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A Fitting Sentence for the Boston Marathon Terrorist
Townhall.com ^ | May 17, 2015 | Jeff Jacoby

Posted on 05/18/2015 5:27:49 AM PDT by Kaslin

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's life is a meager compensation for the murder of Martin Richard, Lingzi Lu, Krystle Campbell, and Sean Collier. But it is the highest price he can be made to pay under our system of justice, and a jury of his peers has unanimously recommended that he pay it.

From the outset, the death penalty was the sentence most Americans believed Tsarnaev should receive, assuming he was guilty of the grisly Boston Marathon bombing. Long before the case went to trial, all doubt of his guilt had vanished. Not even his lawyers tried to suggest otherwise. On the trial's opening day, defense attorney Judy Clarke bluntly acknowledged: "It was him."

What all these weeks in the federal courthouse in South Boston established was not that Tsarnaev is a murderer and a terrorist — that we knew. What was made brutally clear is that he feels no remorse for the blood he shed and the pain he caused. Witness after witness described, in heartbreaking and agonizing testimony, what Tsarnaev's bombs had wrought. The jury saw and heard it all, and drew the logical conclusion: The heartbreak and agony were the whole point.

Like Timothy McVeigh, like the 9/11 hijackers, like the bombers of Pan Am Flight 103, like the Fort Hood shooter, Tsarnaev and his brother set out to slaughter as many victims as possible, and to do so with a maximum of cruelty and horror. Under federal law, the death penalty is meant to be reserved for the worst of the worst. Tsarnaev placed a nail-filled pressure-cooker bomb a few inches behind an 8-year-old boy, and sauntered off to buy a quart of milk after the child was blown to pieces. If such a murderer doesn't qualify as worst of the worst, no one does.

Opponents of capital punishment strenuously faulted the Justice Department for seeking the death penalty. They argued that the bombing was a terrorist attack aimed at Massachusetts, which has rejected the death penalty as a matter of policy. But it was Americans that Tsarnaev determined to terrorize and kill. The message he scrawled in the boat where he was found expressed hatred for America. It would have been a dereliction of the government's duty had it shied away from prosecuting him to the full extent of the law.

Copley Square was repaired long ago; there is no sign of the blood and gore and rubble of that awful day in 2013. But the destruction Tsarnaev caused will last a lifetime — in shattered families that will never be made whole, in physical wounds that will never fully heal, in emotional trauma that will never be shaken off. Above all, in the death of innocents who will never again smile, or dream, or love.

Human justice is imperfect. But in returning a verdict of death for the Boston Marathon bomber, 12 Massachusetts jurors have come as close as they could.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS:

1 posted on 05/18/2015 5:27:49 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Isn’t it a shame that this country has devolved to the point where someone needs to say this, as opposed to it being common sense?


2 posted on 05/18/2015 5:30:28 AM PDT by ArtDodger
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To: Kaslin

He deserve death and the sooner the better. He is using up valuable oxygen good people could use. He has been found “guilty”, end of story. No appeals should be allowed.


3 posted on 05/18/2015 5:32:00 AM PDT by DaveA37
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To: DaveA37

I agree, especially that no appeals should be allowed. Though he should have to suffer until he is finally excecuted


4 posted on 05/18/2015 5:35:04 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin

If this isnt a death penalty case, then what is?


5 posted on 05/18/2015 5:35:16 AM PDT by Sasparilla (If you want peace, prepare for war.)
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To: ArtDodger

Here’s the thing...99.9999-percent of Americans (roughly 300-million) will go about their chores, work, and tasks everyday, without any thought of killing someone. The vast number of us do it for sixty-plus years. So when you come across some guy or gal who just can’t prevent the urge, or hold their moral compass straight, or find compassion within themselves....well...it’s not really about finding a ‘fitting’ sentence. It’s about removing them from the life cycle. They aren’t with the rest of us.

If this was a car accident or drunken driving...we’d simply send the guy to ten to twenty years of prison. But this is a cold-blooded guy who would have killed dozens of kids to make himself happy. We don’t need to waste time or money on such characters.


6 posted on 05/18/2015 5:36:49 AM PDT by pepsionice
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To: Kaslin

The only problem I have with this is that he will die a peaceful death, as if he were peacefully going to sleep.
Don’t get me wrong, the point is to rid the earth of this piece of scum, which I approve of. But his victims did not have the luxury of a peaceful death. They died in horror, with the victim’s families and the survivors reliving that horror everyday.
He should die in the same horror.


7 posted on 05/18/2015 5:43:24 AM PDT by envisio (I ain't here long... I'm out of napalm and .22 bullets.)
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To: envisio

I am in 100 percent agreement with you and I am totally against lethal injection, which means putting that terrorist to sleep like a vet puts a beloved pet to sleep to put it out of his misery


8 posted on 05/18/2015 5:49:50 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin
...a jury of his peers...

This concept does not exist in American law, because in America, everybody is everybody else's peer. We have no commoners, peers, nobility, royalty.

9 posted on 05/18/2015 5:58:25 AM PDT by Arthur McGowan
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To: Kaslin

Cardinal O’Malley is very good at finding occasions NOT to mention abortion—like Ted Kennedy’s funeral. But he’s absolutely punctilious—like all other bishops—about making a statement against the death penalty whenever a criminal is in court who faces it.


10 posted on 05/18/2015 6:01:38 AM PDT by Arthur McGowan
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To: Kaslin

Also blame the US Feds..they were warned about brother Tamerlan being associated with terrorists Some ‘Homeland Security’. Dhokar punk plus his supportive deranged Mom are muzzie bad seeds and unremorseful of the wicked, murderous deeds caused to innocents. They are trash sad to say.


11 posted on 05/18/2015 6:02:46 AM PDT by tflabo (Truth or tyranny)
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To: Kaslin

Why is remorse relevant?


12 posted on 05/18/2015 6:03:30 AM PDT by Raycpa
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To: Kaslin

If I thought he would stay in prison all his life, and not be released by some bleeding heart liberal, I’d want him sentenced to life imprisonment at menial labor for the rest of his life.


13 posted on 05/18/2015 6:23:05 AM PDT by I want the USA back (Media: completely irresponsible. Complicit in the destruction of this country.)
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To: I want the USA back

Sorry but I have to disagree with you about the menial labor part. I prefer the hard labor part over the menial labor part 100%


14 posted on 05/18/2015 6:26:42 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: Kaslin

The only “labor” I’d like to see for this murdering terrorist trash is him “laboring” up to the line where he is shot in the head.


15 posted on 05/18/2015 6:28:41 AM PDT by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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