To remember the victims of the 2013
Boston Marathon Bombing, we, the comrades of Unit 1012, will post this article
from Jonah Goldberg:
Death penalty opponents in an awkward spot
By Jonah
Goldberg
Monday,
April 13, 2015, 9:00 p.m.
How about
now? Are you in favor of the death penalty now?
I ask
because the preferred argument from opponents of the death penalty is doubt: We
can never be sure; look at all of the people released from death row; we can't
afford to risk ending a single innocent life.
None of
those arguments applies to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. He admitted, through his lawyers,
that he and his brother murdered three people and maimed 260 others at the
Boston Marathon. (A few days later, they murdered a police officer.) Tsarnaev
knowingly left a bomb next to a family on an outing. Martin William Richard, 8
years old, died. His sister Jane lost a leg. His mother lost an eye.
A half-hour
after the bombing, Tsarnaev went to Whole Foods to buy some milk, and the next
day, he wrote on Twitter, “I'm a stress-free kind of guy.”
Ever since
Rolling Stone's asinine cover story on the murderer, Tsarnaev has become
something of a sex symbol for the morally stunted and chronically stupid. If
you're one of them, or just someone who thinks maybe Tsarnaev's confession was
coerced, bear in mind that he was captured on video planting the bombs. A jury
convicted him on 30 of 30 counts against him.
In other
words, we know he did it. Does he deserve the death penalty?
Wait.
Consider Michael Slager. He's the North Charleston, S.C., cop who shot Walter
Scott in the back as he was fleeing and then allegedly lied about it. Slager
claimed he was in fear for his own safety after Scott stole his Taser. But the
shooting was captured on video and Slager can be seen apparently moving the
Taser to fit his story.
Legally,
it's harder to argue that Slager should get the death penalty if convicted.
It's unclear how much premeditation, if any, there was in this case. Presumably
Slager didn't know Scott before he pulled him over for a traffic stop. Still, I
think you could make a case for the death penalty in cases like this.
The analogy
that comes to mind is the wartime military. There are capital offenses for
crimes other than murder because the integrity and effectiveness of the armed
forces is a priority. I could make a similar argument about police officers who
murder and lie about it. Faith in the fairness of the justice system is
indispensable to a democracy. Lack of such faith may be why Scott ran from
Slager. If so, his mistrust was tragically well placed.
There's
neither the time nor the space to rehearse the whole death penalty debate
again. People claim that retribution is illegitimate because revenge is
illegitimate. But it seems to me that what some people call revenge many others
see plainly as justice.
Tsarnaev is
a traitorous, child-murdering cop killer. He became a citizen on Sept. 11,
2012, and by the spring he was plotting to blow up as many Americans as he
could.
Slager
awaits trial and is a less cut-and-dried candidate for the death penalty. But
killer cops do more than simply commit murder; they inflict a grievous wound to
the justice system itself.
Slager
deserves his day in court. But Tsarnaev had his — and now he deserves death. It
is honorable to oppose the death penalty on moral grounds. But it is
dishonorable to blow smoke about uncertainty in other cases when there is
certainty in this one.
Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a
senior editor of National Review.
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