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Does death penalty bring closure for loved ones?

By Public Affairs

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Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

After a federal jury sentenced Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death earlier this month,  Boston Mayor Martin Walsh expressed “hope [that] this verdict provides a small amount of closure” for those affected by the 2013 bombing. Many others echoed the belief that victims of the bombing — including the families of the four people murdered by the Tsarnaev brothers — could now find some relief from their anguish.

Will Tsarnaev’s death sentence help them?

Jason Marsh, of the campus’s Greater Good Science Center, explores this controversial topic with a look at research findings, in a piece for CNN.

Among other things, Marsh reports on a 2007 study reviewing media interviews of family and friends of murder victims, conducted around the time the murderer was being executed. He also looks at a study involving in-depth interviews with people in two states, Texas and Minnesota, who had experienced the murder of a loved one. In Texas the murderers got the death penalty, while in Minnesota the sentence was life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Also included is video on Boston Marathon bombing survivors’ reactions to Tsarnaev’s death sentence.

Read Marsh’s article — “ Does death penalty bring closure? ” — on the CNN website.