On January 7, the Boston Bar Association, rep­re­sent­ing more than 10,000 lawyers, released a state­ment oppos­ing the use of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The Association already had a long­stand­ing posi­tion against the death penal­ty in state cas­es. Paul T. Dacier (pic­tured), the President of the Boston Bar, said, ​“Without equiv­o­ca­tion, the death penal­ty has no place in the fair admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice and makes no sense on a prac­ti­cal lev­el.” The orga­ni­za­tion’s new stance was based on a review of the death penal­ty by a work­ing group chaired by retired Superior Court Judge Margaret Hinkle and Martin Murphy, a part­ner at Foley Hoag LLP. Murphy said, ​“The research we con­duct­ed con­firms that death penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions, includ­ing fed­er­al death penal­ty cas­es, are more expen­sive and time con­sum­ing, more sub­ject to pro­longed delays, and unlike­ly to pro­duce a dif­fer­ent result than where the pros­e­cu­tion seeks life with­out parole.” The study also raised con­cerns about the ​“inevitabil­i­ty of error” in criminal cases.

A September 2013 poll by the Boston Globe found that 57% of Boston res­i­dents would pre­fer a sen­tence of life with­out parole for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the man accused of the Boston Marathon bombing.

(M. Valencia, ​“Boston lawyers’ group blasts death penal­ty,” Boston Globe, January 8, 2014; M. Moore, ​“Boston Bar takes stand against death penal­ty in fed­er­al cas­es,” Boston Business Journal, January 7, 2014). See Federal Death Penalty and Studies.

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