Balance the scales of justice. By robbing others of their natural right to life, he has forfeited his own. A jury of his peers has found that he is guilty and recommended the death penalty. In my own opinion, that's how justice ought to be: cold, objective, balanced - even for a person like the bomber.
Does killing one man perfectly balance the deaths of several? No. But it's a step in the right direction, and the farthest that can be reached without torture, which could have its place under certain circumstances involving multiple victims, only so far as it contributes to balancing the scales. Do I personally view any torture as good, or suggest or condone it in any circumstances? No. But I do think that it may be necessary to make the punishment equal to the crime.
That was in regards to the Boston Bomber.
It depends on how you view punishment. If the end is rehabilitation, torture has no place. If the end is equal retribution, then it may have a place under extreme circumstances. If the end is to prevent future crimes, then torture sounds like a very effective means to that end. I personally see justice, and the punishment necessarily associated with it, as a function of the later, and to allow sentiment to encroach upon the purity of it as folly beyond words.
To torture a criminal clearly guilty of heinous crimes does not make the arbiter and administrator of justice, or the society that sanctioned it, "no better than the criminal". The criminal creates chaos, the judge creates order.
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