The Oklahoma City federal building was crumbling, and then came the report there was a daycare center inside. For the first time ever, I said to myself, whoever did this really does deserve to die.

It was a passing thought. It faded as the immediate instinct for vengeance dissipated. It had vanished entirely by the time Timothy Mc- Veigh's execution became just another smarmy spectacle.

The idea of the death penalty makes the skin crawl. It is, in the United States, meted out with dreadful predictability against black people much more so than against whites. The executioner is called even when the convicted has the mental capacity of a child, when incompetent lawyers sleep through the trial, when the criminal might have been a child himself at the time of the crime.

A leading proponent of this view of the death sentence - that there are really no circumstances where reason might best prevail over retribution - was former Texas Gov. George W. Bush. So it does not surprise that the first suspected conspirator in the Sept. 11 terrorism has been shipped off to Virginia.

Justice Department officials boast openly that they are more likely to win a death sentence for Zacarias Moussaoui in the Old Dominion than in New York. Those pesky New York jurors earlier this year refused to put to death the terrorists - associates of bin Laden - who'd been convicted of bombing two American embassies in Africa. They're away for life instead.

These jurors endured months knowing they were targets for madmen. They looked at all the evidence; they heard the anguish of the victims' families. And still they saw complications.

Some said they feared execution would allow the terrorists to proclaim themselves martyrs, an honor these citizens fervently wished to deny. This was a complication, a legitimate one.

The complication in seeking the death penalty for Moussaoui, who authorities believe was preparing to become a hijacker when he was arrested in August, isn't easily apparent. If convicted, there is reason to expect a death sentence. The eastern district of Virginia was one of nine among the 94 U.S. Attorneys offices found by the Justice Department last year to account for 43 percent of all federal death-penalty cases.

The geographic disparity was seen at the time as cause for official concern. Now it is seized as an official opportunity.

There is no worry about this complication of the Moussaoui matter: The other suspects believed to have had direct involvement in plotting the attacks were rounded up in Europe. They are held there now and will not, under European Union policy, be extradited to the United States if they face death.

The Europeans settled against the death penalty long ago. They do not budge. They even got the Russians to declare a moratorium on executions. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who is the American president's good friend, has said he believes the death penalty is no deterrent, but a form of "revenge."

The blatant venue-shopping that brought Moussaoui to Virginia may be a crowd-pleaser at home. But it is the sort of thing that brings cringes abroad. It makes cooperating in the war on terror more difficult, not less.

The Justice Department says Attorney General John Ashcroft, who visited Europe last week, did not discuss extraditions. Moussaoui may well turn out to be the only alleged terrorist who is executed, even if others were more intimately involved.

I do not know if there is justice in this. I only know we are enveloped by death.

I still cannot pull myself away from the personal sketches of those murdered at the World Trade Tower, the soccer coaches and the funny grandpas and the newly engaged couples whose hopeful bond was severed before they could cut the wedding cake. The widows now struggle to get the Christmas tree up into the stand all by themselves; there is no explaining this loneliness to the kids.

For the victims' families, there is no peace, nor justice. No one can know their anger, or how many thirst for retribution or how many are too sad to contemplate it.

In reality, there is no penalty adequate to this task. We fool ourselves in pretending there is.

Copyright © 2001, Newsday, Inc.

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