jury deadlocked on a sentence. More than 2,000 survivors and relatives of the 168 dead victims were eligible to witness McVeigh's execution. Of the approximately 300 who initially told authorities they wanted to watch McVeigh die, 231 showed up at the federal prison facility. Aren attended a closed-circuit showing of the execution in Oklahoma. "It didn't feel good or bad," she recalls, Broox playing at her side. "I wasn't saying, 'Yes, he's gone.' I know what it's like to lose a child and that's hard. It would still have been difficult for his parents. I never really cared for enjoying that. And I didn't want to know why he did it either. His reasons were never going to be good enough." She stops. A few minutes pass in silence. "My bad days are getting less and my good days are getting better. But it's still very hard. "It doesn't bother me that Nichols is still alive. Timothy McVeigh thought he had done something great. Terry Nichols, I think, feels bad now that it's all said and done. An eye for an eye isn't going to bring my daughter back, or make me feel any better. But you could talk to everyone who lost someone and you'd get 168 different answers." Someone made a painting of the photograph of Baylee with the fireman and sent it to her. She keeps it away in a closet and never looks at it. She has a house full of happier photographs of her daughter. Chris Fields used to keep a poster-sized version of the picture behind a pile of old shoes in a closet. He hasn't seen the picture in years. Philip James Allen, known to everyone as PJ, wheels his bicycle through the living room of the house belonging to his grandmother, 53-year-old Deloris Watson. He says it cost $170. The 11-year-old has lived with his grandmother for more than a decade; she adopted him from her own daughter, who was unable to look after him following a bad marriage. PJ, the youngest survivor of the Oklahoma bombing, has few visible signs of injury except his constant wheezing and some scarring on the back of his head, where small concrete rocks were once embedded. There is also scarring from his tracheotomy tube, removed more than a year ago. I ask PJ about the bombing. He just shrugs. "I can't really remember," he answers politely. Deloris has dedicated her life to looking after the youngster - who, at 19 months of age, was blown through a wall on to a pavement below the day-care centre. When she found him at the local children's hospital 5 hours later, PJ was suffering from second and third-degree burns over 55 per cent of his upper body. His left arm was broken in three places and he had inhaled gas and heat, charring his lungs and leaving his vocal cords permanently damaged. He was 1 of 6 children to survive that day. He was sent home from hospital 45 days later. In her devotion to the boy Deloris has sacrificed her job and then her marriage, divorcing her husband, who blamed himself for PJ's injuries. He was supposed to take PJ to the day-care centre that morning but wanted to stay in bed, so Deloris took him instead. They arrived earlier than normal. If her husband had taken him at the usual time, they would have arrived after the bomb exploded. "He took on that mental anguish and became very angry and I did not want to raise this child angry at anyone," says Deloris. Throughout the trials PJ remained very sick and Deloris refused to get involved in the proceedings. Three years passed before she even discovered the names of all those who had died. "I was just trying to keep my boy alive," she says. "It's not like I'm opposed to the death penalty. I just don't want my son to ever feel like it's okay to kill anybody for any reason." Throughout this time the American Red Cross and other organisations paid living expenses and provided mental-health counselling for the family. The federal government, she insists, gave her family nothing. "We are neglected compared to the victims of September 11 in terms of funding and financial assistance. I'm not opposed to these people being helped, they deserved it, but where was our help? The federal government failed to provide us with medical care." Her mouth is working angrily now, as if trying to expel something distasteful. The Unmet Needs Committee, a group of churches and non-profit organisations that created a special fund for bomb victims, built PJ a room to protect his body from damaging ultra-violet rays. It also had a humidifier and germ killer to prevent the spread of illness. PJ now attends school after being taught at home for years. After many delays and problems over funding - Deloris lives on welfare benefits and charity - his tracheotomy was finally removed at the end of 2003. When McVeigh was executed, Deloris bought PJ a little bear from the Oklahoma Memorial gift shop and wrote the date on the tag. "That will be his only memory of it when he is older." The image is a poignant one. She knows her grandson was lucky. Edye Lucas, formerly Smith, had just bought a house the day before the explosion. She had been off work on both Monday and Tuesday, due to sickness. She had planned on taking Wednesday off, which would have meant her two sons, Chase, four, and Colton, 2, wouldn't have gone to the day-care centre, but her co-workers at the Internal Revenue Service had arranged an office "pre-birthday party" even though her birthday was on Friday. "Everybody was waiting for me to cut my cake," she recalls. "When I got up to blew out the candles, the bomb went off." And that was the moment her life was changed forever. "The night before I had stayed in their room. We lived in my mom's house and they had twin beds and we lay there for over an hour. We read books and sang