The verdict is in. Tsarnaev is sentenced to death.
It’s hard to oppose the death penalty. Harder still as a member of a community that knew so many victims and sadly, knew the assailants as well. Harder still as someone who never knew his grandpa because of a violent crime. But, I will always oppose it because it runs counter to my faith and my values, is a colossal waste of money and time, and does nothing to deter crime or terrorism. At the end of the day, we are making a martyr out of someone who would’ve been forgotten behind bars. The people of the Commonwealth and the victims families overwhelmingly understand this, I wish our leaders did.
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In theory this is extreme enough that I would be OK with death, but I don’t know if I would go for it if I were a juror. I wouldn’t be outraged if it didn’t happen and I’m not going to dance on his grave now. I am a little surprised given polls I’ve seen indicating Bostonians were against death and I figured someone on the jury would object. I understand the prosecution could veto jurors who oppose, but shouldn’t the defense have had an equal right to veto those who favor?
Any juror who was considering holding out had to know that s/he would be targeted by the media the same way that the witnesses and family were, with helicopters and tv trucks following them around.
If this wasn’t a case that called for a change of venue there is no such thing.
This is exactly the argument I’m most worried about in terms of appeals. I guess we’ll find out in a couple of years.
Worried that it will overturn the verdict, or worried that the idea of change of venue will be harmed if the verdict is affirmed?
eom
This verdict is shameful and embarrassing.
According to the cited link, only jurors who had no objection to giving the death penalty were allowed to serve — itself a miscarriage and resulting in a jury that is NOT representative of our state.
This outcome tells me that we are still “Boston Weak” — unable to move past fear and unwilling to place our faith in the values and morals that have made us the greatest nation in human history. I have always been repelled by “Boston Strong” (because it conveys an attitude that in my view is just the opposite), and this verdict intensifies that reaction.
We have shown ourselves to be “Boston Weak”.
A crappy Rehnquist decision from 1986 holding that it is unconstitutional NOT to weed out jurors who would be unwilling to impose the death penalty. How that squares with the concept of an impartial jury of peers is beyond me. It stacks the deck against the defendant. Maybe that will be the subject of the appeal.
…one would think it should be the other way around, that the defendant would have the constitutional right to try to veto pro-death penalty jurors. Of course, since we can’t read minds and most jurors don’t have a public record can’t they just say whatever to either stay in or get out of the jury pool?
impose the death penalty would seem to guarantee a death sentence in most cases. After all, if you do not oppose the death penalty and you are on a jury, what would stop you from voting for capital punishment? Supposed mitigating factors might stop you in some cases, but those factors will probably carry less weight with you than if you were a death penalty opponent. The system seems to be stacked against the defendant in these cases.
That Tsarnaev got the death penalty does not seem surprising. I don’t think it has anything to do with Boston being strong or weak. It’s the result of a judicial process that would seem almost inevitably seem to lead to this result.
The people of Boston overwhelmingly opposed the death penalty for this case as I mentioned above, as did the victims families, quite vocally so. Carmen Ortiz is weak, which isn’t news, not the people of Boston or the families of the victims who strongly demanded fair and accountable justice and were wrongly denied that by a self serving and capricious prosecution.
My comment is directed at the general maelstrom of horse manure — our media (especially NECN), our culture that celebrates bumper stickers and little colored ribbon magnets, and America’s general retreat in the real “holy war” (America’s world view versus the Jihadist world view) that began on 9/11.
The America that I love prosecuted war criminals in 1945 and should have done so after our 2003 Iraq invasion. Prosecution like that is how we show we are strong (without a capital “S”). Bumper stickers — especially on cars in the middle of the deep south — do the opposite.
I understand that Boston and Massachusetts opposed the death penalty, and I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.
It is the larger milieu that I criticize.
I always considered these two to be domestic terrorists and lone wolves like Timothy McVeigh, fully apart from the ‘Global War on Terror’ the media made them out to be waging on us. On that we agree.
Timothy McVeigh in my own and I believe others’ minds is usually the object of a sentence that begins, “If anyone merited execution…”
Hence my disagreement with the execution of Timothy McVeigh. Nobody “merits” execution. The death penalty is either wrong or it is not. In my view, it is wrong. Timothy McVeigh should not have been executed.
Obviously, I’m OK with death in the most extreme circumstances.
