Everyone who ever voted to convict someone was firmly convinced that the accused “did it”.
Did Tsarnaev do it?
Beats the hell out of Wikipedia. 
His own lawyers said right in their opening statements that he indeed did everything he was charged with. He previously had written a confession (although he wouldn’t call it one) on the boat wall.
This is not a case you can argue *doubt *with, although there certainly are many others.
It surely appears so, but folks in a jury are certain the guy they find guilty is guilty, and sometimes the aren’t. Sometime it may be you or me that people are certain is guilty.
Then why does he deserve to live?
It’s a good thing we don’t immediately execute people right after the trial jury issues a sentence, then.
Maybe. If it happens to me and I am guilty, then I’ll pay the penalty for it; and if I’m not guilty, the system will eventually exonerate me.
The death penalty is wrong, always and everywhere.
AND it fails as retribution/vengeance.
Because we don’t deserve to kill him. It isn’t about him, it’s about us. Who do *we *want to be?
That’s a pretty recent innovation in our justice system, actually.
Before or after your execution?
He doesn’t, but setting a precedent that " if a jury is certain the guy is guilty, then whack him" may cause innocent people to be executed.
Of course we do. He wronged us. We are entitled to restitution.
We want to be the executors of justice.
And a very good one at that.
Before. We don’t execute innocent people in this country.
If innocent people being executed was actually a thing that happened, you might have a faint glimmer of a point there.
But it isn’t, so you don’t, and the possibility that a completely unrelated person might wrongfully executed years from now does not excuse the crime of allowing Tsarnaev to live.
Restitution? How can he make it up to us?
You must have meant “retribution”, which does not help us.
What do you mean by “justice” then? Something other than retribution, something more moral and civilized? What?
Hoo boy. Somebody else want to take this one?
By surrendering his life.
I meant what I said.
Justice occurs when those who have done wrong are punished appropriately. There is nothing more moral and civilized than the fair application of justice.
Does that bring back the dead? Restore amputated legs? Heal any wounds? “Make us whole” as the lawyers say? How? What does that do except take another life, worthless as it is?
You’re constantly using different words but you’re still dodging the question. What is “appropriate” punishment and who decides?
Of course not. What it does is punish the wrongdoer for what they’ve done. You can’t change the past. What you can do is ensure that actions have consequences.
The appropriate punishment for murder, IMO, is a public execution by hanging, beheading, or burning.
In our society, the appropriate punishment is decided by the people via their elected representatives, who have concluded that a private execution via lethal injection, inhalation of gas, electrocution, or firing squad is appropriate.
Then it’s mere retribution, not restitution, that you want. And the previous questions about what we are and want to be still lie there. Life in prison without parole is certainly punishment, you know, and possibly worse than death.
In some parts of the US, yes, that’s still accepted. Others, a growing majority, have put it in their pasts along with so many other things we have developed beyond, and so has most of the rest of the civilized world.
Is there a difference?
To paraphrase the Dread Pirate Roberts; life is better than death. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
I don’t believe that any part of the world that suffers criminal murderers to live has a claim to calling itself “civilized”. The only thing that such squeamishness indicates is cowardice.
Ah. Got it now. You’re with ISIS!
“deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.”