On April 15, 2013, two explosions occurred on Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts. Killing three people and injuring, both mentally and physically, scores more, two pressure cooker bombs attacked the Boston Marathon. Shooting and killing a cop, two men that graduated from the high school my peers and I will be going to next year set these bombs. One of these men is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and he currently faces the possibility of being murdered by the government.

This man deserves to die. The man that rigged a bomb to go off at the end of a marathon and a block and a half away from my father deserves to die. The man that caused any amount of fatalities
deserves to die.

But this is just me, a bystander. Can you imagine what the families of the people that did die are feeling? Can you imagine what the family of Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev is feeling? He deserves to die, there’s no question about that. But is it the right thing to kill him? If we do are we any better than he is?

If we kill him, no one will ever see him again. No one will have deal with him. Many people would smile at the sight of the headlines describing his death. Some would ever cry with happiness. But many wouldn’t. Many would cry for a different reason. Many would say: “We can’t go around killing people.” Many would say: “We are no better than him now.” And they’re right. However awful he is, there is no necessity in killing him.

For the rest of his life, he will almost definitely be placed in a supermax prison. He will be in his cell 23 hours a day, getting minimal contact from any other human. He will receive food through a small hole in the door and will probably not get a glimpse of the person who puts it there. He will have a very small cell, probably less than 10 feet long and wide. He will have no activities, except for the slim possibility of reading material. Despite having no sense of time due to the lack of windows in his cell, he will have one optional hour out of his cell to exercise. He will have no contact with other people. These prisons are essentially designed to drive prisoners insane as fast as possible.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is twenty years old. At the time of the bombing, he was nineteen. Yes, he has done some terrible things, but does he deserve the death penalty? He deserves to die, but does he deserve the murder by the U.S. government? The better question really is: isn’t a supermax prison punishment enough?

Twenty years old. If every generation lives 25 years later on average, our generation will very likely live past one hundred. Life expectancy in supermax prisons is shortened, so its fair to say he will live to ninety. If we do the math, that’s seventy years or more he will be in prison.

Seventy years of being in a bright windowless, lifeless room for 23 hours a day, without socializing.

As humans, we need to be social. Without other people, we wilt. Everyones’ seen the movies about people that will live on the own on the mountains, but after all, don’t they have dogs? Or maybe it’s not a dog. Maybe the mountain man hunts deer, but either way, we are still socializing.

When I was eight, me and my family visited a place called Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. There isn’t a more beautiful place on earth. It was only a small inn we stayed at, but we had the time of our lives. Everything there flourished. The garden, the animals, the birds. Well, one bird in particular. It’s called the Quetzal, and is the national bird of Guatemala.

I still remember my mother explaining what it was when we all stared at it in amazement. It’s known as the “freedom bird,” and will only survive in the wild. Everything time anyone has ever tried to keep it in captivity, it dies. Just like that, as soon as it can’t be social it’s gone. This isn’t just quetzals. Many species have this problem.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will never see Lake Atitlan. In a way, his situation can be compared to the quetzals’, except that there’s nothing beautiful about him.

For those that say he deserves to be removed from the earth, I agree with you. I believe he deserves to die, but why should we bow down to his level?