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Thread: Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev - Federal Death Row

  1. #241
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Tsarnaev’s Attorneys Want Him Off Death Row. Here’s What They'll Argue

    More than four years after Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was sentenced to death for killing four people and wounding hundreds more, his attorneys will argue in a Boston courtroom Thursday why his conviction and death sentence should be thrown out.

    Attorneys for Tsarnev’s defense and the federal government will each have an hour to make their cases in front of three appeals court judges at the Moakley Courthouse in Boston — the same courthouse where Tsarnaev was sentenced in 2015.

    Both sides have already filed hundreds of pages of court records arguing their case. Here's what they say:

    What Tsarnaev's Lawyers Argue

    Attorneys for Tsarnaev, in their 1,126-page brief, listed out 15 errors they say were made by the lower court.

    Three notable claims made by the lawyers are detailed below and focus broadly on the following:

    the location of the trial;
    the actions of at least two jurors;
    a lack of evidence about the alleged previous crimes of Tsarnaev's older brother and co-conspirator, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in the shootout with Watertown police.

    The Trial in Boston

    “This case should not have been tried in Boston." That's the first line of the appeal's introduction.

    “Almost everyone in the Boston metropolitan area had a friend or family member at the Marathon, sheltered in place, participated in the manhunt, or bought or wore Boston Strong paraphernalia,” the attorneys wrote. “This Court should presume prejudice because constant, intense, and inflammatory pre-trial publicity saturated all of Eastern Massachusetts, so much so that more than two-thirds of the venire [jury pool] believed Tsarnaev was guilty before they heard a single witness.”

    Tsarnaev’s attorneys essentially asked, if this case wasn’t eligible for a change of venue, what case ever could be?

    That was the same argument made in an amicus brief by eight “prominent citizens,” including former Mass. Supreme Judicial Court Justice Fernande R.V. Duffly and James Doyle, former head of the public defender division of the state's Committee for Public Counsel Services.

    Attorney George Kendall filed that brief. He said the Constitution requires not an uninformed jury, but a disinterested one.

    “Given the extraordinary nature of the crime and then succeeding events thereafter, the quartering in place … the vast majority of people in the Greater Boston area were not disinterested,” he said. “They'd all been affected, not in a little way, but in large ways.”

    Jurors in other cities might have known about the case, Kendall said, but they would be far less likely to have been personally affected.

    It's an argument Tsarnaev’s attorneys have made before — four times, in fact. Their requests to move the trial out of Boston were all denied. On the eve of trial, they made their last request to the First Circuit Court of Appeals — the same court that will hear this appeal -- and lost.

    Former federal judge Nancy Gertner said this was a case where Boston, through its iconic marathon, was the victim.

    "You would never have a trial in the victim's home," she said. "And this is essentially the victim's home."

    Jurors' Social Media Posts

    Tsarnaev’s attorneys contend the panel that convicted him and sentenced him to death was a “compromised jury.” Specifically, they called out two jurors — the forewoman and juror 138.

    Attorneys said the forewoman made more than 20 Twitter posts about the bombings before the trial, and retweeted one post calling Tsarnaev a “piece of garbage.” She posted about sheltering in place during the manhunt for Tsarnaev. But in her questionnaire and in oral questioning, Tsarnaev's lawyers wrote that the forewoman answered she hadn’t commented on the case online, or been on lockdown.

    Juror 138, meanwhile, posted about being called to jury duty on Facebook. Friends commented on his post, and hours after he’d been instructed not to, he continued to post about jury selection and the case. Posts included friends telling him to “play the part” and “get on the jury” to send Tsarnaev “to jail where he will be taken care of.” He replied with details about jury selection and being “ten feet” from Tsarnaev.

    When asked by the court about talking or posting about the case, he said he hadn’t.

