Category: Society Page 3 of 11

The Tsarnaev jury and the death penalty

On May 15, 2015

Clockwise from top left: Boston Marathon bombing victims Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard, Lingzi Lu and shooting victim Sean Collier.

Clockwise from top left: Boston Marathon bombing victims Krystle Campbell, Martin Richard and Lingzi Lu, and MIT police officer Sean Collier, who was murdered in the aftermath of the attack.

The jurors in the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev trial had an unimaginably difficult job. They deserve our gratitude. The evidence and the sheer depravity of Tsarnaev’s crimes certainly support the death penalty, though I remain adamant in my opposition to it.

But let’s not forget that in a state without the death penalty, and in which polls showed a majority favored life in prison for Tsarnaev, prospective jurors who opposed capital punishment were barred from serving.

No, you don’t have to explain to me why. Allowing a death-penalty opponent onto the jury would have guaranteed a life sentence since there would be no possibility for a unanimous vote for death. But isn’t that just one more argument in favor of abolishing capital punishment?

Don’t take away Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s chance to repent

By Dan Kennedy

On April 26, 2015

In Society

If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev doesn’t get the death penalty, he’ll be sentenced to a prison where he’s pretty much guaranteed to go insane, David Abel reports in The Boston Globe.

Tsarnaev deserves no luxuries and no special treatment. But he does deserve to be treated humanely, even though he treated his victims with wanton cruelty. Because that’s who we are — or should be.

We used to call prisons penitentiaries. Sometimes prisoners come to understand the horror of their crimes and undergo conversion experiences. That doesn’t mean Tsarnaev should ever be let out of prison — of course he shouldn’t. But we should not take away his chance to repent.

Let Dzhokhar Tsarnaev fade away in prison

By Dan Kennedy

On April 8, 2015

In Society

Martin Richard

Now the real Boston Marathon trial can begin.

A federal jury’s decision to convict Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of 30 charges related to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings was the most anticlimactic of anticlimaxes. The 21-year-old’s lawyers admitted from the beginning that their client had participated in the horrific terrorist attack, which both scarred and strengthened this city.

The outcome of this first phase may have been preordained, but nearly two years after the bombing, the trial has held Boston and the region in thrall — more so than I might have imagined. The case regularly lands on the front pages of our two daily newspapers, the Globe and the Herald, and often leads the local television newscasts. The Twitter feeds of reporters covering the trial are avidly followed.

We haven’t learned much new, although harrowing details about the deaths of the Tsarnaev brothers’ four victims have come out. More than anything, many people find something cathartic in seeing the seemingly insolent, unrepentant Tsarnaev being brought to justice.

The only issue to be decided is whether Tsarnaev should be executed. Which is why the second phase of his trial is the one that really matters. Was Tsarnaev so thoroughly under the sway of his radicalized older brother, Tamerlan, that he should be spared lethal injection? Or had this seemingly typical teenager transformed himself into a hardened jihadist who obsessed over al Qaeda propaganda such as the article “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom”?

What kind of justice should Tsarnaev receive? There is no death penalty in Massachusetts, and in September 2013, according to a Globe poll, 57% of respondents supported life in prison for Tsarnaev; just 33% said he should be executed.

By moving the case into federal court, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made it likely that Tsarnaev would receive the death penalty. Keep in mind that no members of the jury were deemed eligible to serve unless they stated beforehand that they were willing to consider putting Tsarnaev to death.

But imagine a different scenario in which Tsarnaev had been allowed to plead guilty in return for a life sentence. He would have been denied the public stage he has been granted; although he has not testified (so far), his terrorist actions have been replayed over and over again for people to see the world over.

The 2015 Boston Marathon will take place in less than two weeks, on Monday, April 20. Thousands of runners will clog the 26.2-mile route, and tens of thousands will cheer them on — as they did last year, proving to the world that we will not be intimidated. And Tsarnaev’s lawyers will still be fighting for their client’s life.

It is a natural if disturbing reaction to events like this that it’s easier to remember the names of the perpetrators than of their victims. But Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a loser and a nobody. He should be allowed to fade away into the obscurity of a maximum-security prison cell. The people who deserve to be remembered are those he and his brother killed on Marathon Day — Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell and Lingzi Lu — and Sean Collier, the MIT police officer they executed in cold blood. It is they who should live on in our collective memories.

Personal photo by Lucia Brawley.

Originally published at CNN Opinion.

Jennifer Lawrence and the hazards of the cloud

By Dan Kennedy

On September 5, 2014

In Society, Technology

I haven’t said anything yet about the nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence and other celebrities that got hacked and distributed. But we’re going to talk about it on “Beat the Press,” so I’ve been thinking about it.

To me, the big thing is that the women were using iCloud, Apple’s private backup service. If they had posted their photos to some allegedly private area of Facebook, I guess I’d be snickering right along with some of the others and saying, “Well, what did you expect?” But what the hackers did in this case was identical to sitting in a car outside your house, breaking into your WiFi and looking at what’s on your computer. We all know it can happen, but it’s not the sort of thing that anyone prepares for.

It’s yet another reminder that nothing online is secure.

What New Haven could teach Ferguson about police video

By Dan Kennedy

On August 18, 2014

In First Amendment, Free speech, Media, Society

WGBHNews.org has posted an excerpt from “The Wired City” about a controversy over citizens’ video-recording police that played out in New Haven in 2010 and ’11 — relevant given the ongoing violence in Ferguson, Missouri, and the vital role of citizen video in documenting what is taking place on the streets.

