by Paul Elie
from Georgetown University

Tsarnaev Sentence: A Last Spasm for the Death Penalty in America

“The last time a convicted criminal was executed in Massachusetts — 1947 … the high wall in left field at Fenway Park had just been painted green.”  But now they want to undo the gains of two-thirds of a century in Massachusetts by putting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death.   

The death sentence for him is a giant step backwards for us, because the strong evidence is that in the United States the death penalty will soon be a thing of the past.

Mario Marazziti is sure of it.   Long the “portavoce” of the Community of Sant'Egidio in Rome, lately a member of the lower house of Italy’s parliament and chair of its human rights committee, Mario – friend to many of us – was a founder of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty late in the last century.  Since then much has changed in the United States, as he spells out in a powerful opinion piece in today’s Los Angeles Times:

The number of executions and new death sentences is at a 20-year low, and just a few states are responsible for the vast majority of executions …  A bill to reintroduce the death penalty in Massachusetts was defeated. Bills to outlaw the death penalty are in process in Delaware, Kansas and Colorado. Even in Nebraska, a conservative state, a bill to abolish the death penalty has such strong support that legislators could override an expected veto by the governor.

Much has changed – and much is changing.  In the weeks since the publication of Mario’s book Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty (I wrote the afterword), the Supreme Court has heard arguments against lethal injection in Oklahoma and two death-row prisoners have been exonerated.  

In the hours since he wrapped up the LA Times opinion piece, the Atlantic dropped a new issue with a cover story on lethal injection and  Nebraska legislators did indeed vote to abolish the death penalty (and they do have the numbers to overide a veto from the governor).

It seems possible and even likely that Tsarnaev will still be alive when the death penalty is declared dead in this country.  

  1. etr-gu posted this