Tsarnaev is in custody, but now what?

With a simple Google search, one can delve into the world of how a 19-year-old man from an immigrant family came to become one of the most hated people in the U.S.

Just search “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.”

Tsarnaev and his older brother Tamerlan, who was shot to death last week, have been accepted as the alleged perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15 that killed three people and injured more than 200 others.

Almost immediately, people seem to be trying to find ways to condemn the younger Tsarnaev to a dark and dank pit in Guantanamo Bay.

However, what most people seem not to realize, is that Tsarnaev is a U.S. citizen, not a foreign terrorist. He was, until very recently, a student at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where he did what most young college kids do: study, drink and party, fantasize about the opposite sex, and just try to get by. He wasn’t and isn’t a foreign terrorist.

Thus, Tsarnaev the younger may not be consigned to a pit in Guantanamo Bay, much as he may seem to merit it.

Recovering from multiple gunshot wounds he received during his arrest, Tsarnaev was quickly questioned by authorities and then read his Miranda Rights and then assigned a public defendant. This is how U.S. citizens who are guilty of a crime are handled. Note, he wasn’t zip-tied to a chair and questioned with a bright lamp in his face or water-boarded until he screamed out names willy-nilly.

Yet, in Congress, Republican lawmakers are pushing that he be classified as an enemy combatant and subjected to martial law.

Under the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution, all U.S. citizens are guaranteed to trial by jury, to speedy trials and to protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

As it stands, Tsarnaev could very well spend the rest of his life in prison or receive the death penalty.

According to our nation’s legal system, this is enough of a punishment for Tsarnaev’s crimes. I’m inclined to agree with that.

Sure, Tsarnaev and his brother’s actions are horrific and completely unwarranted, especially considering that they lashed out at a country that has housed them, given them citizenship and even provided them with welfare benefits. Yes, they killed three people and harmed hundreds more. But, at the risk of sounding clichéd, the difference between the Tsarnaevs and the rest of the civilized populace is trust and belief in the power of the law.

Tsarnaev could lose his right to continue living. He could very well lose all his freedoms while in prison. But he should not be treated like a faceless foreign terrorist that vanishes forever. It should be enough that he will be prosecuted to the very full extent of the power of the penal codes of this country. Let that be enough.