With all deliberate speed

[Guinevere]

Two informative pieces on Boston.com today:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/ ... Must_Reads

If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is condemned to die for the Boston Marathon bombing, he is most likely to meet his end in Terre Haute, Indiana.

He would die in a white T-shirt and khaki pants after eating a meal of his choice. He would be allowed to deliver some final words.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2015/ ... Must_Reads

If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is spared the death penalty, he will spend the rest of his life in prison—almost definitely the very same prison that is home to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, shoe bomber Richard Reid, and 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

Attorney Chris Tritico, who represented Timothy McVeigh, says where Tsarnaev would serve his sentence would be “entirely up to the Bureau of Prisons.”

“But I have never seen a case of domestic terrorism where the person didn’t end up in supermax. And there’s only one federal supermax facility,” Tritico told Boston.com.

That facility—ADX—is located in Florence, Colorado.

[Lord Jim]

Interesting article on Clarke, her strategy, and the challenges she faces with this:

Tsarnaev's lawyer faces perhaps her biggest challenge yet

BOSTON — Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's attorney is renowned for keeping her high-profile clients off death row, but Judy Clarke could face her most daunting challenge yet in trying to save the Boston Marathon bomber from execution.

Most of Clarke's past successes hinged on persuading prosecutors to take the death penalty off the table before their cases ever reached a jury. She accomplished that on behalf of such killers as Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph and Arizona mass shooter Jared Loughner.

With Tsarnaev, Clarke doesn't have that option.

A federal jury convicted Tsarnaev of all 30 charges against him Wednesday and found him responsible for the deaths of the three people killed in the 2013 attack and the killing of an MIT police officer three days later. The same jurors will begin hearing evidence next week on what his punishment should be. They have only two choices: life in prison or execution.

Clarke has had some success in persuading juries that someone who committed a horrific crime should be allowed to live. In 1995, a jury in South Carolina spared the life of Susan Smith, who drowned her two young sons by sending her car into a lake with the boys buckled in their car seats.

Prosecutors said Smith killed her children because she saw them as an impediment to being with a man who had broken off their relationship. But Clarke told the jury about a history of trauma in her life: Her father killed himself when she was 6, she was molested by her stepfather, and she made two suicide attempts as a teenager. Clarke called Smith "one of the walking wounded" and asked the jury to see her as a human being with flaws.

It worked. The jury refused to sentence Smith to death.

Clarke also helped defend Zacarias Moussaoui, often called "the 20th hijacker" for his role in planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Moussaoui's life was spared when one juror held out and refused to vote for death.

"The goal for her is to humanize Tsarnaev," said David Hoose, a death penalty lawyer who won a life sentence for Massachusetts nurse Kristen Gilbert after she was convicted of killing four patients.

"Of course, that's a difficult challenge for her when the defendant has — by the defense team's own admission — committed such a horrific act. Yet, it's certainly not impossible."

Hoose said he experts Clarke and the rest of the defense team to focus on Tsarnaev's youth — he was 19 at the time of the bombings — and present scientific research that indicates the adolescent brain continues to mature in the teenage years and judgment is not fully developed until the 20s.

"This is a very hot issue in criminal justice circles these days ... that young men really do not mature fully in terms of the neuroscience until they are in the mid-20s," Hoose said. "This is a kid who one minute is goofing around with his college buddies and the next minute is looking at jihadi movies."

During the first phase of the trial, Tsarnaev's lawyers admitted he participated in the bombings, but said he did so only after falling under the influence of his older, radicalized brother, Tamerlan, 26.

Robert Blecker, a New York Law School professor and expert on capital punishment, said he expects Clarke to call family members and friends as witnesses to show the jurors that Tsarnaev had a turbulent childhood but had done well in school and was liked by many people. Tsarnaev's family lived in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan and the troubled Dagestan region of Russia before moving to the U.S. about a decade before the bombings.

"She needs to have them look at him not as this one-dimensional monster, but as a multi-dimensional human being who had a difficult childhood with divorcing parents from another country whose brother became a surrogate father," Blecker said.

Hoose said that to humanize Gilbert, he called both of her grandmothers to testify about the close, loving relationship they had with her. The jury also heard testimony that she was a doting mother of two children.

Such testimony, known as "good guy evidence," figures prominently in many death penalty trials.

"What we always want to do is show another side of this person — yes, they did horrible things, but they also did some good things," Hoose said.

