Why Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should not Receive the Death Penalty

The Boston Marathon was run today.  Tomorrow the penalty phase of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s trial begins.  He is guilty of a heinous, cowardly and deliberate bombing.  Yet, I hope he is not given the death penalty.  Here is why: 

At 6:52 p.m. on the evening of November 1, 1955 United Airlines Flight 629 took off from Stapleton Airfield in Denver.  Eleven minutes later the Douglas DC 6B disintegrated in the air and plunged into a sugar beet field near Longmont, CO.  All 44 people on board died. 

            A bomb, 17 pounds of dynamite with a timer, had exploded in Daisie King’s luggage.  It had been placed there by her son, John Gilbert “Jack” Graham.  At check-in Mrs. King paid a $27 fine because the bags were overweight.   She asked her son if she really needed that much in her luggage.  Cold as ice he said to her, “Yes, mother, I’m sure you will need it.”  Jack Gilbert had then turned to his wife, gave her some money and told her to buy three life insurance policies on his mother’s flight. 
            There was ample evidence at the scene of the disaster that a bomb was involved.  It was the first major act of criminal violence against a U. S. airliner. Thirteen days later, the FBI arrested Jack Graham.  He was convicted on May 5, 1956 and executed in the gas chamber of the Colorado State Penitentiary in Canyon City on January 11, 1957.
            A silent witness to this case, its history, ramifications, conclusion and aftermath was a very serious and impressionable nine year old girl living in Denver.  I was that girl.  This was the first trial in the United States covered by television and I was witness to and read everything I could about the case.  The death penalty was a given and when Graham was sentenced to execution I felt no moral ambiguity about the findings of the court.  I continued to follow the Graham bombing up to the day of the execution.  That is when I had an epiphany.  The execution did not make me feel better.  I had assumed that it would change things: that the crime wouldn’t seem as frightening; the innocents wouldn’t be as dead; life wouldn’t seem so uncertain or death so arbitrary.  I was naïve.  I was wrong.
            Slowly, I started to become a person morally opposed to the death penalty.

That lasted until I became a parent.  I started reading about people who unrepentantly committed crimes that seemed to revoke their right to life.  Many criminals whom I thought were safely removed from society were being given comfortable lives in prison, or worse, released on parole despite histories of violence.  The laws I thought made the death penalty unnecessary were proving inadequate to the job. 

I believe that we show ourselves to be more committed to civilized behavior when we choose not to execute felons.  I also believe we are suckers when we offer these aberrant creatures parole (ridiculous), rehabilitation (impossible), or comfortable lives (wasted resources) in prison.  Tsarnaev should spend his life in a solitary cell with a bed, toilet and sink with three meals a day pushed through a slot.  No television, no recreation, no vestiges of the civilization he has chosen to reject; just him and whatever thoughts wander through the mind of a monster.  There would be no extraordinary medical care offered him either.  Just lock him up and let nature do with him as it does with all animals.

I don’t coddle and don’t forgive, but I do keep the faith.