Death? No. Possible Redemption.

The final verdict has been submitted and the jury found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts of murder in the Boston Marathon bombing. The second part of his trial will now be about whether or not he is sentenced to death.
According to a New York Times brief, the defense will try to save him by building the argument that he fell under the power of his brother, Tamerlan.
This is one of those interesting situations where my knee-jerk reaction is somewhat different from a more thoughtful and slow approach to the question of whether we should kill Dzhokhar for the horrible crimes he committed.
My knee-jerk reaction was instantly 'No.' We should not kill him, because that is exactly what he wants. His mentality about death is that it is honorable to die for what he believes. He believes that killing people, Americans, would bring him glory in the afterlife. My knee-jerk reaction was to keep him alive so that the glory he so wished for would be kept from him. That should be torturous for him metaphysically.
But, after I thought more about it, I realized that I was wrong about this approach. I do not mean to say that I think that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be sentenced to death. I abhor the death penalty. I mean that it was wrong of me to think of this from the perspective of being kept from his own joy of his afterlife.
The idea that a man could do what he did, notwithstanding, Tsarnaev is a human being. Even though we would not deign to admit it, for good reasons, he has dignity. He is alive. He is capable of thought. He can be rehabilitated -- even reconciled -- from his way of thinking.
I agree that he needs to go to prison. I agree that his sort of mental sickness is awful. But I don't agree with is that he can never be a person who can look back and say that what he did was wrong.
Religion in this situation is at the root of this young man's evil act. He did this as an act of evangelism. He wanted to gain notoriety by being a terrorist and he wanted to die to gain glory in the afterlife. That is poisoned thinking, for sure.
How often do we not get poisoned into thinking something that, in a clearer light, we would reject out of hand?
Dzhokhar is a human with some really bad problems. In time, those problems may heal. In time he may be brought to see the error of his ways. In time, he may be able to help end the situation as it is in this world, where we are not fully free until we stop believing poisoned philosophies and dogmas.
I for one wish to see no more loss of life from this terrible tragedy. I do not foresee it doing much good to take his life from him, the way he took the lives and liberties of so many others.
He is a sick person, but that sickness comes from a lifetime of indoctrination. Perhaps if Dzhokhar had been raised in a place where he was free to find his own Truth, he would have been a productive member of society.
I believe that killing him is wrong, not so that he will experience the metaphysical torture of being kept from what he believes he will receive in the afterlife, but because there is hope that he will be able to find that the afterlife he believes in is nothing compared to the redemption that may be found if he gets the help he needs.
Incarcerate him. But do not kill him.