No matter what so-called mitigating factors the defense presents, prosecutors have a wealth of evidence on the aggravating factors they say make death the only appropriate punishment. Those factors include the death of an 8-year-old child in the bombings and the choice of the Boston Marathon as a target because its huge crowds provided an opportunity for maximum bloodshed.

More than 260 people were wounded in the bombings, including 17 who lost limbs. During the first phase of the trial, several people gave heart-wrenching testimony about losing one or both legs.

Additional victims are expected to testify during the penalty phase. In the trial of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the judge allowed 38 people to make victim impact statements.

"If some of the victims who lost their limbs give victim impact statements," Blecker said, "just the sight of that will absolutely bring it home."

http://www.telegram.com/article/2015040 ... 09957/1052

Another big challenge she has is the fact that in addition to his poor courtroom demeanor, Dry Dock has never expressed the slightest remorse for his crimes.

I think that given the circumstances, she made the exact right call in conceding guilt right out of the gate in her opening statement and presenting a very minimal defense in the guilt-or-innocence phase.

The evidence is such that from the very beginning her sole goal has had to be saving Dry Dock from the DP, and in order to have the best shot at doing that, she needed to preserve her credibility with the jurors so that she would at least get a fair hearing from them in the sentencing phase.

And the fact that this is clearly a jury that is disinclined to be in any way sympathetic to her client, (guilty verdicts on every single charge and sub-item pretty well demonstrates that) makes her credibility even more critical.

[Lord Jim]

I wonder if Clarke will put Dry Dock's mother on the stand...

She's a completely off-the-hook piece of work:

America is the real terrorist, my boys are the best: Boston bombers' mother



The mother of the convicted mass-murder responsible for the Boston bombings in 2013 declared that her son was ‘the best of the best’, while declaring America “the real terrorist”.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, was found guilty by a jury in Boston on April 9 for all 30 counts in connection to the deadly 2013 attacks. Of the 30 attacks, 17 were punishable by the death penalty.

Despite the guilty verdict, the bomber’s mother, Zubeidat Tsarnaev, was adamant that Dzhokhar and his late brother Tamerlan were innocent.

In a text message to her sons’ supporter Timur Rudaev, Zubeidat called the convicted killer “my precious boy” before going on a rant against the US.

“America is the real terrorist and everyone knows that,” she wrote in the text, which was later shared on the Russian social media site VKontakte and sent to a local news site.

She continued to thank everyone who had been helping her family over the past two years and vowed to keep them in her thoughts.

“May God reward them for supporting my precious boy,” the mother wrote.

Zubeidat Tsranaev’s statement was accompanied by Rudaev’s rambling rant about Dzhokhar’s guilty verdict in Boston.

“Today, foolish Americans completely shattered the life of a great guy! Rudaev wrote in Russian, adding that “no trial, no jury could trample our opinions, only the Almighty has power over us! Only the Almighty knows the outcome of this trial… we hope the merciful Allah will give Dzhokar a second chance!”

He further added that he hoped that Zubeidat Tsarnaev would gather everyone at her home to celebrate Dzhokar’s release in the near future.

http://tribune.com.pk/story/867589/amer ... rs-mother/

Ordinarily in a situation like this, you would put the mother on the stand as a character witness, and also in the hopes that other mothers on the jury might find her sympathetic and identify with her...

Obviously this kookaboo is completely useless from a defense perspective for any of those standard purposes, (the jurors are likely to find the woman absolutely despicable; hell she might even spit at them) but I could see where you might put her on the stand for a completely different reason...

To try and get some mitigation from the jury based on the argument that Dry Dock was raised by a complete nutjob, and at 19, she was still a big influence in his life...

[Big RR]

When the jury votes and fails to find agreement they continue to discuss, the dissenters will be asked to explain themselves. Even if they use a secret ballot the jury will have to continue to deliberate.

Face it, no one in the jury has the power to force another juror to explain him/herself or even deliberate; even the judge cannot do that. They can be forced to sit the room longer, but no one can force anyone to talk or join the discussion. All the dissenter has to say is yes, I vote not to impose the death penalty.

As a practical matter, most people will try to deliberate and discuss the matters, but one never needs to defend their vote or change if the other jurors aren't convinced. In the end it depends how they stand up to peer pressure; some people knuckle under, others get more entrenched in their position.

