If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev does not receive the death penalty, we might as well abolish it.
At the 2013 Boston Marathon, Tsarnaev and his brother detonated multiple homemade bombs, killed three people, including an 8-year-old and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, injured hundreds and had a shootout with police, according to CNN on April 12.
If that doesn’t qualify for the death penalty, what does?
Capital punishment is the law of the land. For literally thousands of years across the globe, humans have felt justified doing it to other humans, many times in the pursuit of justice. America has embraced it since Independence Day and for a variety of crimes, including arson, piracy, horse stealing, slavery rebellion and, of course, murder, according to PBS.
However, as we’ve evolved as a nation, so has our conscience. Ironically, we attempt to improve capital punishment; we sentence less people to death and have a more limited list of crimes that qualify for capital punishment while steadily knocking more crimes off the list, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Murder is still on there, though, and it’s a big one; we can’t help but want an eye for an eye.
We’ve created death row to civilize a primal impulse to make sure that the condemned are absolutely guilty, which has led to years of appeals. We’ll never know if we have allowed the occasional innocent man to fall through the cracks.
Sometimes, though, cases like the Boston bombing come along, and it is a reminder of why we have been unable to shed the death penalty from our ever-developing sense of justice.
There are 3,108 inmates on death row in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. If Tsarnaev’s bombing does not warrant death, then those 3,000 inmates should immediately have their sentencing changed to life or life without parole; never again should there be an execution.
It wouldn’t be fair for the U.S. justice system to kill any of those 3,108 inmates for murdering someone if Tsarnaev, who murdered three people and attempted to murder hundreds more in an act of terrorism, gets to live out the rest of his life.
Parents of the Boston bombing victims have stated that they would hope to see Tsarnaev sentenced to life without parole, in hopes to avoid reliving the horror of the day over and over through the appeals process in court, according to NBC last month.
Some may be afraid that killing the unapologetic murderer will paint him as some sort of martyr to other extremists.
Is it more acceptable to execute a man if his appeals process is shorter and more convenient or because he will not be seen as a martyr?
Is there some sort of perfect formula for who should die, and who should live? Or is death too finite a punishment for something as versatile as crime?
My mind completely agrees with the family, and with those who worry about his portrayal as a martyr, but my heart desires vengeance.
A CNN/ORC poll released on Tuesday stated that 53 percent of Americans favor the death penalty for Tsarnaev.
However, if Tsarnaev somehow avoids his deserved fate, then it would shatter the legitimacy of the death penalty and any credibility of putting an inmate on death row will be lost.
The Massachusetts jury’s decision will definitely kill something. America will be watching to see if it is Tsarnaev or the death penalty.