Even bad guys deserve a decent burial

Timothy McVeigh, Adam Lanza, the Columbine killers and even Osama bin Laden were all afforded some form of respectful burial. Why is Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s case so different? There are plenty of gravestones, tombs and burial sites of people who have committed far worse crimes and murdered more innocents. And that’s just in Massachusetts alone.

I get the emotions and visceral response to the “not in my back yard” crowd. But I haven’t heard an argument on how it dishonors, or cheapens the victims in any way to allow the family to bury Tamerlan. In fact, as I understand the law, you MUST bury a body “within a decent amount of time” with no provisions made for how good or bad the deceased was.

If the outrage was consistent, I suppose I could at least consider the requests to deny burial in their cemetery, town or state. But as long as serial killers, mass murderers, child rapists and other criminal slime is allowed to be buried without controversy, you won’t find me on this bandwagon.