As I tried to show, the New Haven Independent’s repeated coverage of the controversy helped lead to a number of reforms, including statements from the mayor and the police chief in support of the right to record; a training session at the city’s police academy; and a bill in the state legislature that didn’t pass but that served further to raise consciousness about the issue.

Making sense of the violence in Ferguson

By Dan Kennedy

On August 14, 2014

In Media, Society

Like many others, I watched in horrified fascination last night as this livestream from Ferguson, Missouri, played out online. (Thanks to Sara Rosenbaum, whose Twitter stream alerted me to it.) With cable news slow off the mark, the amateur footage of police firing rubber bullets at peaceful protesters was all we had.

But live images from a chaotic scene on the ground are no substitute for context and analysis. As we try to make sense of the Michael Brown shooting and the community and police response, I want to call your attention to several pieces that have helped me understand what’s going on:

“America Is Not for Black People,” by Greg Howard, The Concourse. An impassioned, well-argued essay by an African-American writer. “Michael Brown is not special,” Howard says. “In all its specificity, the 18-year old’s death remains just the most recent example of police officers killing unarmed black men.”
“Even before Michael Brown’s slaying in Ferguson, racial questions hung over police,” by Wesley Lowery, Carol D. Leonnig and Mark Berman, The Washington Post. Vital background on the racial tensions that preceded this week’s events.
“In Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrest,” by Wesley Lowery, The Washington Post. Lowery, a former Boston Globe reporter, was one of at least three journalists who were arrested while trying to do their jobs. Lowery’s story includes video he shot before being taken into custody. (The other two were Ryan Reilly of The Huffington Post, arrested along with Lowery, and Ferguson Alderman Antonio French, who’d been posting videos of the unrest.) And make sure you read Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron’s tough statement.
“Ferguson, Mo., Under Siege After Police Shooting,” The New York Times. An explainer that needs to be fleshed out but that still offers the basics if you’re just catching up.

Some questions about a bicyclist and an enraged driver

By Dan Kennedy

On August 6, 2014

In Society

After reading Tom Farragher’s Boston Globe column this morning about Chris Smith, a legally blind bicyclist who says an enraged driver got out of his car in Brookline and came at him with a baseball bat, I’ve got two questions.

Is it wise or even legal for someone who has lost much of his vision to be riding his bike on public ways? Aren’t we always told that cyclists have to follow the same laws as drivers?
Was it a good idea for Smith to rap his knuckles on the side of the car as they were both making their way through traffic? Farragher calls it “a signal of safety. I’m right here, it said, don’t hit me.” I wouldn’t. I’d call it obnoxious behavior by a cyclist, and at the very least I’d be giving him the hairy eyeball.

Let me be clear: There was no excuse for the driver to go off the way Smith describes. But I don’t think it’s all that clear-cut that Smith was in the right. Cyclists: I want to hear from you, either here or on Facebook.

FBI wants to know if journalists have been naughty or nice

By Dan Kennedy

On August 5, 2014

In Society

I’ll be on “NightSide with Dan Rea” at 8 p.m. on WBZ Radio (AM 1030) to talk about this article in The Washington Times revealing an FBI plan to rate news stories about the agency as “positive,” “negative” or “neutral.” Reporter Jim McElhatton interviewed me for the story. And here is the FBI document (pdf) he unearthed.

Update, Aug. 8. The FBI backs off.

A nuanced, layered story that is almost about race

By Dan Kennedy

On July 14, 2014

In Media, Society

Vincent (left) and Herbert Campbell in 2009.

The New York Times on Saturday published a feature story about an obscure but layered issue — a fence separating a public housing project in New Haven from the adjoining suburb of Hamden. After some 50 years, the fence is finally coming down.

It’s a story that caught my attention in late 2009, when Thomas MacMillan of the New Haven Independent first reported on efforts to remove the fence, also known as “the Berlin Wall.” It struck me as an example of the kind of nuanced journalism that characterized the Independent, an online-only nonprofit news site that I was tracking for my book “The Wired City.”

On the surface, you might think the issue was about white suburbanites who objected to black public housing residents gaining easy access to their town. But that would be too simple. Hamden has a significant African-American population. MacMillan interviewed two brothers who lived in Hamden and who opposed efforts by New Haven officials to remove the fence. MacMillan quoted Herbert Campbell as saying the fence prevented “all the riff-raff from coming around,” including drug dealers. Vincent Campbell added: “We had a lot of problems in the past. You never know who’s going to break into your house.”

This past May 4, Independent editor Paul Bass — who tells me he first wrote about the fence in 1999, while he was at the now-defunct alt-weekly New Haven Advocate — reported that the fence would be removed after it was discovered that it is actually on the New Haven side of the border. A federal civil-rights investigation helped speed matters along. Here is Bass’ follow-up on the actual tear-down. The daily New Haven Register covered the story as well, and published an editorial hailing the removal.

The New York Times story, by Benjamin Mueller, acknowledges the complexities of the saga, noting that both New Haven and Hamden now have black mayors, and that Hamden residents both black and white appear to be united in their opposition to the fence’s being demolished.

Photo by Thomas MacMillan, courtesy of the New Haven Independent.

A harrowing case of sexual assault on campus

By Dan Kennedy

On July 13, 2014

In Media, Society

This is long but worth it: a deep dive into a case of sexual assault on campus by Walt Bogdanich of The New York Times. If you’ve ever thought that the college form of justice discriminates against men and subjects them to unfounded accusations, here is an example of just the opposite occurring.

For more, here is my friend Kristen Lombardi’s series “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Frustrating Search for Justice,” which she reported for the Center for Public Integrity.

Please feel free to get angry at George Will all over again.