Most of us will never forget the Boston Marathon bombings. Horrific sights. Innocents crushed. Children maimed. But with the sentencing yesterday of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev the case can begin to recede a bit, at least for those of us not personally affected.
Judge O’Toole
In reading The Star’s story this morning about the sentencing, it struck me, just from a few quotes I read, that U.S. District Court Judge George O’Toole Jr. must have given a memorable sentencing statement. That prompted me to Google the entire statement, and I think it will move many of you, as it did me. He opened his address to Tsarnaev by quoting from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Here’s what the judge said: “One of Shakespeare’s characters observes: ‘The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.’ So it will be for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.” Think about that — evil trumping good. It’s not the way it should be and not what we want to hear, but… Then, the judge explained what that line meant as it pertained to Tsarnaev. “Whenever your name is mentioned, what will be remembered is the evil you have done. No one will remember that your teachers were fond of you. No one will mention that your friends found you funny and fun to be with. No one will say you were a talented athlete or that you displayed compassion in being a Best Buddy or that you showed more respect to your women friends than your male peers did. What will be remembered is that you murdered and maimed innocent people and that you did it willfully and intentionally. You did it on purpose.” …And then there was the brothers’ twisted rationalization of why a human slaughter was acceptable. “You tried to justify it (the bombing) to yourself by redefining what it is to be an innocent person so that you could convince yourself that Martin Richard was not innocent, that Lingzi Lu was not innocent, and the same for Krystle Campbell and Sean Collier and, therefore, they could be, should be killed. It was a monstrous self-deception. To accomplish it, you had to redefine yourself as well. You had to forget your own humanity…” …The judge ended his statement with another theatrical allusion.
“In Verdi’s opera Otello, the evil Iago tries to justify his malice. ‘Credo in un Dio crudel,’ he sings. ‘I believe in a cruel god.’ Surely someone who believes that God smiles on and rewards the deliberate killing and maiming of innocents believes in a cruel god. That is not, it cannot be, the god of Islam. Anyone who has been led to believe otherwise has been maliciously and willfully deceived. Mr. Tsarnaev, if you would stand, please…
…Thank you, Judge O’Toole. You gave one of the monsters of the modern world a memorable send-off.
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
Thanks, Jim. We all needed to read Judge O’Toole’s memorable words.
Laura
It was well spoken. But for high drama and stunning news value it was what came before the judge spoke. When Tsarnaev for the first time said anything in public, and he apologized. I know. I was there.
We are lucky to have as a reader and commenter Rick Serrano, a national reporter for the Los Angeles Times. He covered the trial and the sentencing. (He was a colleague of mine at The Kansas City Times many years ago.) Here is the link to Rick’s story on the sentencing..http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-boston-bomber-formal-sentence-20150624-story.html#page=1
You forgot to mention the best part…the sentencing. Hopefully there will be no appeal, and we can rid the world of this monster in speedy fashion.
There was no new light I could shed on the sentencing…I don’t break much news in this blog. As I did here, I often focus on aspects of stories that tend to get overshadowed by the headlined news.
Jim —
I would mention one thing more, and being a newspaperman, you will appreciate this.
The Boston Marathon bombing was hands down the biggest terrorism case in the US since 9/11. Yet over the last two years Judge O’Toole has sealed at least 90% of the court case, often without even giving any clue to what the files are about. They remain sealed today.
That means the public has no idea why the older Tsarnaev brother, Tamerlan, went to Russia, who radicalized him, and whether any foreign terror groups ordered the attack on the Boston Marathon. There have been no public disclosures on why the Russian govt was trailing Tamerlan, how the FBI responded, and whether the FBI turned Tsarnaev into an informant (which they often do in these cases) and should have known he was plotting the Marathon attack.
In fact, the judge is continuing to seal court filings at a record pace, even after the conviction over a month ago.
Sadly, the state of newspapers is so dire that they no longer have the money to mount a legal challenge against this assault on the First Amendment. It could well mean that many of the most important facts will be be “interred with him” when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is executed, as Judge O’Toole stated in quoting Shakespeare.
I didn’t know any of that, Rick…I am removing the cloak of adulation from Judge O’Toole, but I still admire the lengths he went to to deliver a statement commensurate with the magnitude of the case…Thank you for pressing to keep the public informed and to get every aspect of this case resolved.
CBS news this morning noted that Tsarnaev normally speaks with no foreign accent, but that during his statement he spoke with an accent they described as a “cross between Russian and a form of Arabic.” Odd …
You have to wonder if it was affected and part of a sham. I’m not discounting his apology, but it was not a straightforward, unequivocal apology. At this point, he’s just not capable of that. I do think his brother played a big role in corrupting him. He’s undoubtedly a weak personality.
Who cares what the judge said? This monster will still be alive two decades from now.
In the 50’s a man and woman kidnapped and killed little Bobby Greenlease. 81 days later they were both tried, convicted and executed. It recently took the 7 Dwarves of the Kansas Supreme Court 11 years just to hear the appeal of the Carr brothers, and like every capital case since ? they overturned the death penalty.
The rule of law is dead in America, the only justice that’s administered anymore is street justice when these punks accidentally pick the wrong victim and are executed on the spot..