songs, but that night was different. I was probably excited about moving house and all that stuff, but that night really stays with me." We meet at her house in Norman, an area of flat Oklahoma farmland that has changed little in decades. Photographs of her dead children line a hallway; there are more on the fridge. She keeps hundreds more in numbered photo albums in a closet in her bedroom. "The next morning I dropped them off, got a hug and a kiss. Chase was a real comedian. He was bright and funny, a nice little boy to be around. He opened doors for people. He'd say, 'Here you go, pretty lady.' Colton didn't talk a whole lot and he was really fat. He ate all the time. People called him Chunky Monkey. They were best friends." Her brother, Danny, a policeman, found the bodies of the boys at the bomb site. He made her promise never to ask about that day, and what he saw or what they looked like. "I just try to remember them the way they were when I dropped them off." The boys are buried together in a single white casket. There was a time, says Edye, an engaging 32-year-old, when she was so angry she didn't care what happened to her. If she had died it would have been fine. "I'd be with them, I was afraid of nothing. But I picked up the pieces and life went on." She didn't seek therapy and thinks that perhaps she was in shock for some time. She had divorced the boys' father before they died, but they remarried in 1995. She divorced him again a year and a half later. Remarrying had been "a big mistake". Then she married again and had one son, Glen. The marriage didn't last, and she married a 4th time. It lasted four years. About 5 weeks ago she married again. "I knew things would get better," she says, biting her lip, "because they couldn't get any worse. But I didn't hate Tim McVeigh, he was just an idiot. I don't hate him. Terry Nichols? I don't have any ill will towards him either. This is what I was taught growing up. You don't hate people, and I don't. It just comes natural." About seven years ago Nichols sent a letter to Edye, followed by Christmas cards. In the letters he thanked her for "her kindness". Edye had dinner once with Nichols's ex-wife. She told her he talked about God a lot. Edye never replied. "It's no big deal." Ten years on and Edye is devoid of anger. The more I press her, the more she insists it is true. "I don't have anything to be angry about. He is a nice person, he just did a bad thing. The Bible teaches forgiveness so I just forgive. What good am I going to get from being angry? I chose not to do that. I don't hate them." The hardest times were the years she went childless. That was horrible. After Glen was born a lot of it changed. "I didn't even know who I was then. I'm not the same person now." She's 32, had five marriages and two dead children. She smiles a huge smile. Tiny lines crack her face like a broken glass jar. A smudged tear forms on her mascara-covered eyes. Some search for truth, others are desperate for a final conclusion. Most are prone to outbursts of anger. But they all share this in common: that one event ten years ago changed their lives for ever, and that they are all now vastly different people. They lost their families and, at some point, lost themselves. Bud Welch lost Julie, his 23-year-old daughter, in the bombing. At one point he couldn't wait until "that bastard fried and the gates of hell swung open". But that's in the past. At the Oklahoma National Monument, near the reflecting pool and a bronzed gate framing the place where the bomb exploded, Bud sits patiently recounting the events of the past ten years. The bells of a nearby church ring out. The outdoor memorial opened on the fifth anniversary of the bombing; one structure is engraved 9.01, another 9.03. The bomb went off at 9.02am. The times symbolise before and after. In between are 168 empty bronze chairs facing the pool. The Alfred P Murrah building was never rebuilt. Bud doesn't come here often because it brings back too many difficult memories. A cordial man with abundant silver hair, he talks proudly of his daughter, a daily communicant at her local Catholic Church. Julie worked in the Murrah building as a Spanish translator for the Social Security Administration, serving her government in one of the least exalted positions: helping the poor. After they found the body, rescuers said if she had been able to walk another three seconds from where she stood, she would probably have survived. Anecdotal details matter: two weeks after Julie's death, Bud learned she had planned to announce her engagement. Mostly he was tormented by his daughter's last moments, turning them over in his mind, wondering if she died instantly or if she suffered. As he sank deeper into depression, he turned to alcohol. "The pain was so great," he says, "that I wanted them executed: no trials, nothing. And I was always against the death penalty before. I struggled with this for about ten months. But then I remember going to the site in January 1996. It was the last place she was alive. My head was sore from abusing alcohol, everything was a mess. I just thought I needed to move forward. I finally realised that taking these men from their cages to kill them was not part of my healing process. I was living with revenge and hate and it was destroying me. It destroyed Tim McVeigh. It destroyed 168 people." Part of his healing led him to Bill McVeigh, Timothy McVeigh's father. "I met him three and a half years after the bombing. That helped, because what I found was a bigger victim of the bombing than myself. Every morning Bill awakens he's got that noose around his neck that his son is convicted of all