Should we come down to Tsarnaev’s level?

We are witnessing the emotional and dramatic penalty phase in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, an ethnic Chechen immigrant. Federal prosecutors are seeking to persuade the jury to sentence the Boston Marathon bomber to death. Prosecutors told jurors that he remains “unconcerned, unrepentant and unchanged,” showing Tsarnaev’s photo apparently “giving the finger” to the security camera in his cell.

Tsarnaev, 21, was convicted of 30 federal charges in the twin bombings that killed three spectators and wounded more than 260 other people near the marathon’s finish line April 15, 2013. He was also convicted of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer during his brother’s getaway attempt. He claimed that these attacks were meant to avenge the deaths of Muslim civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At the time of the bombing, he was a 19- year- old college student. By his own admission, Tsarnaev is a “traitorous, child- murdering cop killer.” He deliberately killed and maimed.

Tamerlan, his older brother, now dead, was 26 years old at the time of the bombing. He is portrayed by the defense team as a domineering influence on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev who pushed his younger brother into drug use at a very early age. The defense states that Tamerlan’s overbearing power should be seen as a “mitigating factor” lessening Dzhokhar’s culpability.

Tamerlan was loud, got into flights, never held a steady job and displayed uncontrollable anger at an imam who compared Martin Luther King Jr. to the Prophet Muhammad.

During the penalty phase, victims and family members are recalling in heartbreaking detail the blood, the screams and the terror of the attack, worsened by the pain and grief that continues.

A number of these survivors and relatives are asking that Tsarnaev be sentenced to life in prison rather than to death. Bill and Denise Richard, whose 8- year- old son was killed and whose 7- year- old daughter lost a leg, said years of appeals over a death sentence “would prolong the most painful day of our lives,” while locking up Tsarnaev for life would allow them “to turn the page.”

This is the time when I should begin to address the death penalty as morally wrong because it denies the innate worth of an individual, no matter what the crime. God’s image remains intact. Unfortunately, as in this case, God’s likeness has been radically tarnished.

However, another viewpoint grounds my conviction that vengeance never brings justice.

It bothers me that since 2013, the only countries that have executed more of their own citizens than the United States are China, Iraq and Saudi Arabia — hardly the sort of company we should want to be in.

Tsarnaev has no regard for human life. But we do not have to lower ourselves to his standard.