A professor at Northeastern University has declared that a federal court should not sentence guilty Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokar Tsarnaev to death because such a sentence would upset terrorists too much.
“If this guy gets the death penalty we’re gonna be hearing more than we ever wanted to hear about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev,” the emeritus professor, Edith Flynn, told CBS Boston.
“We have to remember that the purpose of terrorism is to draw attention and get the world focused on their issues, and to any degree that we have a sentence of death with all the appeals following, we are playing into the hands of the terrorists.”
Flynn also told CBS Boston that future terrorists could rally around Tsarnaev because of his dark good looks.
“I think Tsarnaev, given his youth and that Rolling Stone photograph — he’s quite a handsome lad — is going to draw quite a bit of sympathy, particularly from people who might be on the edge,” she predicted.
The longtime criminology professor who cites counterterrorism among her specialties compared Tsarnaev, 21, to Ted Kaczynski, the notorious Unabomber who for years lived in a hut in the Montana wilderness except when he was mailing or planting homemade bombs in a campaign against modern technology.
Kaczynski is currently serving eight life terms without the possibility of parole in a supermax prison in Colorado.
“Who thinks of Ted Kaczynski? I bet you half the population can’t remember his name,” Flynn wagered, according to CBS Boston.
On Wednesday a jury found Tsarnaev guilty of 30 criminal counts related to the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. (RELATED: Boston Bomber Found Guilty)
The bombings perpetrated by Tsarnaev and his dead brother Tamerlan killed three people and injured hundreds more. Seventeen people saw their limbs blown off.
Tsarnaev’s defense attorneys tried to portray him as a victim of his brother’s Islamic radicalization. They said his brother’s influence caused the Tsarnaev to put pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. (RELATED: The Last Days Of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev)
The 30 counts against Tsarnaev range from aiding and abetting his brother in the attack to carjacking to bombing a place of public use.
Several counts carry the possibility of the death penalty.
The sentencing phase of the trial will now decide if Tsarnaev receives the death penalty. This phase will include an entirely new set of deliberations.
The bombs set by Tsarnaev and his brother during the 2013 Boston Marathon killed Martin William Richard, an eight-year-old boy who had gone to the event to cheer for runners.
Krystle Marie Campbell, 29, and Lu Lingzi, 23, were also killed.
Three days later, the brothers ambushed and killed MIT police officer Sean A. Collier, 27.
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