Today, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that prosecutors will be seeking the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev for the bombing of the Boston Marathon. This is not without precedent, and this was not unexpected. Hell, it might be the most predictable news story of the day. There are a number of reasons to find the death penalty unjust. Some see the massive racial disparity, some see the sheer number of innocents who accidentally get murdered by their state, some see the torture possibly inflicted by unverified drug cocktails, some straight-up do not believe the State, as such, has...
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On Teresa Lewis and the Problem of Capital Punishment
Last night, Teresa Lewis was executed in Virginia. The news stories I\’ve seen all lead with the rarety of the death penalty being applied to a woman: Lewis was the first woman executed since 2005, and only the 12th in the 34 years since the death penalty was reinstated. There are questions about whether Lewis\’ execution will lead the way to more women on death row being executed, but that\’s not the most salient piece of the story. What matters more are the circumstances of her case and whether they merited the sentence received. There is no...
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