On May 12, the edi­to­r­i­al board of USA Today affirmed its oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty in an edi­to­r­i­al urg­ing that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev be sen­tenced to life with­out parole, rather than the death penal­ty, for his role in the Boston marathon bomb­ing. ​“Laws aren’t writ­ten for a sin­gle indi­vid­ual, and the death penal­ty applies to many peo­ple,” the edi­to­r­i­al said. ​“Tsarnaev and oth­er infa­mous defen­dants … demon­strate the penal­ty’s arbi­trary nature. While Tsarnaev has a superb legal team, most defen­dants get by with lawyers who are inex­pe­ri­enced, low-paid and often inept.” USA Today not­ed that “[m]ore than 150 death-row pris­on­ers have been exon­er­at­ed since 1972” and many cas­es have been reversed because of “ ​‘intol­er­a­ble’ errors by the defense” and ​“pros­e­cu­tors with­hold­ing evi­dence.” The edi­to­r­i­al also crit­i­cized the death penal­ty as ​“dis­crim­i­na­to­ry,” say­ing that death sen­tences are more like­ly to be imposed if the defen­dant is poor or black or ​“most cer­tain­ly” if the vic­tim is white. USA Today also ques­tioned the pur­pose of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, say­ing “[t]here’s no cred­i­ble evi­dence that it deters crime. Tsarnaev cer­tain­ly was­n’t deterred by the exe­cu­tion of ter­ror­ist Timothy McVeigh, who took 168 lives in the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb­ing.” After describ­ing the con­di­tions of the fed­er­al super­max prison where Tsarnaev would serve a life sen­tence, the edi­to­r­i­al con­clud­ed, ​“He deserves extreme pun­ish­ment. But with the death penal­ty or with­out, that out­come is assured.”

(Editorial, ​“Lock Boston bomber away for life with­out parole: Our view,” USA Today, May 12, 2015.) See Editorials and Federal Death Penalty.

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