Timothy J. McVeigh was sentenced to death on August 14, 1997, for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which left 168 people dead. Although United States Attorney General John Ashcroft explained that \u201call the citizens of the United States were victims of the crimes perpetrated by Mr. McVeigh,\u201d all such victims were not allowed to watch McVeigh\u2019s execution by lethal injection at the United States Penitentiary at Terre Haute (USPTH) on June 11, 2001.
\nIn Entertainment Network, Inc. v. Lappin, Internet content provider Entertainment Network, Inc. (ENI) requested permission to record and simultaneously broadcast McVeigh\u2019s execution via the Internet or, alternatively, to gain access to the live audiovisual transmission of the execution for the purpose of broadcasting that material. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) declined ENI\u2019s request on the grounds that 28 C.F.R. \u00a7 26.4(f) prohibited such recording. Section 26.4(f) states that, except as otherwise ordered by a court, \u201c[n]o photographic or other visual or audio recording of . . . [an] execution shall be permitted.\u201d ENI\u2019s challenge was \u201cto its face,\u201d meaning that, if successful, the section 26.4(f) ban could no longer be enforced against any member of the press.
\nThis note examines the reasons why the ENI court upheld the ban on the press\u2019s ability to record executions. After explaining the court\u2019s reasoning, it will discuss how, although the ruling was not surprising, the court erred in finding section 26.4(f) to be content neutral and gave unwarranted, uncritical weight to the government interest in upholding the ban. Given the terrorist events in New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, this note also examines the press\u2019s rights of access in the event that suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden should be somehow captured, tried in an American court, and executed. It will finally present a number of compromises that would have been more appropriate on the facts of ENI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Timothy J. McVeigh was sentenced to death on August 14, 1997, for the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, which left 168 people dead. Although United States Attorney General John Ashcroft explained that \u201call the citizens of the United States were victims of the crimes perpetrated by Mr. McVeigh,\u201d …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,45,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7738,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710\/revisions\/7738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}