Most of my opposition stems from the patent unfairness and racial bias of capital punishment in practice. Cases like McVeigh and this don’t really have that particular problem. Nor do they have much of a “are you sure its the right guy?” problem. Were I a juror, I would probably not have qualified under that awful legal standard, because those jurors have essentially taken this guy’s life. But these cases are not really fodder for the anti-capital punishment cause.
…is that it shows up when the standard is simply life for life, but not when like me you reserve it for the most extreme cases such as mass murderers and terrorists. As I run through a mental list of those that meet my standard for execution I come up with all white guys.
I sense confirmation bias. Was Osama Bin Laden a white guy?
I’m opposed to killing people. Didn’t God have something to say about that? It’s not better when the government does it in my name, and it’s not better when a group selected for their willingness to inflict death decides to do it in my name. The high percentage of wrongful convictions makes the practice of state execution completely unacceptable.
Like acts 12:23….
And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.
I’m referring to the most concise, directly-attributed-Word-of-God text — the Ten Commandments. He didn’t equivocate there, thy neighbor’s ass aside.
…but the same God who said thou shalt not kill (murder more accurately) both proscribed death for some offenses (most of which we would never consider as capital offenses today) and directed the Israelites how to slaughter opposing armies.
Sorry, but I reject this argument.
You are citing writings of a Bronze-age sect who attempted to describe what they (actually what their men) thought “God” wanted them to do. Even if we stipulate that such an entity exists and intentionally communicates to us (which I reject in the theistic sense we’re using it), whatever it was He (or She) attempted to say is filtered through the VERY noisy channel of the men who heard it, repeated it, elaborated it, enhanced the parts they agreed with and forgot about the parts they didn’t, and wrote it down generations after the communication. I flatly and categorically reject the premise that these are the words of “God”.
This is the God who instructed us to kill those who do not keep the Sabbath (on Friday night at sundown through Saturday night at sundown, by the way). The God whose followers believed, rightly or wrongly, that the punishment for “adultery” (which applied ONLY to women) was stoning to death.
This is the tradition that celebrates, as its historical character, a man who believed that “God” wanted him to sacrifice his son, and who went as far as to truss his trusting child before “a revelation” convinced him otherwise. This is a tradition that TODAY requires men who wish to convert — even if already circumcised — to submit to a ritual circumcision in which actual blood is drawn from an actual cut to the prospective convert’s penis. All this, in the name of “God” (as understood by them).
I reject it. I find the “moral” arguments in favor of the death penalty self-serving excuses for vengeance and for perpetuating ancient traditions of blood lust.
There is a long tradition of excellent academic and scientific (anthropological) work such as Religion Explained, by Pascal Boyer) that demonstrates compellingly — across history and cultures — that whatever morality we embrace comes first, and that we adjust our religious beliefs to reflect that, rather than vice-versa. A related set of criticisms can be found in the writings of John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey. Some of us may cite “God”, “scripture”, or “religion” as the source of our morality, but the facts say otherwise.
I am a spiritual man. I have reasonably deep familiarity with the Christian and Jewish scriptures and the various analyses and faith traditions that have come out of them. I think that one premise that Christianity (specifically the Gospel according to John, primarily) gets right is that morality is ultimately both individual and interior.
I find proof-texting as an attempt to argue otherwise unpersuasive and unhelpful. I ask your forgiveness if I am overly sensitive to all this — my family of origin were conservative Southern Baptists and I was raised in a church where as children (“Royal Ambassadors for Christ”) we conducted “debates” in which were expected to use memorized quotes from “scripture” to make each point (and required to cite chapter and verse for each).
You are, ultimately, precisely correct — it doesn’t matter, because we are (thankfully) not (yet) a theocracy.
When we begin to discuss laws and punishments we invariably begin to invoke religious overtones to deal with how society should treat criminals. I like to think of things in terms of how a small city state might have to deal with a renegade bent on it’s destruction. You can also picture it as one of the remote outposts of the wild west with the log walls and the “society” huddled inside. If one of the members of that society were infected with a deadly highly infectious disease, and that individual wouldn’t leave himself wouldn’t that society be justified in killing that individual. As soon as you can justify it in one case it begins to be easy to justify it in others. I find morality very situational.
…though it almost sounds like you think I do. I’m just pointing out what scripture, the basis of faith and morals for many, says.
When angles come down from heaven to give people the death penalty, then I’ll get behind it.
Until then, let’s not make arguments in favor of ending lives that have their source in fairy tales.
…but rather answering kirth’s question about what the scriptures say.
…you are very right.