[liberty]

Generally, "death juries" only actually sentence a defendant to death one out of three times. That gives Tsarnaev decent odds -- ... " .

A statistical estimate makes sense only if it is reasonable to equate this with the number of individual murders committed while drunk, angry &c.


yrs,
rubato

Since Tsarnaev is a person of color can we be sure he is getting a fair trial, are not people of color given the death penalty statistically more frequently than white people.

[Guinevere]

After seven days of deliberation, Aaron Hernandez was convicted of 1st degree murder (and two handgun charges) and sentenced to LWOP earlier today. He had to sit down while the verdicts were being read, and looked about as emotional and upset as I've seen him the entire proceeding.

Next up, his trial for two other murders, outside a Boston nightclub.

Perhaps now he will understand that his life has changed forever.


The Tsarnaev proceedings are on hold until the end of April. Today is Boston Day, and next week is the marathon & Patriot's Day. Better to have that in the rear-view mirror before reconvening.

[MajGenl.Meade]

...and in further good news:

Aaron Hernandez, a former tight end on the New England Patriots, was convicted of first-degree murder and several weapons and ammunitions charges Wednesday, ending the stunning downfall of a player who was once one of the N.F.L.’s most promising young stars.

Mr. Hernandez, 25, will spend the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Odin Lloyd, who was dating the sister of his fiancée, Shayanna Jenkins. Mr. Lloyd, a 27-year-old semiprofessional football player, was found shot six times in a pit at an industrial park near Mr. Hernandez’s home in North Attleboro, Mass., in June 2013.

Prosecutors, who took more than two months to present their case and called more than 100 witnesses, said that Mr. Hernandez’s motive was that Mr. Lloyd spoke with people Mr. Hernandez did not like at a bar in Boston. Their case was largely circumstantial. No murder weapon was located, and no independent witness to the shooting came forward.

The defense’s case lasted only a day and included three witnesses. Mr. Hernandez’s lawyer, James Sultan, acknowledged that his client was at the scene of the killing and that two other men, who are charged separately for the crime, committed it while high on PCP

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/sport ... .html?_r=0

[Guinevere]

Isn't that pretty much what I said above - minus the "good" characterization?

[Lord Jim]

I was pleasantly surprised to see this result...

After six days of deliberation, I (like many others) thought there was a strong likelihood of a hung jury...

But what was really going on, (much like in the Scott Peterson case in California a few years ago, where the jury also took a number of days to render a verdict; and many expected a hung jury) was that the jury was taking its responsibility very seriously and wading methodically through the testimony of over 100 witnesses and thousands of pages of evidence...

A big shout out to the jury....

The one thing I don't like about the way this is structured is that because this conviction carried a mandatory sentence of LWOP (which is the least he deserves; I personally would have preferred the DP) he got sentenced today immediately after the trial, and thus there was no opportunity for victim impact statements...

I certainly don't think this guy should have had the opportunity to get anything less than LWOP, but it seems to me that when there is a First Degree Murder conviction like this, there should be some provision in the law that would provide an opportunity for family members (if they choose) to have the catharsis of being able to stand up in open court and look at the murderer and tell the scumbag what his/her actions meant to them...

And for the scumbag to have to sit there and listen to it...

It seems to me that it wouldn't be all that difficult to craft the law in such a way that even when you have a mandatory sentence, there could be such a hearing...

ETA:

I want to make VERY clear, (if it wasn't clear in what I already posted) that I am not taking issue with the mandatory LWOP sentence... I'm not unhappy that there was no "Life with parole" option...(I'm not happy about the fact that there was no Death Penalty option, but the law is what it is, misguided as it may be...)

With no DP option available, I see mandatory LWOP as the best possible second choice.

What I am suggesting is that in cases of this nature, there should still be some provision for a victim impact hearing that would require the defendant's attendance...

[Big RR]

Jim--I think at least the mother of the victim had a chance to present a victim impact statement before he was sentenced today (at least that's what I heard).

Personally, I am of mixed feelings on the value of such statements; confronting the murderer (or other convicted criminal) and telling what the actions did to them might be cathartic, but I have seen footage of such statements where the victim's family is crying and pouring their heatrs out and the criminal just sits there smirking, sometimes even laughing. some have even taunted the families while in the court room--I recall Richard Allen Davis saying in the court room that the girl who he murdered (Polly Klaas) last words were "don't rape me like my dad did". Anyone who could do something like that doesn't give a damn about what pain he causes, and the confrontation will have no effect on him, so I think the cathartic effect is overstated. Not that I'd deny anyone the ability to say what they want, but I honestly wonder how many people see the victim's impact statements as having a cathartic effect after they make them and get a chance to assess what happened.

