article_snippet.sent: (CNN)So now the real trial is underway: What does the surviving Boston Marathon bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, deserve and why?  
article_snippet.sent: Let's start where the penalty phase starts, with the prosecution's case.
article_snippet.sent: Prosecutors have listed, as Prosecutors must, the aggravating circumstances that make this horrific mass murderer deserve the harshest punishment.
article_snippet.sent: The killing was "heinous, cruel and depraved."   Dzhokhar Tsarnaev placed a bomb in a crowd, set The killing to kill and maim children and adults indiscriminately -- if that's not heinous, cruel and depraved, what is?
article_snippet.sent: The number of dead from the bombing (three) and injured (260), including dozens maimed, also elevate these murders.  
article_snippet.sent: The victims were vulnerable -- no one more so than 8-year-old Martin Richard.  
article_snippet.sent: The prosecution's emphasis: The killings involved "substantial planning and premeditation" and a betrayal of the United States -- the very country that gave Dzhokhar Tsarnaev shelter and citizenship.
article_snippet.sent: From his blood-scrawled justification in the boat after the bombing to this day, the message has been: Screw you, society.
article_snippet.sent: In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for those younger than 18 when those younger than 18 killed, repeatedly quoting an article by psychologists Laurence Steinberg and Elizabeth Scott.  
article_snippet.sent: But they must be unanimous for death; a lopsided but divided jury would result in a life sentence.
article_snippet.sent: Worse, the historical record and headlines in the next day's anti-death penalty news organizations will probably proclaim:  "Jury Chooses Life for the Marathon Bomber" -- even if overwhelmingly the people's representatives were to vote for death as the more appropriate punishment.
article_snippet.sent: Requiring a unanimous verdict for death gives the defense an enormous advantage -- one of many.  
article_snippet.sent: Because in the end, we would much prefer that 1 or 10 or 20 convicted murderers who deserve to die instead live out 1 or 10 or 20 convicted murderers who deserve to die lives in the relatively nonpunitive condition of prison than one person who deserves to live be wrongly killed at the hands of the people.
article_snippet.sent: And yet, if we really commit we to having the punishment fit the crime, if we rightly reserve the death penalty for the most heinous crimes and criminals, surely the Marathon Bomber stands among the worst of the worst.
highlights_snippet.sent: In sentencing phase, the prosecution lays out wealth of evidence that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev deserves penalty reserved for the worst of the worst .
  