federal authorities are seeking the death penalty for Boston Marathon
suspected bomber accused bomber two hearts are Naiad
now Massachusetts of course does not have the death penalty but the law does
allow for the federal
authorities to instruct the death penalty to be sought by prosecutors
in particularly heinous are egregious crimes now if you
remember of course diehards earn I have one of two alleged bombers involved in
the Boston Marathon bombing back
when when the race was run ultimately
captured hiding in a boat in the outskirts
Boston unable to speak for some time
eventually able to speak to to prosecutors and investigators
and ultimately now will be charged with the
with where as the only surviving alleged
perpetrator up the Boston bombing and the death penalty
is on the table I think that this is a bad idea
and not because this isn't a heinous crime not because Joe Hart soon I have
is not deserve to be punished or the crime that he is accused of having
committed
if he is indeed found guilty but because
even if we go beyond so let's let's take a step back
I'm against the death penalty and the number of reasons I'm against against
the death penalty could
Hill an hour or more program and these include disproportionate application of
the death penalty
on poor and minority individuals the fact that we know of
at least five to 10 people who have been
put to death by the death penalty who ultimately turned out to be
innocent of the crimes they were convicted have because if the expense
above the death penalty given the number of appeals that you're entitled to
and of course also because %uh the fact that it has not been shown to be a
deterrent to crime
and as such really seems like a practice that we should
eliminate the same way so many other countries at our level of development
have but i wanna take it a step further with this specific case
if you were to agree that the death penalty should be on the table
were particularly heinous crimes including as some described here
incident where multiple people are killed
what does that say to someone who lost a family member
in an individual homicide compared to someone who lost
one family member while other people
were also killed is the loss of their one family member
when it was a lone killing less
egregious or less punishable then the Los
up one family member when the perpetrator also killed other people
unrelated to your family member I think that that idea
were there makes the application of the death penalty capricious and arbitrary
right it does seem to you I
take away from from those individual homicides I guess
and you know I I don't know how I would feel about that
I mean I can certainly understand multiple homicides being a bigger deal
but
at also I mean a I'm assuming that he probably wants to die I mean
why given what he wants there are only so many cases where
you may have someone who believes they will be a martyr
if they are put to death and that's what they want
that is also a reason for those who say we want this strictest possible
punishment if I think
about the possibility up spending the rest of my life
in prison for a crime I committed verses being
put to death if I think I'm going to be a martyr
by being put to death it's worse for me to spend the rest of my life in prison
and if I don't think that I still would think it's worse to spend the rest of my
life in prison
because you have to live that as opposed to lights going out
I'm not saying that should be the standard what is worse for the
perpetrator
but if that is your standard then you should also be against the death penalty