reaction from oklahoma city victims

the following exerpt from a washington post news article illustrates another reason why the death penalty isn't all it's proponents make it out to be.

'Too Easy for Him'
For Witnesses in Oklahoma City, A Long Day Brought Little Relief

By Paul Duggan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 12, 2001; Page A01

OKLAHOMA CITY, June 11 -- When it was over, Shari Sawyer stepped into the morning sunlight, feeling empty.

"It was too easy for him," she said after watching the death of Timothy J. McVeigh on closed-circuit television. "He just laid there. . . . He went to sleep. That was it."

"Not like my mother, who was on the fourth floor and fell four floors," said Sawyer's husband, Jay, who also viewed the execution. His mother, Dolores Stratton, was at work

in the Alfred P. Murrah building when McVeigh's bomb exploded on April 19, 1995. Now Jay Sawyer, 31, and his 30-year-old wife squinted through tears and spoke in voices freighted with 2,245 days of grief.

"So many people suffered," Jay Sawyer said. "For him just to go to sleep just is unfair."

He and his wife stood at a lectern in front of scores of journalists on a vast, outlying field at Will Rogers World Airport here, after the couple and 230 other witnesses had watched the execution on five television screens in a federal prison facility on the airport grounds. About 320 witnesses had signed up to view the telecast, officials said, but dozens changed their minds.

Many of those who came called it a memorable, but ultimately unsatisfying, experience. The Sawyers' anguish, their undiminished rage at McVeigh, was a common theme in witnesses' remarks today. Witnesses who spoke with reporters said they felt no lifting of their emotional burdens after watching McVeigh die. Some voiced resentment at the painlessness of his death; others said they were angered by his final "statement" from the execution table -- his silence.

"He actually lifted his head, looked directly into the camera," said Larry Whicher, 39, whose brother, Secret Service agent Alan Whicher, was among McVeigh's 168 victims. "It was a totally blank, expressionless stare. His eyes were unblinking. . . . I truly believe that his eyes were telling me . . . if he could, he'd do it all over again."

"I feel he got the last word," said Jay Sawyer, referring to the stare. ...