    Judge George O’Toole was made aware of the posts that defense attorneys said “conceal[ed] bias against Tsarnaev and their disobedience of the Court’s instructions.” Yet, they wrote, O’Toole let them stay on the jury and didn’t ask any follow up questions before seating them.

    Gertner said in a death penalty case like this, the judge's obligation to secure a fair jury is doubled. In her view, O'Toole should have taken "every step" to make sure jurors were unbiased.

    "This is not just jurors lying about any old thing," she said. "This is jurors lying about their participation in the case and lying about their perspectives on the case. It doesn't get any worse than that."

    Kendall said these issues with the jurors are tied to the decision to not move the case.

    “When you keep a case like this in Boston, there are going to be people who actually want to get on the case,” he said. “And so sometimes they will not be forthcoming and truthful ... and that happened in this case with at least these two jurors where they were not.”

    The Waltham Triple Murder

    On Sept. 11, 2011, investigators believe Tamerlan Tsarnaev, along with a friend, Ibragim Todashev, killed three men inside a Waltham home.

    In court documents, police said that after the bombings Todashev confessed to his and Tamerlan’s involvement in the murders. Todashev was killed in a confrontation with police shortly after the alleged confession.

    The defense wasn’t allowed to talk about the murders at trial. If they had, they believed it would have shown the radicalization and violence of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, and the influence he may have had over his little brother.

    “The jury heard only a misleadingly sanitized picture of Tamerlan from the prosecution — that he was merely a ‘bossy’ older brother prone to verbal outbursts,” Tsarnaev’s attorneys wrote in their brief.

    Had the jury known more, they may have considered the brothers' relationship a mitigating factor and sentenced Tsarnaev to life in prison, instead of death. Only three of the 12 jurors said Tsarnaev “acted under the influence of his older brother” or “was particularly susceptible to his older brother’s influence.”

    Gertner said, to her, the issue of the Waltham evidence is clear.

    "When death is on the line, you err on the side of inclusion," she said.

    What The Prosecution Says

    In their own 400-plus page brief, the government refuted Tsarnaev’s defense claims.

    They detailed what they say was his quiet radicalization while he was a student at UMass Dartmouth. They also reprinted what Tsarnev wrote while hidden in a boat during the manhunt, calling it his “jihadist justification” of the attacks.

    And, in a particularly powerful section, prosecutors reminded the court of the devastating injuries Tsarnaev and his brother inflicted on marathon spectators with their homemade bombs.

    Tsarnaev got a fair trial in Boston, the government said. Yes, much of the jury pool knew about the bombing, but those seated said they could set aside what they knew and be impartial. And, they argued, there was nowhere to move the trial where people wouldn’t have heard about the attacks.

    “Tsarnaev would have been hard-pressed to find any U.S. jurisdiction in 2015 where a significant percentage of potential jurors had not been exposed to media coverage of the bombing,” prosecutors wrote.

    Plus, prosecutors contended in their brief that neither of the two jurors Tsarnaev's lawyers accuse of wrongdoing made dishonest statements that would have justified their removal from the case. Besides that, they said O’Toole had already (properly) ruled on their removal during jury selection.

    Finally, in regards to the Waltham triple murder being entered as evidence, prosecutors said that was a drug-related robbery and completely unrelated to the marathon bombing. Nothing about those murders showed Tamerlan “influenced” or “intimidated” his little brother, they said.

    “Rather," prosecutors wrote, "the evidence showed that Tsarnaev was independent, did not follow his brother’s strict religious lifestyle, and was a willing and eager participant in the marathon bombing."

    Who Will Decide On The Appeal?

    The case is before the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which sits in Boston and includes the federal districts of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island. Judges Juan Torruella, William J. Kayatta, Jr. and O. Rogeriee Thompson will hear the arguments.

    Torruella already weighed in on one part of the defense claims: the change of venue. In 2015, when Tsarnaev’s defense unsuccessfully asked the appeals court to seek a new venue because of pre-trial publicity in Boston. Torruella “vehemently” dissented, calling the pre-trial publicity “pervasive, prejudicial, and inflammatory.”

