Published in USA TODAY on June 16, 1997, shortly after Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for the  Oklahoma City bombing.

Many people feel that Timothy McVeigh received the sentence he "deserves." Many others, perhaps, believe he deserves a punishment harsher even than lethal injection.

What does McVeigh deserve? This, I believe, is not the key question. Let us say for a moment that he deserves death by torture. What prevents us from exacting that punishment? The answer is that as a society we have standards of moral integrity and human rights. We have laws that protect from torture even individuals who seem to deserve it. We do not want to sink to the level of brutality that works in the minds of the twisted.

For the same reason that our laws do not allow torture, the laws of most nations do not allow execution--even for those who "deserve" it. It is an issue of fundamental human rights. It addresses not so much what people like McVeigh deserve, but rather what we as individuals and as a society deserve: to preserve our moral integrity even in the most challenging of circumstances.

We must take the moral high ground. It is too easy to dwell in bitterness, anger, and for many, tragically, the excitement of revenge. Much more difficult is the process of standing with dignity without that fleeting, gratifying moment of hearing the death sentence announced, and painfully working toward some sort of inner reconciliation and healing which for some will be a lifelong process never fully resolved.

We must send the message that expressing anger through acts of violence is unacceptable. Tragically, having the death penalty in place did not deter McVeigh from translating his own anger into violence. We must do better than McVeigh.

Our country is the only Western nation that has not yet caught on. Someday I hope we, too, will uphold international human rights standards and abolish the death penalty.