By Jeffrey Page

Once again, America has been attacked from within and again, some of the victims were the little ones, the defenseless ones.

And again we confront the vexing question that arises whenever there is a mass shooting or, as in the Boston case, a bombing: What do we do with the killers who steal young lives as casually as they’d swipe an extra after-dinner mint from a restaurant?

The question is a fair one. In fact, you’d have to be a raving optimist to believe that the work of the Tsarnaev brothers at the finish line of the Boston Marathon will be the last such atrocity. Based on a report in a recent issue of Mother Jones Magazine on mass killings in America, it is reasonable to conclude that such acts against America will happen again. Mother Jones found that there have been about 62 such incidents over the last 30 years in 30 states. In those attacks, 513 people were killed and 736 injured. Additionally, Mother Jones found, the rate of such attacks has increased in recent years.

Citing sources, The Boston Globe has reported the younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, admitted planting the two bombs that killed three people and injured 170 others. What is a civilized society do with the likes of him?

–Some Americans would wish him a sentence of life imprisonment, not for his sake but for ours. They believe – and ultimately are correct – that every time the American justice system puts a criminal to death, it coarsens the nation as a whole and diminishes the humanity of each of us, its citizens and residents.

–Eye-for-eye types would send Tsarnaev to the death house forthwith.

–Some people argue against capital punishment by suggesting that Tsarnaev would suffer more by spending the rest of his life in prison – knowing he will never walk free – than by being put to death.

–There are people – good ones, sincere ones – who oppose capital punishment but have an asterisk in their souls that shouts the impossibility of mercy for someone with a gun and a cause who kills children. Clemency for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? What about clemency for Martin Richard?

I look at the pictures of Martin, the 8-year old boy who was killed by one of Tsarnaev’s bombs. In the photos I have seen, Martin is smiling. He is the toothy kid with the hand-made sign that said, “No More Hurting People. Peace.” He’s the kid whose sister and mother were gravely injured in the bombing. I think about Martin and his family a lot.

And after two decades, I still think a lot about Baylee Almon, the year-old baby who was among the dead in Oklahoma City in 1995, and about Veronica Moser-Sullivan, who was killed in the movie house massacre in Aurora, Col. last July. She was 6.

And there are Charlotte, Daniel, Olivia, Josephine, Ana, Dylan, Madeleine, Catherine, Chase, Jesse, James, Grace, Emilie, Jack, Noah, Caroline, Jessica, Aveille, Benjamin and Allison at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Conn. Every one of them was either 6 years old or 7.

A few questions for Zest readers: If we sentence ordinary one-victim murderers to life imprisonment, are we bound to refrain from imposing the death penalty on someone who kills children? What should be done with such a criminal?

And so, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. I have heard some arguments for sparing Tsarnaev. He’s only 19. He was probably under the influence of his angrier, older brother. Capital punishment diminishes all of us.

Yes, yes, and yes.

So what do we do with him?

Tags: Boston Bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Jeffrey Page

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