U.S. family decides murderer's fate 7,000 miles away

The Pennsylvania family of a murder victim faced an extraordinary question: Should the man who authorities say killed 40-year-old Jennifer Brown in Qatar die for the crime? It was a decision the family who lost a daughter and a sister had to face, reports CBS News correspondent Anna Werner.

Heather Shapiro and Tricia Snisky lost their sister when she was brutally murdered. Since then, they have been living through their own story of crime and punishment.

"It's two years later and it's still really hard to imagine that this did happen," Shapiro said.

It began in September 2012, when Brown moved to Qatar, a small Arab country in the Middle East, to teach pre-kindergarten.

"She was really intrigued by it. She thought it was a great opportunity and they made it look so great," Shapiro said. "Once she got that, she was -- there was no changing her mind."

Their sister had been living in Qatar for just two months when their father called Shapiro at home.

"He couldn't even get words out. So I knew that something like -- awful had happened. But I would've never thought that it was that," recalled Shapiro.

Brown had been stabbed to death in her apartment. A Kenyan security guard at her building was arrested and reportedly confessed.

His trial took place in the Qatari capitol of Doha, nearly 7,000 miles away from her family home in Pennsylvania.

"We felt like we couldn't be there for Jenny," Snisky said. "We just felt helpless. There was nothing that we could do, and to help, and it was very painful."

It didn't get any easier. The trial dragged on for months. And then just a few weeks ago, Brown's family learned a Qatari judge wanted them to help decide the man's punishment.

"I was shocked. I didn't even consider that they would take the family's wishes... into consideration like that," Shapiro said.

They were told their options included giving him a shorter sentence in exchange for "blood money," a payment of $56,000 from the man's family.

"It's very insulting that they would even think that we would consider that after what he's taken from us," Shapiro said.

The next question was harder to answer: whether he should get the death penalty.

"It's difficult. It's a real hard decision," Snisky said.

In the beginning, Shapiro said she had moments of wanting revenge. She said her father did, too, but their Catholic faith and their own belief system won out. The family asked for life in prison.

"We just didn't want to be like him. We don't want to take, you know, life's sacred to us. We don't want to take another life... because he did. And it's, we just don't feel it's right," Snisky said.

Brown's body now rests at the parish cemetery in her hometown. Her sisters visit her often and believe she would have agreed with a decision to spare the life of the man who took hers.

"I think that Jenny was so forgiving and loving towards everybody that she thinks that we did the right thing," Shapiro said. "This is what she would have wanted."

Under Qatari law, judges are statutorily required to take the views of a victim's family into account in cases of premeditated, intentional murder, a Harvard law professor explained to CBS News correspondent Anna Werner.