Of course, if the penalty can be affected by them, then I do think there is a place for victims to testify; but otherwise I have my doubts as to their value.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Yeah Guin.... in scrolling I saw Tsarnicholas in yr last para and thought he was the subject of the first. I was wondering when he'd shot two other people......

[Lord Jim]

Penalty Phase In Boston Marathon Bombing Trial Will Test Defense Lawyer’s Record In Capital Cases

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — As the Boston Marathon bombing moves to the penalty phase, this week, the defense will try to engage the jury’s sympathies in hopes of sparing their client the death penalty.

It’s a tactic that has worked for the last 20 years for defense lawyer Judy Clarke, who has represented some of the most reviled defendants in the annals of U.S. criminal justice.

Clarke herself does not speak to reporters,[Wow, a high profile defense lawyer who doesn't talk to reporters...What a concept...most of them yammer endlessly in front of any TV camera they can find...]but interviews with both a fan and a prosecutor who’s gone up against reveal an attorney who uses her own reservoirs of compassion to convince juries to see her clients humanity.

“That’s the key to the success that she’s seen in these particular cases,” says South Carolina state representative Tommy Pope, who faced Clarke when he prosecuted Susan Smith in 1994 for the murder of her two children.

“Instead of arguing the facts and evidence of the case, they argued, you know, Susan the victim,” he says, “…to take the jury away from the nature of the crime, the horror of the crime and to dial down into the individuality of the defendant.”

Smith, though, despised when it was discovered her tearful account of being carjacked by an African-American male was a ruse to cover up her own crime, was sentenced to prison and not to death.

Clarke raised Smith’s painful past of sexual abuse by her stepfather in creating a sympathetic portrait of a troubled, desperate woman to counter Pope’s version of a vengeful, cold-blooded murderer.

“She is mission oriented,” Pope says, “and her mission is to save her clients from execution.”

That is something David Kaczynski admires about Clarke. Clarke defended his brother Ted, also known as the Unabomber, who avoided a death sentence despite admitting to mailing a series of letter bombs from 1978 to 1995 that killed three people and injured 23 others.

David says he turned his brother in to authorities in order to save lives and was riddled with guilt to think it might cost Ted his life so he saw Clarke “as an ally.”

“I think she saw her job as saving his life and I think in some sense what she’s doing is saving one life at a time,” he says. “It’s an interpretation of how she sees her role as an attorney and when you have a defendant who is too ill or too consumed with fanaticism to understand their own best interest, Judy is not only saving the individual person’s life, she’s saving society.”

Pope expects Clarke to paint Dhokar Tsarnaev as a follower, unduly influenced by a brother he loved and looked up to and depended on. She has already laid that groundwork in the trial.

Pope thinks it will be a particular challenge but he’s not counting her out.

[Gob]

[Lord Jim]

Oh yeah, that's gonna work...

[Lord Jim]

Boston Bombing Jury Has Question Hours Into Deliberations

Jurors considering the fate of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-HAHR' tsahr-NEYE'-ehv) asked a complicated question Thursday on the first full day of deliberations.

The jury sent a note to U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. asking about the legal concepts of "aiding and abetting" and "conspiracy."

With the jury out of the room, the judge asked prosecutors and Tsarnaev's lawyers for their thoughts on how to answer the question. They disagreed on how to answer it, so the judge said he would take a break and come back and speak to them again before he calls the jury into the room to answer the question.

Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured when two pressure-cooker bombs packed with shrapnel exploded near the marathon finish line April 15, 2013. Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, also killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer days later.

The same jury that convicted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev of all 30 charges against him must now decide whether he gets life in prison or death.

Jurors began deliberating late Wednesday after listening to powerful closing arguments from prosecutors and Tsarnaev's lawyers.

Prosecutors reminded jurors of the pain and suffering caused by the bombing and said Tsarnaev, a 21-year-old former college student, deserves to die for what he did.

But Tsarnaev's lawyer said he was an "invisible" teenager in a dysfunctional family who was led astray by Tamerlan and deserves a chance at redemption.

