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Supreme Court rules Tsarnaev should die
By adamg on Fri, 03/04/2022 - 10:33am
The Supreme Court today reinstated the death penalty for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, ruling in a 6-3 decision that a federal appeals court in Boston erred when it ordered a new trial to determine whether he warranted life in prison or death.
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Comments
HA!
Got ‘em!
Funny no mention
Of who and how they voted on this decision.
Please
Anybody who cares knows who voted how. I also didn't recite the whole story of what he did and how he got caught, either. Funny, huh?
What?
Did you not read all the way to the end, where it said:
I’m guessing he was talking about Rollins…
I didn’t read too much in it but she appears to have sided with the Attorney General in seeking the death penalty (unclear if he had asked yet or what that process needs)
Can I say "Fuck off" ?
Can I say "Fuck off" ?
if not please delete.
Vonnegut:
“I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.”
He was already got
He was never going to be reentering society ever, regardless.
The rest is just bloodlust, which is not synonymous with justice.
He got justice
From Merriam-Webster:
"Definition of justice
1a: the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments"
He had his impartial jury and now all his appeal.
His punishment is merited and legal.
If the law called for life imprisonment I'd have no qualms with that.
Probably a worse sentence.
But legal justice calls for his execution and I'm also have zero qualms about that.
i have no blood lust in my heart and seriously doubt any members of SCOTUS do either.
Great
He deserves to die.
The sooner the better.
Disagree
I don't think the government should kill anyone.
But specifically in this case, I'd rather him and anyone who would copy him see that there is no reward for terrorism. There is no quick, mostly painless death. Their actions have not furthered their cause.
All they get is to spend 60 years in a tiny room to think about how they wasted their life.
If life in prison is worse
If life in prison is worse than death, why did Tsarnaev (and others on death row) not plead guilty at trial and accept the death penalty? Why is he trying to hard to appeal his sentence?
The answer is that people want to stay alive, even if it means living in a cage.
Bingo
We have a winner.
Life is better than death, even a miserable life in prison can allow one to keep in contact with family and have a routine they can tolerate.
Death is final and a proper punishment for his crime.
Homicide
Sounds like another advocate for state-sponsored homicide.
That's what gets put on the death certificates of executed prisoners: homocide
Then again, we live in a society that rarely sanctions extrajudicial state-sponsored homicide in our own communities.
Yes
State sponsored Homicide is sometimes warranted.
This is one of those times.
There is no doubt he did it, if there was a 1 percent chance he didn't do it I'd be in favor of a life sentence.
"warranted"
"warranted" is an odd choice of words. Let's try something simpler: what's the point? What will this accomplish?
No it isn't an odd choice of words
It is the exact word I intended to use.
And what do you mean " let's try something simpler?"
Asking me what his execution will accomplish is simpler? Ok I'll answer, it will accomplish his death as a punishment for his crime.
And...?
And this will accomplish what?
Be honest.
And...?
And this will accomplish what?
Be honest.
it will accomplish his death
And if we don't kill him, he won't die? He won't be punished for his crime?
I answered you.
The death penalty accomplishes the death of the person receiving it as a punishment for his crime.
What does life in prison accomplish?
What does life in prison
The offender stays in prison until they die. It's the exact same result, different timeframe.
Exactly
Both are punishments, one is final and one is for however long his life lasts
Yes, and one does not require
Yes, and one does not require giving the government permission to kill people. You see why that's better, right?
I suppose it's better
If you're against the death penalty.
A jury heard the evidence and voted., there is a zero percent chance of his innocence and this crime was so horrible it deserves death as punishment in my opinion, I know others disagree though.
“i support the death penalty
“i support the death penalty because i support the death penalty”
Experience versus reality
Finality of death is easier to imagine than a lifetime in prison. There is also that peculiar thing called instinct to stay alive. The instinct outweighs any imagining of what a lifetime in prison will be like.
Plus, if he is not in effect solitary for the rest of life then he most likely will die by the hands of other prisoners. Prison pecking order does not gaze kindly upon anyone who killed a child. On the other hand Tsarnaev is a pretty enough young man that if he is not kept in solitary then by the time he is no l longer pretty, if he is still alive, he may wish to die.
The State killing him is just fulfilling legal blood lust. It has no basis in morality. If morality was used in yet another judicial murder then there would be certain other people convicted of war crimes for an invasion many years ago that led to over 4,000 US soldiers dying in an immoral invasion and probably over 100,000 Iraqi civilians dying as well.
He is a permanent resident of USP ADX Florence
There are no shared cells. Some, possibly many, of his neighbors would likely give him a high five though if they ever met. They won't. A concrete 7 by 12 foot room for 22-23 hours a day. The opportunity to exercise alone in a concrete pit like a small swimming pool for an hour, 10 steps wide in a straight line.
I'm content with him living a long, healthy life under those conditions.
Damn!
