On Thursday, January 30, 2014, federal prosecutors decided to pursue the death penalty against Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

I, however, do not believe such an act should take place.

Although the day of the Boston marathon was a tragic, overwhelming day, my decision against the death penalty for this man does not change. Perhaps much of my reason is based on emotion, but emotions aside, I still stand firm on not sentencing to someone to death at such a young age.

First, I believe in justice, so I do think placing him behind bars for life is reasonable. However, I think he should be given an opportunity to change. Think back to who you were 10 years ago, or even one year ago perhaps. Are you the same? Each person, whether a killer, lover, or teenager, transforms day to day. Why not give Tsarnaev an opportunity to go through the motions of changing through psychological help. Since we are unable to know or predict the future, we don’t know what kind of change could occur in his heart.

Second, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has denied his leading role in the bombing. Since today’s society has amazing technology and social media, a lot of the evidence seems to be accurately formed around him and his older brother (whom I think was the mastermind behind the bombing).

Tsarnaev has admitted to playing a role in the bombing, but claims that his brother was the main culprit.

Third, sometimes people are wrongfully convicted and given the death penalty. According to Deathpenaltyinfo.org, there have been 86 death row exonerations of wrongfully accused inmates and “a total of 69 people have been released from death row since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Twenty-one condemned inmates have been released since 1993, including seven from the state of Illinois alone.”

Although Tsarnaev may have been there during the act, after reading a lot of articles in regards to what he and officials have said, I do not think there is enough evidence to kill the young man.

A lot of people are out for revenge, but maybe we should focus less on whether he should be sentenced to death, and more on finding out why this tragedy took place and how we can prevent things like this from happening in the future.