I’m mostly thinking of domestic mass murderers and serial killers. There also has to be zero question of guilt for it to be acceptable to me.
The New World Encyclopedia says this:
Notice that Saudi Arabia is not mentioned there.
If you’re “mostly thinking of” some special-to-you meaning of a word like “terrorist,” it would help if you’d include that information in your comment, rather than make a clarifying comment later.
Oh, and how do you determine that there is “zero question of guilt?”
This article seems to have a broader definition according to the three-race construct with which I am most familiar. Truth of the matter is bin Laden came as a bit of a curve ball in the argument. A reference was made to racial bias, which in discussions about the death penalty in this country usually is a white vs. black context. I cannot think off hand of any African Americans who qualify IMO and the ones I can think of are white.
As for zero question of guilt, are you seriously doubting the guilt of McVeigh, Tsarneyev, or the Unabomber? If you are lucky enough to get it on video or the DNA is conclusive that would certainly satisfy me.
Please explain your concept of the difference between not having “serious doubt” and “zero question.”
The only people who make your list of deserving death for their crimes are white? Have you forgotten these guys? Please note that I am not in any way advocating that anyone be added to your morally-flexible list, or that you have such a list in the first place. I just find it bizarre that you put such blinders on when discussing these issues.
I find it truly disquieting that you are comfortable applying such subjective and ill-defined criteria to a matter of life and death.
…which is surprising since I lived in DC at the time, though as I recall one was a minor so should not IMO be executed. I get that your view is morally absolute and mine isn’t. I’m OK with that.
Sacco and Vanzetti were international terrorists in the same sense, if they did what they were accused of for the reasons they were accused of. That result more or less began the end of the death penalty in the Commonwealth. At least this time it was the federal government overriding the sensibilty of the state, rather than the state’s sensibility.
Assuming you are referring to our culpability in the latter, it’s much easier to prosecute the war criminals of a vanquished enemy.
A major premise of the 1945 prosecutions was that they were NOT just another round of a victor punishing the vanquished.
When we claim moral supremacy, as we correctly did in 1945, then our own culpability should not matter.
…though I have seen the devil’s advocate argument to the effect of on what legal basis did we prosecute if there were not predetermined standards.
We set the standard in 1945. My parents felt strongly that we did the right thing (I wasn’t alive then, my father was a veteran of the Pacific theater). We executed many of those convicted of war crimes in 1945. Six decades later, we were presented with documented evidence that our own government committed the same crimes — from the Oval Office.
We ignored that evidence. In doing so, we demonstrated that — at least to those who chose not to prosecute — the 1945 executions were no different than any other victor who summarily executes the leaders of the vanquished. I suggest that our execution of the war criminals in 1945 was wrong, and played a part in our decision sixty years later to not prosecute our own war criminals — by what standard would we NOT execute Richard Cheney had he been convicted?
Our “leaders” betrayed our values and principles by taking the expedient way out. They chose to avoid the difficult questions a successful prosecution would have raised. We did the same after Watergate and Iran-Contra. In my view we are collectively descending ever further into a deepening spiral of government immorality and corruption, driven by our moral cowardice and by the lack of respect our leaders have for our allegedly shared values. We bleat platitudes and emblazen our bumpers with slogans about “God” and “morality”, while we betray the teachings and insights of virtually every religious tradition.
Some of us, especially in the deep south, argue that those who commit treason should be executed. Many of those conveniently ignore the decision of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant to NOT execute Robert E. Lee after our Civil War.
In my view, if we are to have one legal standard that applies to all criminals regardless of race, creed, ethnic origin, or social status, then a realistic appraisal of our own limitations argues strongly against the death penalty. I note that nearly all of our first-world peers have come to the same conclusion.
The death penalty is immoral and wrong.
When Nixon walked away unpunished,* I just knew that a very bad precedent had been set, and that morally-challenged leaders of the future were going to exploit it. A deepening spiral, indeed.
* Please don’t try to convince me that his resignation and pardon were punishment. You will not succeed.
While I tend to agree that we probably should not have executed Nazi war criminals, it is a false equivalency to compare the Nazis to elected officials in the U.S. such as Dick Cheney. You have to consider motivation in making these judgments. The Nazis’ intention was to exterminate entire races and groups of people. People like Cheney are war profiteers, why may have acted illegally, but they did not commit the same crimes as the Nazis in World War II.
If Bernie Madoff embezzles from one group of clients, and Michael McLaughlin from another, charging each with embezzlement does not make them equivalent.
