WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for a man who could face the same method of execution as Timothy McVeigh's asked the Supreme Court on Saturday for permission to videotape the Oklahoma City bomber's death.

The tape would not be released publicly, but could be used as part of Joseph Minerd's legal argument that federal execution by lethal injection is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, his lawyers said.

There was no immediate word from the court. One of Minerd's lawyers said he did not expect a ruling Saturday.

McVeigh, scheduled to die Monday morning for the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, has told his lawyers he does not object to the taping. The government opposes the idea, but it was not immediately clear whether the Justice Department would file a response with the court.

Department spokeswoman Chris Watney said Justice lawyers had not yet received formal notice of the appeal. She declined further comment.

The appeal first goes to Justice David H. Souter, who has jurisdiction over Pennsylvania. It was not clear whether he would act alone on the appeal or refer the matter to the full court.

Minerd is challenging the government's plan to seek execution in his case. He is jailed in Pittsburgh for the 1999 bombing death of his pregnant former girlfriend and her daughter. No trial date has been set, but federal prosecutions have indicated they will seek the death penalty.

Minerd was charged under the federal arson and bombing law that was also used in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

''This struck us as the best opportunity to preserve evidence of an actual execution for use in our trial if need be,'' Minerd's chief lawyer, Richard Kammen, said Saturday.

Kammen is a specialist in opposing the death penalty and chairman of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' death penalty representation committee.

Lethal injection is no more humane than the electric chair or the gas chamber, Minerd's lawyers wrote in asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower federal appeals court's ruling that blocked the taping.

''Beneath the public relations view of its antiseptic and sanitary nature is another reality,'' the lawyers wrote, saying that lethal injection ''often provides a gruesome and painful and prolonged death to its victims.''

If prosecutors presented ''victim impact statements'' about the effect of a killing on surviving family members, then Minerd should be able to present the videotape as evidence of what his own family might suffer should he be executed, his lawyers wrote.

A tape should be made to document whether the McVeigh execution goes as smoothly as the government says it will, Minerd's defense team said.

''Given the widespread attention on Mr. McVeigh's execution, problems with that execution would demonstrate that no authority could guarantee that execution by lethal injection would go smoothly,'' Minerd's lawyers wrote.

The taping issue emerged Thursday when U.S. District Judge Maurice B. Cohill in Pittsburgh granted the request to tape McVeigh's execution.

The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia then blocked the videotaping order, prompting Saturday's appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department opposes any videotaping, citing a federal regulation that prohibits any photographic, visual or audio recording of executions.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has said the government would do ''everything in our power'' to uphold the regulation.

McVeigh's execution by injection in Terre Haute, Ind., will be the first federal application of the death penalty since 1963.

McVeigh lawyer Chris Tritico said McVeigh does not oppose the videotaping or its use in the unrelated Minerd case.

Lawyers for Minerd stressed that the taping would be done unobtrusively using the same closed-circuit system that will beam video of the execution to survivors of the 1995 bombing and families of the dead.

The tape would remain sealed as part of the court record in Minerd's case, his lawyers wrote.

Allowing McVeigh's execution to pass unrecorded would cause ''irreparable harm'' to Minerd by depriving him of potentially valuable evidence, his lawyers wrote.