Did the Oklahoma City Bombers Succeed?
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| DOI | 10.1177/000271620157400114 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
185
Did
the
Oklahoma
City
Bombers
Succeed?
By
JORDAN
STEIKER
Jordan
Steiker
is
the
Cooper
K.
Ragan
Regents
Professor
of Law
at
the
University
of
Texas
School
of Law.
He
has
written
extensively
on
capital
punishment
and
federal
ha-
beas
corpus.
He
has
also
worked
with
state
legislative
committees
addressing
death
penalty
issues
in
Texas,
and
he
codirects
the
capital
punishment
clinic
at
the
University
of
Texas
School
of Law.
ABSTRACT:
The
worst
case
of
domestic
terrorism
in
our
country’s
history,
the
bombing
of
the Alfred
P.
Murrah
Federal
Building
in
Oklahoma
City,
led
to
the
enactment
of
a
landmark
antiterrorism
statute.
Not
surprisingly,
several
of
the
statute’s
provisions
strengthen
federal
power
in
extraordinary
and
unprecedented
ways
to
counter
the
threat
of
terrorism.
But
other
provisions
radically
re-
strict
the
ability
of federal
courts
to
enforce
the
federal
constitutional
rights
of
state
prisoners.
How
could
Congress
miss
the
apparent
irony
of
responding
to
the
destruction
of
a
federal
courthouse
with
its
own
assault
on
federal
judicial
power?
This
article
argues
that
the
role
of
federal
habeas
corpus
has
changed
substantially
over
the
past
three
decades.
Whereas
federal
habeas
had
emerged
during
the
War-
ren
Court
as
a
general
forum
for
supervising
state
court
compliance
with
constitutional
norms,
it
has
now
become
primarily
a
forum
for
death
penalty
litigation.
Congress
appears
to
have
recognized
this
transformation,
and
the
antiterrorism
statute
confirms
that
Con-
gress
views
federal
habeas
through
the
lens
of
the
death
penalty
rather
than
the
lens
of
federalism.
This
article
explores
the
costs
of
the
"capitalization"
of
habeas
and
the
subtle
relationship
between
federalism,
federal
habeas,
and
the
death
penalty.
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