The standards we wrote at Nuremberg did not talk about motivation, they described specific acts and made them illegal. They described specific defenses (“I was only following orders”) and declared those defenses invalid. Furthermore, the prosecutions I refer to were proceedings taken against the Japanese, not the Nazis.
Vice President Richard Cheney ordered water boarding, from the Oval Office. The US prosecuted, convicted, and executed Japanese military officers for waterboarding prisoners. Richard Cheney did, in fact, violate the same law under which we executed those convicted war criminals. While we apparently agree that Mr. Cheney should not face the death penalty (we were wrong to execute the Japanese convicts), in my view we absolutely should prosecute Mr. Cheney for war crimes he committed while in office. Since we chose not investigate the crimes of the Bush administration, history will never know whether President George W. Bush participated in those decisions and was also therefore a war criminal. The cause of humanity is weakened because of that cowardly and self-serving decision.
It appears to me that it is your own false equivalences and assumptions that are your producing your difficulty, rather than my logic.
You stated:
I assumed your first sentence was referring to Goering, Hess, and the other Nazi leaders who were sentenced to death in the Nuremberg trials. I assumed your second sentence was making a point that people in the Bush administration had committed the same types of crimes as those and other Nazis had in World War II.
I note that Senator John McCain (before he flip-flopped in order to run for President) made precisely the same reference and point.
It said:
“Following World War II war crime trials were convened. The Japanese were tried and convicted and hung for war crimes committed against American POWs. Among those charges for which they were convicted was waterboarding.”
Saying that we put them to death because of waterboarding is the same as saying we are putting Tsarnaev to death because he was convicted of “Possession and use of a firearm” (count 22).
Do I thing waterboarding is wrong, yes. do I believe that the only crime that caused the japanese military committed that caused them to be put to death was waterboarding? no.
It takes time to dig into the specifics of the Japanese prosecutions, I did it long enough ago that I’ve lost track of the cites. There were, indeed, Japanese war criminals who were executed because they ordered or conducted waterboarding.
If you are arguing that we were wrong to perform those executions, I agree with you. If you are instead arguing that waterboarding is not torture and a war-crime, I profoundly disagree. We did not even prosecute our own apparent war criminals (the documentation of Mr. Cheney’s participation in our waterboarding is compelling).
My point is that capital punishment — even for convicted war criminals — seems to be motivated by vengeance rather than justice. We chose not to even prosecute Mr. Cheney. Against that backdrop, it is morally wrong to execute Mr. Tsaernev.
Nothing is being solved by this decision. The jury did what the law asked them to do. We are still left with people who are mass murderers. Work remains to be done. This is not a high five for civilization. It is a sad commentary on the human condition, and a challenge to do something about it.
I don’t understand how we demonstrate our moral superiority to a killer by killing him.
Someone told me that a sign held outside the court last week said (paraphrased): Why do we kill people who kill people to prove it is wrong to kill people?
Those are my sentiments. I also am disturbed when I hear the economic argument that it costs too much money to keep someone in jail for life.
The life sentence versus death penalty argument should have absolutely nothing to do with money.
Tsarnaev is one of them.
Perhaps you can order a brazen bull for the happy event!
If we’re going to be less civilized than the Europeans, why stop at the 20th century?
I have heard so many people say that this brings closure, but I am not sure what kind of closure it could possibly bring – it elongates the appeals process and keeps this process in the spotlight. And, I’m not sure that such a verdict (or any verdict: life in prison, death, or whatever else) can bring “closure.”
This brings the opposite of closure. Wasserman nailed it with this cartoon today:
https://twitter.com/GlobeOpinion/status/599349911440732161
It’s a sad day. Remember when people talked about Carmen Ortiz as a potential governor? That was hilarious.
As others have stated, it was impossible to select a truly representative Jury for this trial. The tenor of the news coverage has often been deplorable as well with both the claims of closure and the depiction of a killer as somehow not really human.
When his mother pulled her son into her arms, his torso came away from the rest of his body.
Sadder than April 15, 2013, for some, apparently.
And she’d tell you her boys killer shouldn’t have died in his name and the trial and appeals and media coverage are ruining her family.
And as I stated in my initial post, finding and killing my grandfathers killer won’t bring him back, won’t bring my family closure, and certainly opposing that killers death sentence doesn’t make me sympathetic or on his side. It makes me a Christian and a human being.
even as a boy. My school teacher, poet, artist, Mom inspired me to love reading and lifelong learning. She said I was always asking authority the question : ” Why ” ? By high school I had become a free thinker and secular humanist.
