Less than 20 percent of Massachusetts residents support execution for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Though nearly a third of those living in Massachusetts support the death penally for certain awful crimes, only 18.9 percent believe Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be executed, according to a new Boston Globe poll. The level of support for putting Tsarnaev to death has faded over recent months; the jury’s decision on his fate nears.
“It seems that voters have concluded that Tsarnaev does not deserve a quick death, but rather should spend the remainder of his days in a windowless cell contemplating the heinous acts that put him there,” Frank Perullo, president of Sage Systems LLC, which conducted the poll, said. “To voters, it would seem death is too easy an escape.”
Nearly 63 percent of Massachusetts residents favor a life sentence for Tsarnaev.
In Boston specifically, only 15 percent think Tsarnaev should be executed. Roughly 66 percent of Bostonians favor a life sentence for him.
The change in support for Tsarnaev’s execution is likely due to the seven weeks of trial in which victims and victims’ families gave vivid and gut-wrenching accounts. A letter published on the Boston Globe’s front page April 16 by Bill and Denise Richard, whose son Martin was killed and whose daughter Jane lost a leg in the bombing, may have also swayed the minds of Massachusetts residents.
“We know that the government has its reasons for seeking the death penalty, but the continued pursuit of that punishment could bring years of appeals and prolong reliving the most painful day of our lives,” the family wrote.
The April 15, 2013, bombings at the finish line of the Boston Marathon by Tsarnaev and his late brother Tamerlan Tsarnaev left four people dead and more than 260 injured.
“It didn’t talk about moral opposition. It was much more about the process of the death penalty case and being dragged through this for years and years,” Daniel S. Medwed, a criminal law professor at Northeastern University, said of the letter. “The heartfelt letter resonated with the community.”
In September 2014, a Boston Globe poll showed 33 percent favored Tsarnaev being put to death.
The more recent poll of roughly 804 Massachusetts residents was conducted by telephone April 23-23 with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
