I do not wish (or expect) for Snowden to be sentenced with capital punishment if he were to turn himself in.
However any attorney or advocacy organization will find it extremely arduous to prove that he did this in good faith.
Fleeing only makes it worse.
It is universally considered a symptom of insincerity.
An insincerity of mission and an insincerity of motive.
It will be an entirely unconvincing case even if it were made in the court of public opinion much less closed-door hearings.
Had he even made the slightest of effort to reach out (to whatever institution, individual or group that he trusted, based in the United States) he would have left an indelible impression on privacy advocates, news organizations and the larger public, even if his criminal fate eventually remained unmitigated, by that act of outreach.
This is a common attack on activists: "if you're really interested in your fellow man, you must act like a saint hermit. Anything less than that is unacceptable and means you're wrong on <position you support>"
How is the problem (that the NSA can record everything we do online) related to a young man's attempts to save his skin?
Would the NSA stop spying on us if it turned out that Snowden was a buddhist monk? Would the NSA stop spying on us if he'd let himself be crucified on a hill near Washington, dying for our sins?
Turning the attention on his means is another way to deflect it from the main problem: that NSA and friends run wild on all the routers in the world with no respect for anyone's privacy or human rights. This is the real issue, regardless of whether Snowden is a saint, a prostitute, a Dutch double-agent or an alien with a penchant for bicycles.
It isn't fair that activists are held to higher standard, but it is true. If you want to change the world, the world expects more of you. This isn't new. Occupy Wall Street may have had a point, but they allowed themselves to be marginalized due to more superficial aspects of the movement.
If Snowden had been "crucified on a hill near Washington" (or even just stayed anonymous), it wouldn't have ended the NSA's spying but it would have definitely added force to his message. Focusing on his means may be a deflection, but he is somewhat responsible for allowing the deflection being as compelling as it is.
It may be too early to dismiss Occupy as having been "marginalized". Sure they're not camped out anymore, but camping was never really one of their top priorities. Who can say that the example of Occupy didn't inspire Snowden to a degree?
Anyone who isn't involved in Occupy just writes them off as a bunch of drum-banging hippies who don't bath frequently enough. Even those who would normally be receptive to what they have to say.
I'd say the media is to blame, but the act of camping was probably the real problem.
The cause for whistle blowing is totally independent of respect or disrespect of a state's corrupt or otherwise judicial system. If you're an international game changer, what we're talking about here, ES initiated a cause far transcending something as trivial as what the political poseurs back home think of him.