ON APRIL 19, 1995, JUST a few minutes after 9 A.M. , the lives of 168 men, women, and children were brutally snuffed out through the actions of one man named Timothy McVeigh. More than 800 others were injured and scarred for life, both physically and emotionally, in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The bombing was the deadliest mass murder ever carried out on U.S. soil. McVeigh showed no remorse for his actions, even when confronted by survivors who described, in detail, the horrors they witnessed.

After finding him guilty of eleven counts of murder, conspiracy, and the use of a weapon of mass destruction, a jury of seven men and five women determined that the accused deserved to die rather than spend the rest of his life confined in prison. They did not take this decision lightly. The jurors' deliberations ended the eleven-week-long...