The Boston Bomber has been sentenced to death and I have so many issues with it. For starters, why is a jury allowed to decide the sentence of a person? I understand that they can decide whether someone is guilty or not guilty beyond all reasonable doubt, and I understand that this allows for a more fair trial than trial by judge alone. However I do not understand how a panel of 12 “everyday people” can decide whether another man can live or not. They are laypeople, they do not have a law degree, they will not understand some of the things that are done or said during the process. They are also specially chosen to ensure they agree with the death penalty, which seems to be the State heavily influencing their own punishment to be enforced through the jury. Another issue I have is that the jury will probably sit on one case, they will decide one man’s future, they will not get to experience numerous murder trials in the way a judge would. The jury will not be as skilled at being impartial, at putting their prejudices and hatred and press influence away when deciding if a man should live or die. On an unrelated note, there are two cases of English civil law which highlights this. Elton John was given vast amounts of money, by a jury, as a reward for his right to privacy being breached. This was because Elton John was a well known person and people liked him. The second case, involved a man who lost a body part due to another’s negligence. The man who lost the body part was given much less (less than half) of the money Elton John was given. Juries do not understand the law, they are not capable of putting pre conceived ideas behind and as a result cannot make a fully informed decision from the facts which is the basis of a legal trial.
There is then the issue of the death penalty being allowed, a much more controversial topic. But it must be asked, how can a State be considered modern and civilised when it is systematically slaughtering its own citizens? A State being able to decide who lives and who dies is the basis of many dystopia novels. It is the reason countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom use to justify military intervention with other countries. The United States may have a system to establish where one should be killed, but it has already be mentioned how they go about it in a wrong way by using juries. There are four main chances to appeal the sentence, with other minor chances however approximately 50% of sentences will not be changed. Instead it is trial after trial, offering hope and stealing it away at the last minute. There are numerous cases where there is reasonable doubt that a person is guilty yet they are still murdered, two notable cases in 2005 and 2011.
There is much more to be considered, and there is much more research I could do, but this is a mere unnoticed tirade about the unfairness of capital punishment.