    Where Is Tsarnaev? Will He Be There?

    Tsarnaev, now 26 years old, is on death row at the "Supermax" federal prison in Florence, Colorado. He is not expected to be in the court Thursday.

    https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/12/11...-appeal-boston
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

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  2. #242
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Editorial:

    Howie Carr: Stop pampering Dzhokhar ‘the Joker’ Tsarnaev

    By Howie Carr
    Boston Herald

    If a life sentence to “Supermax” is so horrible, then why is Muslim terrorist Dzhokhar “the Joker” Tsarnaev appealing his death sentence?

    Especially since the fiend is allegedly such a devout Muslim — why isn’t he begging the infidels to execute him, so he can be on his way to Paradise to collect those 72 virgins that the Koran promises all terrorists?

    Actually, couldn’t you make the argument the Joker did his older brother Tamerlan a favor back in 2013 when he mistook him for a speedbump in Watertown and sent him to the Promised Land?

    Every time one of these savages is handed a life sentence, we are informed how much worse it is to be rotting in prison – “punishment beyond the death penalty,” as the former warden at the Joker’s Rocky Mountain lockup said Thursday.

    Yet how many murderers on any Death Row, either federal or state, ever demand that their public defenders — because they always have public defenders — halt all appeals, in order to end their terrible daily punishment of three hots and a cot, not to mention a TV?

    One in a hundred, maybe. Or is it one in a thousand?

    He’s getting a lot better treatment than Whitey Bulger did. And Whitey Bulger was at least an American.

    Plus, the Joker is such a nice young man, as the alt-left media has told us all along. He was a tousle-haired teen throb, Rolling Stone informed readers, not like those evil UVa frat boys they falsely accused of a gang rape.

    The Joker was an All-American boy, a local host at National Panhandling Radio gushed.

    The Globe told us how his welfare family of shiftless foreign layabouts was always short on money — maybe because none of them actually ever got a job, as busy as they were slaughtering Jewish drug dealers to celebrate the anniversary of 9/11, or using their EBT cards to buy pressure cookers to murder 8-year-old Americans.

    Tsarnaev is a victim, in other words.

    Forget the four people he murdered in cold blood, and those three Americans whose throats his brother slit in Waltham.

    All these cold-blooded killer stories follow the same arc. His appeal will be denied, it’ll go to the Supreme Court — denied again. A few years will pass, followed by yet another round of slobbering sob stories, planted by his “advocates,” all of whom are on the clock, with the taxpayers picking up the tab.

    Any reader could write these headlines in his sleep:

    Washington Post: Tsarnaev greatest ‘austere religious scholar’ in Islam since al-Baghdadi.

    Tsarnaev lauded as ‘role model’ for younger Muslim prisoners.

    Aspiring rapper Tsarnaev releases new tune on Spotify — Jihad Rock, follow up to Shake, Rattle and Sharia.

    Terrorist petitions BOP for furlough to visit sick mom.

    Time magazine names Tsarnaev Terrorist of the Year.

    Al Qaeda files friend-of-court brief in support of Tsarnaev’s halal hunger strike.

    ISIS teen bride professes love of man she calls “Jihad Joker.”

    Seriously, what is his complaint about being incarcerated in Florence, CO? He is a convicted mass murderer, after all.

    And yet, he gets to hob nob, sort of, with other blood-soaked cutthroats — his fellow Muslim inmates include fellow austere religious scholars Richard “Shoe Bomber” Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui.

    He can swap lies with another serial-killing bomber from the People’s Republic of Cambridge — Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.

    The only real job he (or anyone in his entire family had was selling narcotics. So he and El Chapo should have plenty to talk about in the yard, assuming he ever gets out of the cellblock.

