Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s recent death sentence cast a focused spotlight on the use of the death penalty in the United States. Just last month, in the wake of his conviction, Intelligence Squared U.S. presented the debate “Abolish the Death Penalty.”
While there were many headlines leading up to the debate – botched executions and erroneous convictions – the Boston trial is perhaps the highest-profile death sentencing America has followed in decades. Proponents of the death penalty argued that a crime this heinous is precisely where the death penalty is suitable. They see the death penalty as both moral and just, and a reasonable expression of our societal sense of outrage. Time in prison, even a lifetime in prison, treats the most monstrous criminals no differently from others and hence fails to express our revulsion at the nature of their crimes.
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