Everyone one on the Boston jury was pro-capital punishment so it is not surprising that Tsarnaev got the death penalty. It was not going to come out any other way.
I guess I never will understand how any rational person can think that killing someone you have in custody makes any moral or logical sense. Put in its simplest form it is just revenge and not much beyond cold blooded murder. We make a big deal about our legal rituals and all that claptrap but when you get down to the nitty gritty we are still pretty primitive.
As I have said many times here, I don't believe in capitol punishment under any circumstances. Not for this young man or for anyone else. There is not a valid argument for why more death is the right thing to do.
2 comments:
As I've read somewhere, "Killing someone to prove that killing someone is wrong, is wrong." I am opposed on principle to capital punishment in all cases.
That said, I cannot work up much sympathy for Tsarnaev. If there's anything worse than killing someone you know, with passion, in anger, it's killing people you don't know, for no definable reason, with cold indifference. The jury was right about one thing: Tsarnaev manifested no remorse whatsoever. My reaction to that is not to kill him, but to imprison him for the rest of his sorry goddamned life, with only the works of William McGonagall to relieve the tedium.
So long as our prisons continue to be able to hold those guilty of the very worst, most heinous crimes,
I am opposed to capital punishment. As I haven't heard of any supervillains recently brought to justice, I expect my stance in this regard to remain unchanged. I do in fact believe some few people are likely to improve the world only by leaving it, but I have no faith whatsoever in the ability of any society (past, future, existing, or theoretical) to consistently and accurately determine exactly which lawbreakers deserve to live or die.
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