The jury returned its verdict this afternoon:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 21-year-old who admitted he and his brother bombed the 2013 Boston Marathon, has been found guilty on all 30 counts against him, including conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and bombing of a public place.
The jury of five men and seven women deliberated for roughly 11 hours over two days before reaching a verdict. Tsarnaev displayed no reaction as it was announced.
(Huffington Post, April 8, 2015)
Of course, there was never any doubt this jury would find him guilty. Yet the media spent most of its wall-to-wall-coverage of his trial manufacturing suspense.
Likewise, there is no doubt this same jury will sentence him to death. Yet the media is already manufacturing suspense about that too. He killed three and maimed over 260. But, thanks to media hype, from the day he was captured, every member of that jury probably sees him no differently than they saw Osama bin Laden.
On the other hand, if perpetrating the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 does not make him eligible for this punishment, what’s the point of having the death penalty?
I did not plead for his life as much as I argued for the abolition of the death penalty. If his execution serves any sensible purpose, I hope that it intensifies the debate on whether the specious penal purpose of the death penalty justifies the corrosive effect it has on our humanity and morality.
(“Stanley ‘Tookie’ Williams Executed!” The iPINIONS Journal, December 13, 2005)
Far better, I say, to let convicted murderers/terrorists rot away in prison … in obscurity. This would at least spare the criminal justice system the farce inherent in an appellate process so convoluted and dilatory that convicts sentenced to death often spend the rest of their lives on death row … waiting to be executed.
Gary Alvord, a Florida man who was sentenced to death for strangling three women, died in May 2013 — of natural causes. He had been on death row for nearly 40 years.
(The Economist, February 3, 2014)
In any case, the most significant thing about this conviction is that it belies, once again, all of the arguments Republicans have been proffering to oppose President Obama’s initiative to close Guantanamo Bay. From day one of his presidency, Obama has maintained that U.S. courts have the capacity and competency to prosecute all inmates being held there. What’s more, U.S. courts have continually demonstrated as much:
In 2008, the Justice Department submitted a budget request citing ‘319 convictions or guilty pleas in terrorism or terrorism-related cases arising from investigations conducted primarily after September 11, 2001.’
The NYU Center on Law and Security conducted its own comprehensive study and came up with yet a higher number.
‘If you had every single terrorism-related prosecution since 9/11 and you wanted to know the convictions, there would be 523,’ says the center’s director, Karen Greenberg.
(NPR, February 11, 2010)
Mind you, these are the same Republicans who — with their warmongering support for the invasion of Iraq — stirred up the hornet’s nest of terrorism that is now stinging countries all over the world. Yet they are now hurling warmongering rhetoric at Obama’s diplomatic efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, showing no concern whatsoever about stirring up another hornet’s nest of terrorism.
Therefore, I fear Republicans are unlikely to learn from this case. Which means that these self-appointed guardians of America’s national security, national purse, and international reputation will continue their cravenly political opposition to Obama’s principled initiative to close Guantanamo Bay. This, notwithstanding that, by doing so, they’ll just create more enemies for the United States and cause it to continue incurring unnecessary costs and reputational damage.
Related commentaries:
Botched executions…
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