Tsarnaev Should Get the Maximum Penalty

This article first appeared in Eagle Rising.


I watched the verdicts come in Wednesday on the Tsarnaev Boston Marathon bombing trial. There was hardly any surprise. Guilty on all 30 counts. We now move on to the penalty phase, and it would seem given the gravity of the crime, that the death penalty will be imposed. But hold on, here. We are talking about Massachusetts. We are dealing with a  jury pool where 57% of the respondents in a Massachusetts survey said Tsarnaev should get life in prison as opposed to the death penalty.

After the verdict, I switched to the mad-hatters at MSNBC, where the consensus seemed to be that life in prison was the proper sentence. Not only was the above poll repeatedly mentioned, but so was the youth of Tsarnaev and the argument that his older brother likely pushed him into participating. One contributing talking head, whose name I didn't catch, even took issue with the statement to the press by one of the surviving victims that Tsarnaev seemed arrogant and unrepentant as the verdict was being read.

If ever a case screamed out for the death penalty, this was it. There will never be a revelation years down the road that the wrong man was convicted. His blood-stained scrawling on that back yard boat where he was captured destroyed any argument that he was pulled into the plot against his will. He will, if sentenced to death, walk into the death chamber with a smile on his face confident that he will be embraced by those 72 virgins in Paradise for his "noble" deed of killing 4 people including an 8-year-old child and blowing off the limbs of others. Why give him his wish? Because there will be no Paradise for this punk. Yes, life in the maximum security facility in Colorado for the next 50 or so years is probably worse than death. But who can say that the next President Obama won't commute his sentence someday or swap him for hostages?

I am hoping for the death penalty. Under the federal system without state appeals, we are looking at 5 years or so. And may God not have mercy on his miserable soul.