these murders. It was helpful for both of us. We've never really talked about the bombing itself, just personal, private things. "I was talking to Bill about Terry Nichols being remorseful, and Bill doesn't like Nichols, he blames him for leading Tim astray. I asked Bill if he thought there were other people involved and he said no. He'd asked his son several times, and said that when you would ask Tim a question about things he would never lie to you. If he answered your question he would tell you the truth." Bud talks for a little while longer, then says: "As far as I am aware, Tim said sorry for what he did. He said it to a priest and a bishop who went to see him the last few days of his life. One of them gave him the last rites of the Catholic church. They won't say which one. To receive the Last Rites you have to be sorry. And I don't think Tim would have lied about that so close to his death. If he said that he was sorry, I think he truly meant it." In 1999, Bud Welch was named Abolitionist of the Year by the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty for his work against capital punishment. Since the explosion at least six people closely connected to the bombing have taken their own lives. Jannie Coverdale is among a resolute group of survivors and members' families who are still searching for evidence of a wider bombing conspiracy. "I will never stop asking questions until I get answers," says the sprightly 67-year-old. "I'll give up when they put dirt on my face." No-one can tell her to get over the deaths of her grandchildren Elijah, five, and Aaron, 2 - and move on, "because they died horribly". Like Deloris Watson, she had custody of the boys because her son, their father, had a troubled marriage. That these children were alive at all was both a miracle and a mystery to her. Then they were gone. Jannie lives in a small apartment with Adrian, an 11-year-old Hispanic/Native American boy she adopted. Surrounded by a babble of furniture and hundreds of angel ornaments and pictures, her face is filled with desperate fatigue. All the kids in the neighbourhood black, white and Latino - call her Granny. Some call her Miss Jannie. She viewed McVeigh's execution on closed-circuit television because she wanted to watch him die. Then she began to concentrate on Nichols. "After he didn't get the death penalty I got angry again," she says. "But after some time I began to see things differently. I realised we can't keep killing people. I felt a burden being lifted. I wrote Terry Nichols a letter saying that God had felt fit to spare his life and that he should tell the truth about what really happened. I told him I didn't hate him any more, I love him, and I thank my God for that. I will never like him but I will love him." For the past few years Nichols has been writing to her. "He thanked me. In the letter he says it [the bombing] should never have happened. I think one of these days he will tell who else was involved." She promised Nichols she would not show his letters to anyone. "In the courtroom Terry looked like he could be easily persuaded. Then you look at Tim and you see a leader. Terry was a follower." Not for the first time does she mention them by their first names. "Over the years I have got to know Tim and Terry. They have made themselves part of my life. I didn't choose them to be in part of my life. I feel I know them quite well." Then she pauses. Aaron was a lovely child, Elijah more mischievous but bright for his age. He could recite the alphabet, count to 20 and knew all his colours. She kept their clothes and toys for a long time until she could no longer bear it. She sent their clothes to orphans in Rwanda. Their bicycles went to the Oklahoma Memorial Museum. Elijah's stroller is tucked away in a closet. She cannot look at it. For a long time there is silence in the living room. "Sometimes I feel like it was all yesterday. I just wish I could remember what they were wearing and then I could lay them down to rest." When the bomb went off, Randy Ledger, a maintenance worker, had just left the day-care centre where the boys were playing, after replacing fluorescent lights. "I had watched one of the female workers rock a baby while some of the children put their faces against the window, looking outside," he says, grappling for some dim, distant memory. "Nothing justifies the murder of these children." Randy was a 280lb bodybuilder and the impact, though injuring him dreadfully, did not kill him. His myriad infirmities were horrendous - a severed carotid artery and jugular (he lost 2/3 of his blood); the left side of his face blown off from his cheek to the rear of his skull; 30 per cent tissue loss from the left side of his face and throat; a severe puncture to his larynx, causing a cracked oesophagus; severed nerves to his left shoulder - the list goes on and on. He is still paralysed on the left side of his face, and suffers severe headaches and emotional trauma including memory loss, anxiety attacks and dyslexia. He talks quietly, deliberately, as if the pain of the bombing spills out with every word. We talk for more than an hour. He will attend the anniversary events, like many of the others, but maybe this year the survivors and those who have lost family members will dig their heels in. Try to stop any further descent into bitterness. Randy Ledger says he forgives McVeigh for what he did. "Jesus forgave the sinner, so I must be able to forgive." He closes his eyes again to concentrate on memories, blurred by rubble and the screams of the dying. It is humbling to listen to him. "The old is past," he says. "All things are new." (source: The Herald (UK) )
