With death penalty reinstated for Boston Marathon bomber, Doylestown survivor reflects on sentence

Amy O’Neill’s 80-year-old father is in favor of it.

So, too, are the legions of friends of the 52-year-old licensed professional counselor in Doylestown.

Presumably in favor of it are the hundreds of injured survivors, some of whom lost limbs in the blast or required amputation. A good guess is those in favor of it are the family members of the three who were killed in the blasts, including an 8-year-old boy, on that terrible day in Boston nine years ago.

Even one of O’Neill’s sons, who back then at age 12 asked her if it was OK to feel that way. A boy asking for permission, looking to his injured mom to justify his feelings. What happened to his mom left a mark on his psyche back then and, more recently, on the 22-year-old college student’s person, just below the left collarbone: A tattoo of the date of the heinous crime, April 15, 2013.

Everyone is in favor, it seems, of executing Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 28, who again faces death after the recent US Supreme Court 6-3 vote to reinstate the death penalty in his case that was vacated by the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston in 2020 due to errors by the prosecution and presiding judge.

Everyone in favor of the death penalty but O’Neill herself.

“I was in the courtroom in Boston when Tsarnaev was sentenced to death the first time, in 2015,” said O’Neill, while sipping hot tea at Nonno’s Italian Coffee Parlor in Doylestown the other day. “We all knew this was a death penalty case going in.

“You know, I’ve been all over the map on the death penalty. I can conceptualize it. When I was in high school, I wrote a paper in favor of the death penalty. But when you’re asked now if you’d be OK for them to put someone to death, it’s very different.

“My values on life are such that you’re being asked to be part of a decision here to put someone to death. I’m a humanist. Maybe it’s my Catholic upbringing. I don’t know. I just can’t say I agree with the death penalty.”

O’Neill was in the final mile of the 26.2-mile event. The finish line was in sight. It was just before 3 p.m.

Then, bedlam. The bombs exploded. Death and blood and screaming and panic and sirens. Hundreds were injured. Battlefield carnage is how the Court of Appeals described the scene. O’Neill wounded in the center of a world spinning out of control.

Nine years after that terrible day in Boston, the fallout from that life-altering day lingers. The wounds from O’Neill’s surgically repaired left calf, the one ripped into by shrapnel from the second homemade bomb detonated by Tsarnaev and his late older brother, Tamerlan, have long since healed. Emotionally, however, the wounds remain fresh. Therapy has provided her coping mechanisms to deal with her reformed self. The fallout, she says, even factored in the dissolution of her marriage.

“When you face death, you change,” she said. “When you’re introduced to death in such an intimate way, it changes the way you live your life.”

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O’Neill’s father, a retired attorney, was very outspoken about his view of the death penalty after the bombing and his daughter’s injury. A few months later, he drove O’Neill to the formal interview in Boston to recount her experiences for authorities.

“The final question they asked me was, 'Are you in favor of the death penalty?'” she recalled. “I didn’t expect that question. My jaw dropped and I broke down. I told them I didn’t feel I was in a position to make that decision, that people can believe whatever they want to in this case.”

O’Neill participated in January on a panel titled “Dignity & Healing: A Catholic panel on restorative justice," in New York City sponsored by the Archdiocese of New York. She shared how victims like her of a heinous crime make sense of it. She said being victimized in that way shatters the way one looks at themselves, the way they see the world and the way they move through the world. She told the panel she wondered if she even had a right to have an opinion on the death penalty.

If not her, then who?

O’Neill took a sip of tea. She wore a gray baseball type cap with an Eagles logo outlined in pink on the front, and a breast cancer ribbon on the side. She fended off the chilly day with a black sleeveless zip-up winter vest over a gray/black speckled long-sleeve shirt, and sneakers. She looked very much like one who was just out for a run, which she had been.

I asked O’Neill what she believes her life would be like today had she not been at the marathon during the bombing.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think this was supposed to happen to me. I think the last nine years have been treacherous but impactful to me interpersonally. But it did happen. Meaning-making is an important aspect of recovering from a traumatic situation, When people can make meaning out of tragedy, it provides a narrative to be able to live through it and transform from it, and that is often in a good way."

Those hoping Tsarnaev will be executed for his crimes — I'm among them — may be waiting for years. On average, the time between a death sentence and execution in America is 22 years. I asked O’Neill if Tsarnaev was to be executed, would she want to be there to witness it. Given her views on the death penalty, I assumed I knew her answer. The woman fell silent, almost contemplatively, moving her eyes around the coffee shop as if searching for the right words.

“I’d probably put my name in the ring to watch,” she said.

Columnist Phil Gianficaro can be reached at 215-345-3078, pgianficaro@theintell.com, and @philgianficaro on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Doylestown survivor of Boston Marathon bombing disagrees with death penalty