USP ADX Florence is super harsh. I think I'd rather die. Who do prisoners there get to see besides guards? Do they even see guards?
He wanted to be seen as a
He wanted to be seen as a martyr. And since the death penalty doesn't deter crime, and certainly won't deter terrorists, he shouldn't be given what he wants.
He's not
What he wants is to live. He's going to die.
He won't be a martyr , he will be a murdering scumbag who got the death penalty..
humans don’t always make rational decisions
that he has a physiological desire to remain alive doesn’t necessarily mean that to spend the rest of his life rotting in a prison cell would be a favorable outcome
That's a stretch of logic at
That's a stretch of logic at the level of vaccine conspiracies. It's basically claiming that we're "tricking" Tsarnaev into staying alive even though deep down he really wants to be executed, and only thinks he wants to stay alive.
huh?
you claimed that he didn’t opt to plead guilty at the outset. ergo the death penalty is worse than a life sentence. i’m saying that logic doesn’t necessarily follow.
his physiological desire to live – more importantly, the opportunity to punt certain death down to a later date – doesn’t necessarily indicate that living in prison for 60 years is actually a favorable condition.
That again makes a claim that
That again makes a claim that in 59 years Tsarnaev will reflect on his life and think, "Damn, I should've settled for the death penalty in 2015."
That's fantasy. There are certainly valid reasons to oppose the death penalty, but the argument that life in prison is worse than death is based on romantic fiction, not anything real.
i would love to be as
i would love to be as irrationally certain about the unknowable as you are. life would be much easier.
I don't think the government
Agree. Does that make me a proponent of "small government"?
Because oddly, it always seems like it's the "small government conservatives" -- the ones who moan constantly that social welfare programs, health inspections and safety regulations are a crushing abuse of government authority -- who bray the loudest about how the government needs to be empowered to literally kill people.
They're also the States Rights crowd
Until the state has a law (like one forbidding executions) that they don't like and can overrule
Yes, and it is utterly dispiriting
to be reminded how far the Supreme Court has moved right since the death of Thurgood Marshall, not least on the question of the death penalty.
Deserves Got Nothing to do With It
Just because someone deserves to die, it doesn't mean we the people should kill them. Do you really trust our justice system to end people's lives for the "right" reasons? If so, I suggest you peruse the cases here: https://innocenceproject.org/about/
There are death penalty cases
There are death penalty cases where there are questions over whodunnit, the integrity of prosecutors, the reliability of witnesses, and the adequacy of evidence.
Then, there are cases like Tsarnaev's, where the only grounds for appeal was a bizarre question over whether his brother might have killed N people or killed N+3 people, and whether the jury needed to know about it.
I think it's reasonable to raise the bar for the death penalty without eliminating it.
Boy
I feel safer already now that this guy who would have been behind bars for the rest of his life will now be behind bars until he is killed by the state. Surely this will deter other would-be martyrs or do anything other than appeasing the blood-hungry among us.
Against the Wishes of the Citizens of Massachusetts
Only 18% of MA citizens, who do NOT include the Richard family, wanted Tsarnaev executed, yet the feds took it out of our hands for the sake of sheer vengeful bloodlust and handed it over to the group of amoral political hacks running the supreme court. If you put one of those moronic "Thanks Joe Biden" stickers on this decision, it actually fits.
https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2021/10/12/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-death-pena...
Abolish the death penalty
I won’t shed a tear for Tsaraev when he breathes no more, but to continue a corporal punishment that is still only practiced by places like Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, and North Korea is depraved. Russia, the place where journalists and dissidents are routinely assassinated, has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 1996
Agreed, but Russia is a bad example.
Their government doesn't follow its own rules. Their constitution explicitly forbids censorship, for instance, and we all know how well *that* gets followed.
And does it really matter if they had a moratorium on the death penalty if they also kill people *without* a trial?
Does our government follow its rules?
I think reading up on The Innocence Project might change your views on that.
Minor niggle
It's capital punishment, not corporal punishment. Otherwise agree.
Japan also
Japan also has capital punishment - by hanging - and it has rather high public support (around 80%).
Personally, I feel it’s too problematic as others have pointed out.
His brother? Yes. Him? Ehhh, maybe not
In the end, he was just as guilty as his deceased mastermind brother. Still, I think the idea that he was a pot smoking follower of his big brother isn't all that far off. Even though I'm generally in favor of the death penalty for murderers, this kid could sit in jail forever and I'd feel just fine with that.
Though it might serve some good purposes….
…. it is still wrong to kill him.
Religious belief, dogma, freedom?
So we know that the majority of the Catholic members of the court will not let Catholic dogma dictate their decisions? We can be sure that they will be true and honorable in their conscience, follow both the spirit and letter of the law, respect the custom of stare decisis and NOT base their judicial opinions on religious beliefs where marriage for gay people or the question of abortion are concerned.
Hurray!
Now it's almost as if the marathon bombings never happened!