    Another Supermax inmate: crooked FBI agent Robert Hanssen, a traitor who was collaborating with Russians even before sedition became so fashionable among his fellow G-men during their attempted coup attempt against President Trump. Hopefully, in the near future Florence will have an entire wing set aside for all the bent G-men who betrayed their country, but for now, in his hatred for civilization, Hanssen would seem likely a future good buddy for the Joker.

    Look on the bright side, Joker: They’re not going to execute you. Somewhere, 72 virgins are breathing sighs of relief.

    https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12...oker-tsarnaev/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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  3. #243
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Tsarnaev's First Circuit panel was made up of Judges Torruella (Reagan), Thompson (Obama) and Kayatta (Obama).

    https://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/sites/c...s/calendar.pdf

  4. #244
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    Considering Torruella (Reagan appointee) who's already ruled on the change of venue in favour of the defence has been appointed alongside two Obama judges, this looks like a guaranteed reversal.

  5. #245
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    I'm not certain about "guaranteed", but it sure doesn't look good for the prosecution since there are two Obama appointees plus Torruella who, in the few capital cases to come before him in the First Circuit, has proven himself to be opposed to capital punishment. Moreover, I can't understand for the life of me why the feds couldn't have moved such an extremely high-profile case to western Massachusetts (e.g. Worcester) or somewhere else in New England or perhaps upstate New York. When McVeigh was tried in the 90s, the case was moved from Oklahoma to Colorado.

  6. #246
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still waiting for an appeals court to rule on his case. He is one of 59 inmates on federal death row.

    Since the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way last month for federal executions, three federal prisoners have been put to death for the crimes they were convicted of committing.

    However, despite that, there is still no time frame for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to face the death penalty, even though he was sentenced to death in 2015 after being found guilty of 30 counts connected to the fatal April 2013 bombing.

    Tsarnaev’s lawyers in December 2019, argued in front of the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, that the death penalty ruling should be thrown out. They argue that Tsarnaev did not receive a fair trial. They argued the trial should have been moved out of Boston, rather than it being held in the midst of where the bombing occurred.

    The three-judge panel has yet to issue a ruling in the appeal.

    Authorities say Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan set off the bomb near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in 2013, killing three people and injuring more than 200 more. Tamerlan later died in a shootout with police.

    In June, the Supreme Court denied a challenge by four convicted murders. They had argued that federal executions must be conducted by the manner the state they were convicted in conducts their executions.

    Since the court’s ruling, the federal government has executed three prisoners. The most recent was Dustin Lee Honken, who was executed in Indiana last Friday.

    No execution date can be set for Tsarnaev while the appeal is still ongoing. He is currently being held at a federal prison in Colorado.

    There are 59 federal death-row prisoners, which also includes Dylann Roof, who killed nine people inside a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015.

    When the Supreme Court ruled there were four inmates scheduled for execution, the only one who remains is Keith Dwayne Nelson, who kidnapped a 10-year-old girl who was rollerblading in front of her Kansas home and raped her in a forest behind a church before strangling the young girl with a wire. Nelson’s execution is scheduled for Aug. 28. The Justice Department said additional executions will be set at a later date

    https://www.metrowestdailynews.com/n...eral-death-row
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  7. #247
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    I hope they deny his direct appeal soon, same with Roof
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

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  8. #248
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Death sentence overturned by the First Circuit

    https://law.justia.com/cases/federal...020-07-31.html
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

  9. #249
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Neil's Avatar
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    Now this guy will be removed from death row. Guaranteed. I looked at the first circuit for en banc it’s got a mixture of GOP judges and Democratic judges there’s a Nixon appointee there so it doesn’t look good for them there either.
    Last edited by Neil; 07-31-2020 at 03:04 PM.

  10. #250
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Shep3's Avatar
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    They will take it to scotus and I hope the 5 majority not only reverse but make a rebuking option so full of vile and spite it make every judge who wrote the abomination option resign in disgrace.

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