This blog is another one of my attempts to get conversation going (civil) and sharing ideas about a horrible crime. I am talking about the Boston Marathon Bomber. A young nineteen year old supposedly drawn into a heinous plot by his older brother to blow up innocent people and children.

He has been found guilty of thirty counts. The jury deliberated for eleven hours. I think the jury came to the right decision. Next week, the sentencing phase will begin. It is expected to last as long as the trial did. I have heard commenters say that if he doesn’t receive the death penalty, he will be put in a western maximum prison where bombers are kept. He would be in his tiny cell twenty three hours every day until he dies of natural causes.

I have been thinking about the death penalty and I know that all of you will not agree with me. That is what I want: the exchange of ideas, thoughts and emotions. Death will bring the end of his life. Will it bring the dead back to life? No. Will extremities reform at the moment he takes his last breath? No. But death will bring an end to what is going on inside in his head. He sat quiet and unresponsive during the trial. I am sure his attorney told him to sit and not react. At nineteen, he is only just beginning to be the man he was destined to be.

Though stoic, he did write he wanted to be a martyr. I don’t think we should give him that martyrdom. Martyrs can inspire others to follow in his/her steps.

The prison where they put the bombers is in Florence, California.  If sent there, the Boston Marathon Bomber will be alone for twenty three hours a day. No contact with other humans.  This boy is nineteen. Each year he faces twenty three hours a day to think. To remember what he did. To remember what was said against him in the trial. To fall asleep, and have his nightmares populated by the faces of those he killed or maimed. Twenty three hours is a long time to sit alone with nothing to do. A month of twenty three hours a day is a long time.

A year of twenty three hours is quite long. To live through all of these hours and to know there are fifty to seventy more years to survive. Each minute filled with sixty seconds, each hour filled with sixty minutes. Twenty three hours alone. Granting him the death penalty, instead of a life sentence without possibly of parole and death seems like we would be protecting him from having to live with what he has done.

What do you, my readers, think? How do you feel about this? I do believe he will suffer more with a life long stay in jail that in a death that would end his suffering and his penalty. He wants to die. He wants to be a martyr and have  a platform.  Is it right to give him what he wants?

 Tsarnaev convicted of thirty counts in Boston

Boston Marathon 2013