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Ashcroft considers closed circuit TV for McVeigh execution

Ashcroft says that he will confer with family members of the victims before making a decision on whether to show McVeigh's execution on closed circuit TV.

From CNN Producer Brad Wright

WASHINGTON (CNN) Attorney General John Ashcroft Wednesday said he is still considering whether next month's execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh should be shown on closed circuit television to survivors and families of McVeigh's victims.

Speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Ashcroft hinted he is leaning towards authorizing such a broadcast of McVeigh's May 16 death by lethal injection in the Federal Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Indiana.

"I intend to meet with these families shortly and confer with them before announcing a final decision ... on the way in which this matter will be conducted," Ashcroft said. "But it is with a view toward meeting the needs of these families and being sensitive to their concerns that we will make this decision."

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Ashcroft said he is awaiting a plan for the closed circuit broadcast from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which has determined that as many as 250 survivors and victims' relatives would be interested in viewing it.

"But before I act on that plan I want to confer with the individuals in Oklahoma, and families of the victims and that will take place shortly," said Ashcroft who said last week he may travel to Oklahoma City to meet with the families.

McVeigh was convicted of murder, conspiracy and using a weapon of mass destruction in the April 15, 1995 bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and maimed 500 others.

Ashcroft also promised that the U.S. government will extradite accused killer James Charles Kopp, who was arrested in France last week.

Kopp, accused in the 1998 sniper-shooting of Dr. Bernard Slepian, a Buffalo, New York-area obstetrician who performed abortions, was arrested in France, which may refuse to return him to the United States if he faces the death penalty upon conviction.

"We will extradite Mr. Kopp and we will bring him to justice, and I think for me to comment further on the circumstance would be inappropriate. We do not intend that he not be brought to justice."

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