Justice Applied, Not Denied

There are thirty counts that Dhozhar Tsarnaev faces related to the Boston Massacre, which occured two years ago next Wednesday. Seventeen of these counts carry a maximum sentence of the death penalty.

The defense has handled the prosecution witnesses with kid gloves because the strategy is not to try to find Tsarnaev innocent, as the evidence is overwhelming against him and the team knows it, but rather to play the jury to be at least somewhat sympathetic to their client so he doesn't die for his actions. This is a very smart strategy as this same jury will decide his sentence.

As many of you know, I am not in favor of the death penalty for any crime. Instead, I believe a maximum sentence should be life imprisonment, in solitary confinement, with no chance for parole. Under any circumstances. Ever.

Then, in order not to be considered cruel and unusual punishment, Tsarnaev should be allowed to go outside twice a week for an hour each time. At night, by himself with no other contact with anyone. Then, he gets to be in his 10 by 13 cell with only the natural night from outside. At night, he gets to sit in the darkness, to contemplate how his own actions brought him to this fate. In addition, by not executing him, he cannot become the American Martyr for Jihad.

He will pray for an early death but none will be forthcoming, at least not from the people or our representatives in the federal or state criminal justice systems. In this way, he will have that constant reminder to himself that it was he who stupidly followed his brother down a path where his jihadism got the better of his common sense. It isn't as if he were some uneducated or illiterate sot. He was a student at one of the best schools in the Northeast, if not the entire country. Very few Americans get that opportunity.

I know many people will disagree with my opinion and that is fine by me. I have the luxury of sitting far enough away from the original epicenter of the blast and then the four days of chaos until Dhozhar Tsarnaev was finally captured at dusk that Friday, after a day-long manhunt, by an accident of Karma and Fate.

And thank God for that collision of events.

The jury has its work cut out for it. I don't envy the task the members face. There is a lot of evidence to consider; there is the need to divorce their memories of those days as it impacted each of them from the evidence as it was presented.

I trust that whatever the jury decides, it will be a fair and just verdict with the appropriate penalty assessed by this jury. It is all we can hope for and expect.

It is ultimately the American way, outlined for us all in the Sacred Document we call our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Tsarnaev needs to be thankful he was tried under this rule of law rather than whatever exists for national law in his original, native country.

And so must we.