Editorial, Opinion

EDIT: On death

The city of Boston did not wait with bated breath for the arrest of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev following his shootout with Boston police and the subsequent death of his brother, Tamerlan. Boston held its breath entirely, having forgotten how to breathe as residents in Watertown and beyond contemplated the reality of a terrorist in their midst.

Now, following Tsarnaev’s arrest Friday night, this town has been resuscitated. Memorials and services for the bombings’ three victims, Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell and Boston University graduate student Lu Lingzi, were planned and accomplished with solemn bravado. The Internet continues to flood with triumphant headlines and healing how-to’s. People walk the streets. If they are not unafraid, then many are less so.

But for better or for worse, some of this regained virility of Boston owes itself to Dzhokhar’s survival. The bombings, and subsequent loss of innocent life, ignited such a terrifying manhunt that the public witnessed play-by-play on Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere — resulting in an overwhelming sense of vindication when he was captured alive. The feeling of proximity that the Internet fosters made us all feel like Tsarnaev was in our backyards, and so it can come as no surprise that his capture was — or felt like — a victory. “We will hold those who are responsible for these heinous acts accountable to the fullest extent of the law,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday. In other words, this play has a third act, and there is a rapt audience.

So far, there has been no discourse — only unity in the form of #BostonStrong tweets, a stirring speech by U.S. President Barack Obama at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross and countless other mediums. There has been little disagreement that Dzhokhar is a young man who should meet justice for his actions. But now that this 19-year-old has been charged federally with using a weapon of mass destruction against persons and property, crimes that could and very likely will mean the death penalty, Boston and America will see utter division as its people grapple with what priests and Obama have deemed evil.

Debate surrounding capital punishment is unique in that it does not ebb and flow as easily as arguments about other ethical quandaries. The subject deals with two highly personal convictions — who deserves death and whether the government should inflict it upon citizens, either domestic or foreign. In the case of the Marathon bombings, as it was in the case of Osama bin Laden, it forces Americans to contemplate what the reaction should be to people whose lack of respect for human life makes them irredeemably villainous.

So should the option of state-sanctioned death be on the table, in Dzhokhar’s case? Perhaps. The explosives that he and his brother created were not designed simply to kill — they were designed to hurt as many runners and onlookers as possible. Evidence suggests that there could have, or would have, been more attacks by the Tsarnaev brothers. And based on the social contract of our society, which holds its citizens accountable for their actions and promises swift justice to those who commit murder, capital punishment for Dzhokhar is not wholly outside the realm of equity or probability.

But there is a fine line between justice and retribution. It is only natural for Bostonians and Americans, especially the families of the victims and injured — and the injured themselves — to desire hefty penance, if that is what they want. Still, it is imperative that the court not base such a consequential decision on atrocities that cannot be reversed. The focus must lie in examining Dzhokhar’s motives to the fullest extent and determining from where his propensity to kill and terrorize were derived, now that he faces the very real possibility of death himself, if for no other reason than because no facet of the American justice system can be as flippant about Dzhokhar’s life as he was about the deaths of Martin, Krystle and Lu.

Regardless of either outcome, the fact remains that the events of the Marathon bombings will not fade from the American or Bostonian consciousness. The public will wait as patiently or angrily as it can for Dzhokhar’s fate to be decided, as it did for Osama bin Laden’s and Timothy McVeigh’s — as it still does for James Holmes’s — as it will continue to do as we inevitably face future attacks by faces that are currently unknown to us. This is the way of the 21st century. This is what seems natural. Yet these proclivities must not come to define America as a whole, or even the comparatively small-knit community that is Boston.

Website | More Articles

This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.

Comments are closed.