"I don't actually think the federal government will be executing people in 50 years."

"But if Barack Obama�s Department of Justice not only didn't stop using the federal death penalty, but also actively sought Tsarnaev�s execution, what are the odds that another, more liberal president will come along to do so in, say, the next 15 or 20 years?"

Asks lawprof Noah Feldman, who thinks that if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is actually put to death, "it will be a signal event in the history of" Massachusetts, "where I was born and have lived most of my life" and where "the death penalty has... come to seem distant, foreign and unfamiliar."

Even though "[a]lmost certainly, the execution won�t actually take place here."