Tamerlan, 26, died after a shootout with police in Watertown.

Prosecutor Steve Mellin told the jury that Tsarnaev is a callous "remorse-free" terrorist who bombed the marathon with Tamerlan to make a political statement against the U.S. for its wars in Muslim countries.

Mellin said Tsarnaev wanted to cause his victims as much physical pain as possible.

"The bombs burned their skin, shattered their bones and ripped their flesh," Mellin said. "The blasts disfigured their bodies, twisted their limbs and punched gaping holes into their legs and torsos."

Defense attorney Judy Clarke asked jurors to spare Tsarnaev's life, saying her client "is not the worst of the worst, and that's what the death penalty is reserved for."

"We think that we have shown you that it's not only possible but probable that Dzhokhar has potential for redemption," she said, adding that he was "genuinely sorry for what he's done."

The prosecutor showed a large photograph of 8-year-old Martin Richard, who was killed in the attack, and other children standing on a metal barricade. Tsarnaev placed his bomb just 3½ feet from the children. Another photo showed bloodied victims on the sidewalk.

"This is what terrorism looks like," Mellin said.

Tsarnaev, he said, showed no regret after the bombings, calmly going to buy a half gallon of milk 20 minutes later.

From the beginning of the trial, Tsarnaev's lawyers admitted he participated in the bombing but told the jury he was "a good kid" who was led down the path to terrorism by Tamerlan.

Clarke said Tsarnaev's parents favored his older brother and pinned their hopes on him, believing he would become an Olympic boxer. She showed photos of his father at boxing matches with Tamerlan and then asked, "Where are the pictures of Dzhokhar? He was the invisible kid."

Tamerlan was a "jihadi wannabe" who returned to the U.S. angry and frustrated after an unsuccessful attempt to join Islamic extremists in Russia, Clarke said. Then he decided to find another way to wage jihad.

"If not for Tamerlan, this wouldn't have happened. Dzhokhar would never have done this but for Tamerlan. The tragedy would never have occurred but for Tamerlan — none of it," Clarke said.

Mellin said the brothers were "partners in crime and brothers in arms."

The defense showed the jury photos of the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, where Tsarnaev would probably be sent if he gets life. There, his lawyers said, he would be locked in his cell 23 hours a day — a solitary existence that would deny him the martyrdom he apparently sought.

A sentence of life "reflects justice and mercy," Clarke said.

Mellin reminded jurors that some of them — before they were chosen for the jury — expressed a belief that a life sentence may be worse than death.

"This defendant does not want to die. You know that because he had many opportunities to die on the streets of Boston and Watertown. But unlike his brother, he made a different choice," Mellin said.

"A death sentence is not giving him what he wants. It is giving him what he deserves."

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/jury ... 444?page=2

I could be wrong, but I don't think that question bodes well for Dry Dock avoiding the Death Penalty...

It suggests to me that there isn't a hardcore "no I'm not voting for it period" hold-out on the jury, if they're focusing on questions about the "aiding and abetting" and "conspiracy" charges that carry the penalty, while there are several DP eligible charges he has been convicted of that blame him directly...

[Guinevere]

If I remember correctly, the questions asked by the jury during the deliberations about guilt or innocence were also about aiding and abetting and conspiracy.

Yep, exactly that - the legal definition: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/boston-mara ... questions/

[Lord Jim]

And after they got their answer in that phase of the trial, they came back with a unanimous verdict of guilty on all counts; parts and sub-parts...

[Lord Jim]

This just in...

The Jury has reached a decision on the penalty...

It is scheduled to be announced at the top of the hour....

[Guinevere]

Death on counts 4, 5, 9, 11, 14, 15.

Wow.

All the aggravating factors proved: He intentionally killed multiple people. Killed a child (Martin Richards) Caused injury, harm, loss to all victims and families. Intentionally targeted the Boston Marathon. Lack of remorse. Killed a police officer in the course of his duties (Sean Collier). Committed additional violent crimes.

Did not do well on the mitigating factors, including the theory that his brother led him into these crimes and that he was influenced by his brother. Only a couple of jurors agreed with these.

(the Twitter feed for WBUR Boston has it all broken down)

[Big RR]

Based on the law, the verdict appears to be defensible. I will withhold saying anything further about the DP, but wuld hope no one is celebrating.