Letter 2 America for April 10, 2015

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

To no one's surprise, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted of thirty or so counts of terrorist activity accusations, including three murders, all of which raises two questions.  The first is the question of what to do about this barely post-adolescent perpetrator of heinous acts, and the second is what to do about his ilk.  As to the first question--should Tsarnaev be executed--my opinion is that he should not, and the reason is not that I am against the death penalty, which I am, but that is not relevant in this matter.  Tsarnaev is an irredeemable villain in my opinion, but even that isn't relevant per se, except for the fact that in my opinion again, he deserves the worst punishment that can be meted out to him: life in prison without the possibility that he will ever see the outside world in person again.  Such a sentence would satisfy three of what our society's purposes should be in this regard, and the first is related to the four universally accepted reasons in juris prudence for punishment: restraint, rehabilitation, retribution and deterrence.  As far as restraint is concerned, it is obvious that as a society we cannot permit someone as dangerous as Tsarnaev to roam the streets given not just the violence he has wrought but the threat of violence that he constitutes.  We have a right, both legal and moral I would argue, to protect ourselves from him, and for that reason if no other, he should be in prison from this day until he dies.  Of course, the other three philosophical, juris prudential  reasons for punishment have their appeal as well, but while retribution in any form, including the death penalty might give the victims and those who cared about them some satisfaction--and my guess is that that is where the jury is headed--it will accomplish nothing.  The old adage is that "revenge is a dish best served cold," but it never can be.  Passion will always be involved, and in my experience--which I don't claim for an instant compares to what the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings and their families have gone through--there is no final satisfaction in taking revenge.  My pain and frustration in  circumstances that evoke a desire for revenge in me are never assuaged in consequence of the immutability of what has been done.  The past is the past and it can never be changed, which is one reason that retribution is the least respectable of the four reasons for punishment in the literature on the subject.  Add to that the fact that Tsarnaev's purported reason for doing what he did was retribution and it is clear that we will not be ennobled by executing him.  As to rehabilitation and deterrence, neither Tsarnaev nor his ilk are candidates for it.  Once such dogs bite, they are a threat to everyone around them forever, so restraint...the protection of society...is the most plausible reason to punish Tsarnaev, and that means a life in prison.  But beyond this philosophical and moral conundrum that the prospect of the death penalty represents, there is a practical consideration.

The Tsarnaev brothers were self-styled martyrs.  Whether their motivations were the seventy virgins that they thought Mohammed had promised them or some inner rage over what they perceived as an injustice perpetrated against them and their people, death was literally the "final reward" they were seeking as has been the case with all of the terrorist attackers we have seen here and abroad.  When they act they are courting death, so why should we oblige them.  Why should we gratify their perverse desires.  Further, consider the legacy they leave if they are executed.  The Tsarnaev brothers are the spawn of a woman who is as rabid as at least the older brother was, and if they are martyred in her eyes, she will be validated in some way among the disturbed minority of Muslims who subscribe to the notion that Islam should be the universal faith in this world and that they have the divinely mandated mission of seeing to it.  She will become a symbol of Jihadi zeal rather than remaining the demented sociopath that the facts make her out to be, and it seems counterproductive to give that small segment of the multi-billion Muslim population of the world a heroine--and hence a rallying point--from which to recruit for their perverse cause.  Put concisely, inflicting execution on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is tantamount to facilitating those who agree with him in their insidious quest to inflict mayhem and murder on us.  It would be not just retribution against him...futile in nature as it is...but also a self-inflicted wound for the rest of us.  Add to that the fact that some will certainly say that it is the same kind of behavior that the brothers themselves committed and the result will be a blow struck against our society in the moral debate over Jihad's justification between the vast Islamic majority and the Islamist lunatic fringe, at least in the minds of those lunatics who pursue it and their prospective recruits.  We further their cause if we resort to capital punishment because they will use it as a rationale for what they will call capital punishment in the future...what is today nothing better than savagery and atrocity.

No doubt the prosecution will argue that the depravity of Tsarnaev's acts demands the death penalty, but the virtue of the argument, both in moral and in practical terms is questionable.  If we can rather maintain our passion for justice at the same time as we see the best path toward destruction of the international force that Jihad has become, we will reject capital punishment in this case, even if in this case only.  It is the rare instance in which that thing that seems most symmetrical with the crime committed is really nothing but a Pyrrhic victory for our society.  I hope the jury sees that.

Your friend,

Mike

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://letters2america.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/attymwol/managed-mt/mt-tb.cgi/655

Leave a comment

Categories

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 4.34-en

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on April 9, 2015 10:46 AM.

Letter 2 America for April 7, 2015 was the previous entry in this blog.

Letter 2 America for April 14, 2015 is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Political Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory google-site-verification: google9129f4e489ab6f5d.html

Categories

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on April 9, 2015 10:46 AM.

Letter 2 America for April 7, 2015 was the previous entry in this blog.

Letter 2 America for April 14, 2015 is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

google-site-verification: google9129f4e489ab6f5d.html