On the subject of criminal justice I was especially moved by the writing of Dr. Albert Schweitzer who said : ” All life is sacred.”
And Gandhi: ” An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” And: ” I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians ; they are so unlike your Christ.”
And finally, isn’t the killing of Christ in and of itself; His forgiving those who killed Him — the strongest argument against the death penalty ?
My Dad’s and my favorite Saint was Francis of Assisi. In the Franco Zefferelli bio film ‘Brother Sun, Sister Moon’ Francis gives up his life of privilege, strips naked in the town square — to live a life of poverty like Christ. He dedicates himself to the service of all life—both human and creature. He was the first saint to suffer the stigmata.
Even as an atheist who believes in God I still believe all life has value and killing is wrong even if it is done in the name of the state.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
How, exactly, does that work?
but doesn’t believe in any one churches dogma . . .
An “atheist” is a person who believes that there is NOT a creator, whatever attributes might be applied to that entity.
There are very few atheists. The opposite of “love” is not “hate”, it is more commonly apathy. The opposite of “fervent believer” is not “atheist”, it is more commonly “agnostic”.
out of his historic fear of mortality. His terror of sinking into the abyss of obscurity and irrelevance.
The idea of the possibility of an afterlife in paradise
assuaged this fear and offered comfort to even the most humble — living in a brutal world filled with unspeakable pain and suffering.
To the extent that the idea of God as a judgmental spiritual force for good in the world —leading men to live a more ethical life — is a positive advance for humanity.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Because I oftentimes don’t see what the difference is. We say we oppose execution from a moral high ground, and then condemn a man to a small room, 23 hours per day for the next 50+ years. We de-humanize him to a point where we have inflicted a cruelty more grueling than having him drawn and quartered.
But killing people in response to killing people has always reeked of hypocrisy to me. It’s not a deterrent, especially for people who act out of religious fanaticism.
So, I guess what I think is that SomervilleTom is just wrong in his righteous indignation that we are objectively morally culpable for his death sentence given how cruel life in prison at a supermax is for someone in their 20s. A quick death might be a mercy in the face of that punishment. But death can’t be the BEST solution to our problems. There is where I think Methuenprogressive misses the mark. Some people do need killin’, but not when we have them in custody and they no longer pose a threat. Tsarnaev isn’t an enemy combatant in the field anymore.
I really don’t know what the answer is.
It seems clear enough that Mr. Tsarnaev much preferred to spend the rest of his life in that small room.
I suggest that society has gained much more insight from the post-conviction histories of Charles Manson and Ted Kaczynski than we have from, for example, Timothy McVeigh. On the international front, I suggest that we would have learned a great deal more if Saddam Hussein was still alive and incarcerated.
Society does not have a vote in the choices made by criminals (convicted or not) like Mr. Tsarnaev, Mr. Manson, Mr. Kacyznksi, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Bush, Mr. Hussein, or Mr. Lee. After their crimes are committed, we do have a choice about what we do in response.
Rightly or wrongly, I know what my answer is: “Not in my name”.
suggests that you have moral or ethical qualms with execution. I do not disagree. I would, however, suggest there are equal moral and ethical qualms about his life sentence. I think, in the long term, life sentence in supermax conditions is the more cruel punishment.
Maybe right now. But I bet had be been handed a life sentence, 45 year old Mr. Tsarnaev would disagree with the preference of his younger self, in a similar manner that perhaps 21 year old Mr. Tsarnaev would disagree with his 19 year old self.
Perhaps we might then allow the 45 year old Mr. Tsarnaev to make that choice at that time. After all, is it “suicide”, and therefore “immoral”, for a 45 year old man to reconsider and belatedly choose a death sentence that we had already offered him?
It isn’t clear to me that “supermax conditions” are a requirement. If they are cruel and unusual, then they too are immoral.
I don’t accept the dilemma or comparison you offer. In my view, such moral choices are made more clear when we take full responsibility for our own role in making those choices.
Allow prisoners condemned to life without parole to opt for a suicide after say…10 years? Plenty of time to think it over.
I actually think that’s a fine idea.
If someone is wrongly convicted and sentenced to prison, he can be released when the error is discovered. If he’s executed, we can’t do anything about it. We’ve killed an innocent man, and let a guilty one go free.
