It was easy to understand why a US jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death by lethal injection for his part in the 2013 Boston Marathon atrocity but it was still the wrong outcome.
The defendant, then aged 19, perpetrated an appalling explosion which killed three innocent people, eight year old Martin Richard, Lu Lingz (23), a graduate student at Boston University, and Krystle Campbell (29), a restaurant manager, and left more than 260 others injured.
Tsarnaev planted the devices at the end of the marathon route and was later involved in a shoot-out resulting in the death of his accomplice and elder brother Tamerlan and police officer Sean Collier, both aged 26.
There could be no possible justification for the shocking crimes of Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen opposed to American foreign policies, and he deserves to spend the rest of his life in jail.
However, as he ludicrously viewed himself as a martyr who wanted to kill and be killed for his cause, it would be entirely appropriate if instead he was forced to spend the remainder of his days in a prison cell continually reflecting on the futility of violence .
The family of little Martin Richard displayed true Christian values by appealing for Tsarnaev to be spared execution, and their compassionate view should be at the heart of the appeal process which will follow and may well take years to complete.
It will be noted that, here in Ireland, many people from republican and loyalist backgrounds and, on documented occasions, the forces of the state have been involved in despicable outrages on a similar scale to and, in terms of fatalities, even worse than the Boston bombings over the last 40 years and beyond
Many of those individuals have served the sentences deemed to be appropriate by the authorities, accepted their share of responsibility for their actions and gone on to make a constructive contribution to society.
Indeed, as has been the case both here and in other countries around the world, some have eventually been elected to key positions and helped to persuade their communities that meaningful change can only be ultimately accomplished by constitutional means.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, as a US citizen, had a clear choice between putting forward a legitimate democratic argument, at home or abroad, or engaging in a shameful act of mass murder.
His teenage decision was warped, and he will have to face the due consequences under the American legal system, but executing him will suit his twisted beliefs rather than serving the wider public interest
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