So, as a Bostonian born and raised, I grew up with Marathon Mondays. Almost exactly two years ago, on April 15 of my senior year of high school, my dad took me into the city as per tradition. We bought 7-Eleven Slurpees and street-vendor hot dogs at Kenmore Square, then we made it down Boylston Street, where we bumped into friends — some volunteering near the finish line; some cheering competing family members on; others like me, just spectating. It was about 2 p.m. when we decided to head out early to move our car before traffic got wicked bad. About 49 minutes later, we were on the highway home when two bombs went off at the very spots we just stood.
We all returned to school the next week struck by events that still seemed surreal. Our peers who stood at the finish line were still recovering from psychological trauma. Our middle school principal’s family was in critical condition at Mass General. There are others that were hit closer than most of us. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, at just 19 years old, tore apart our city, killing three and injuring countless others.
This past Wednesday, the federal court unsurprisingly convicted Tsarnaev on all 30 counts for his involvement in the Boston bombings. On April 21, the same seven-woman, five-man jury team must unanimously decide whether to sentence Tsarnaev to death. They absolutely shouldn’t.
Last week, the Boston Globe released its editorial stance against a death sentence for Tsarnaev. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren also declared opposition to execution in a CBS news interview. Capital punishment has been abolished for almost 60 years in the state of Massachusetts, but many Boston politicians, including current Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, support the death penalty in Tsarnaev’s case of terrorism.
Regardless of these varied views on the case, the primary goal of the government is to protect the safety and well-being of its citizens. Ultimately, imprisoning harmful transgressors achieves this purpose just as sufficiently. Even mass bombers like Tsarnaev cease to be physical threats when locked up for life. For a country that has been hurt time and again by terrorist actions, we will not ameliorate any tensions by using the same violence for vengeance. Adopting the same hateful terrorist mentality is a hypocritical — not an ethical — way to conduct a country’s legal system. Murder will never be moral — out of terrorism or out of revenge — by bomb or by lethal injection.
One year ago, when the massacre was especially fresh, a Boston Globe poll found approximately 29 percent of Boston voted against the death penalty for Tsarnaev and 62 percent voted in support of it. Months later, with some time from the immediacy of the event, Boston’s NPR news station, WBUR, polled 49 percent against capital punishment for Tsarnaev and 38 percent for it — a notable reduction in capital punishment support. Likewise, we cannot decide rashly from the heat of our anger and passion, as Tsarnaev did two years ago on this very day. We must allow our rationality to override our impulses to handle this case with careful contemplation.
I am now 19, just as Tsarnaev was that day. I reflect back on all the hasty, careless decisions I made two years ago — even two days ago. I like to call myself an adult, capable of taking responsibility for my actions and my wrongs, but sometimes I am too immature to do just that. This is not to allow Tsarnaev’s youthful ignorance to serve as a safety net; without parole in prison, he will never receive any second chances. However, the solution for incorrigible young individuals is not to annihilate them from existence, but rather, to teach them a hard lesson.
At the time, Tsarnaev was more of a teenage boy than any sort of man. We must teach him what he may not have learned in his own childhood: two wrongs don’t make a right. A lifetime in prison should be an opportunity for him to regret his actions and emotionally realize the damage he imparted. A life sentence is not “sparing” him out of sympathy — it’s a sentence instead of a quick end to societal shame and disgrace. More importantly, it’s to remind us of how we banded together as a community to find and convict him — then, how we had the morality not to perpetuate his wrongs.
A part of me is angry. I want him in prison so he can fester in regret and self-pity for the rest of his existence. But, the other part of me wants him to have, wishes him to have, the opportunity to repent later in his life when he can fully realize his terribly hurtful ways. I am a Bostonian speaking: He hurt my city and my community, but that does not make it right to execute him as a result. Just days before this year’s marathon, we must remember that life in prison is not a mitigation of punishment — it’s just morality.
Karen Hua can be reached at khua@umich.edu.
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