It does not seem at all likely that the current condemned man is innocent, but I do believe that killing him makes it easier to kill the next man convicted of murder, regardless of whether the evidence against that man is as conclusive as in this case
and later redeemed him/herself? Would we be better or worse off if, instead of going to prison, the convicted terrorist were executed?
Have you heard anything again from the Unabomber? The folks at Gitmo? The 19th hijacker? Lock him up and throw away the key, and you don’t need to hear from him again. These appeals will keep his face in the news and give his ideology a platform and get sympathetic people aroused. Much better to forget about him and move on, like we did with all the other convicted terrorists in prison.
Realize that I just finished re-reading the Wolf Hall books, prompted by the Masterpiece mini-series on PBS. So I have that in my head right now.
1) What it all comes down to with me is that I, personally, could not pull the trigger, flick the switch, turn on the injection, swing the ax, or whatever action it would take to kill a condemned killer, so I can’t morally weasel out of that responsibility and ask my government to do it for me. And if, for whatever reason, I was able to do it, I’d expect consequences, as every human life taken by another human should have consequences. I come at this from a humanistic point of view, not via any religious text.
2) I find the phrase “Cruel and Unusual” as problematic as both are relative. What is cruel and/or unusual varies by person, by time, by culture… A clean beheading (again, I just re-experienced Anne Boleyn’s death) might be less cruel than the electric chair or a botched fatal injection. And it certainly wasn’t unusual when it was used. Neither was burning (which is certainly cruel in my book). I think today it is more of a matter of how “clean” the execution is to the witnesses and how well we can live with how it was done afterward. A quick beheading that might result in little to no pain for the deceased certainly isn’t pretty to watch.
And how any of these methods compared to the cruelty of a Supermax type of confinement… I’m sure there are many opinions on that.
So I’m just not sure how helpful that phrase is as a guideline regarding what can and can’t be done to someone convicted of a crime.
The fifth amendment says that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, which suggests to me that any of those things could be deprived as long as it is done WITH due process of law. There is still plenty of room for constitutional arguments ad hoc regarding whether there was due process or if the specific method is cruel and unusual, and you are certainly entitled to a moral opinion that the death penalty is always wrong. I wouldn’t necessarily ask whether you are comfortable doing yourself. There are plenty of things with both positive and negative connotations that need doing, but we may not be comfortable doing them.
This isn’t asking someone to clean your gross shower drain. It is the taking of a human life. Would you be able to act as executioner for Tsarnaev? Are you OK with your government doing it in your name? My answer is no to both. I can understand someone answering yes to both, but I can’t understand yes for one and no for the other.
I’m not saying that Christopher is a “chickenheart”.
The “yes” to one (ok for the government) and “no” for the other (act as executioner) is the essence of the chickenheart call to arms. Set up a mercenary military, fund it well enough that it successfully recruits young men and women who desperately need the money (or who fully embrace the morality of war), then sit comfortably ensconced in safe, secure, and quiet enclaves while paying that mercenary army to do their killing for them.
The strongest argument for a race- and class-bind draft is that it puts the favorite sons and daughters of EVERYONE at risk — and in so doing, makes the “chickenheart” strategy far less effective.
On the other hand, it seems to me that our moral reservations about the use of drones to kill and maim reminds us that the morality of killing is only partially driven by questions about whether or not we would do it ourselves. It seems notable that a central argument of drone supporters is that no American lives are put at risk when a drone makes an attack — that same aspect is simultaneously a central argument of drone detractors.
Killing is killing, whomever does the deed and for whatever purpose. Perhaps it is not always immoral, but it is always morally significant — I suggest that it ALWAYS makes a mark on the soul of the killer.
If a drone were used to execute Mr. Tsaernev, so that no human intervention were needed, it would not (in my view) make that killing any more justifiable.
n/m
our criminal justice system has been a complete and utter failure when it comes to the death penalty (and probably just in general, as well).
Something like half of people on death row either have been later proved innocent or were not given fair trials — had lawyers or judges who fell asleep during the proceedings, didn’t have access to any expert witnesses to rebut the prosecution, etc.
Moreover, there are many people on death row now from cases that happened 15-30 years ago. That was before we knew just how bad witness testimony generally is (seriously, it’s terrible), and before we realized many of the traps, problems and issues with DNA evidence, particularly the horrific standards used at state DNA labs.
At some point, you just have to call the whole thing a systemic failure. Even if hypothetically you could support a morality where killing can be excused, there is no good moral belief system that can support putting people on death row when the system is failed.