Boston Marathon Bomb Attack?!?!?

[Jarlaxle]

That you wear granny glasses? :



*ducks and runs*

[oldr_n_wsr]

I thought the granny glasses were in the other thread with that painting.

[Lord Jim]

Bumping this thread because of the timeliness...

I just skimmed through the first six pages; it's interesting to see how we were theorizing and commenting on this in real time as it unfolded...

[Gob]

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has had his death sentence overturned by a federal appeals court after his lawyers successfully argued some jurors had already decided he was guilty before his trial had even started.

The three-judge panel of the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston issued the decision on Friday more than six months after arguments were heard in the case.

Tsarnaev, who was 19 at the time, and his older brother Tamerlan set off a pair of homemade pressure-cooker bombs near the Boston Marathon finish line in 2013 in an attack that killed three people and injured more than 260 others.

A federal jury in 2015 found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 counts he faced and later determined he deserved execution for a bomb he planted that killed two of the victims.

He has been serving his sentence in the high-security supermax prison in Colorado.

The appeals judges upheld much of Tsarnaev's conviction, but they ordered a lower-court judge to hold a new trial strictly over what sentence he should receive for the death penalty-eligible crimes he was convicted of.

US Circuit Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, writing for the court, said that the trial judge 'fell short' in conducting the jury selection process and ensuring it could identify partial jurors exposed to pretrial publicity surrounding the high-profile case.

Thompson said the pervasive news coverage of the bombings and their aftermath featured 'bone-chilling' photos and videos of Tsarnaev and his brother carrying backpacks at the marathon and of those injured and killed near its finish line.

She said the trial judge allowed his jury to include jurors who had 'already formed an opinion that Dzhokhar was guilty - and he did so in large part because they answered 'yes' to the question whether they could decide this high-profile case based on the evidence'.

Tsarnaev's lawyers have long argued that intense media coverage of the bombing had made it impossible to have a fair trial in Boston.

They pointed to social media posts from two jurors suggesting they harbored strong opinions even before the 2015 trial started. The appeals judges, in a hearing on the case in early December, devoted a significant number of questions to the juror bias argument.

They asked why the two jurors had not been dismissed, or at least why the trial judge had not asked them follow-up questions after the posts came to light on the eve of the trial.

The judges noted that the Boston court has a longstanding rule obligating such an inquiry.

Tsarnaev's lawyers say one of the jurors, who would go one to become the jury's foreperson, or chief spokesperson, published two dozen tweets in the wake of the bombings.

One post after Tsarnaev's capture called him a 'piece of garbage'.

[rubato]

He is still going to die in prison. who gives a rats asshole?

[Bicycle Bill]

US Circuit Judge O. Rogeriee Thompson, writing for the court, said that the trial judge 'fell short' in conducting the jury selection process and ensuring it could identify partial jurors exposed to pretrial publicity surrounding the high-profile case.

Thompson said the pervasive news coverage of the bombings and their aftermath featured 'bone-chilling' photos and videos of Tsarnaev and his brother carrying backpacks at the marathon and of those injured and killed near its finish line.

She said the trial judge allowed his jury to include jurors who had 'already formed an opinion that Dzhokhar was guilty - and he did so in large part because they answered 'yes' to the question whether they could decide this high-profile case based on the evidence'.

Tsarnaev's lawyers have long argued that intense media coverage of the bombing had made it impossible to have a fair trial in Boston.

So the gist of this, to me anyway, is that the court found that 'the jurors lied' when they said they could decide the case based on the evidence.  I suppose, thought, that had they said that they could NOT decide the case on the evidence, then of course it would have been immediately accepted that they were telling the pure, gospel truth and not just trying to get out of jury duty?

Or suppose the Tsarnaev's had been acquitted in the original trial?  Could the state have appealed, claiming that 'the jurors lied' when they said they could device the case on the evidence as well?
(You can spare me the response that they can't; I already know that, due to the Double Jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment, that couldn't happen.  And then there is the practice known as jury nullification or a perverse verdict, where a jury refuses to convict regardless of the evidence ... although this is usually in response to an unjust or misapplied law as opposed to just letting someone off the hook while giving a giant middle finger to the prosecution.)

And of course, with the blitz of media coverage of literally anything that happens anywhere in even the most remote corner of this country and the pervasiveness of social media including message and bulletin boards like this one, you'd have a better chance of finding a virgin working in a whorehouse than you would of finding anyone who was totally and completely ignorant of a high-profile case such as the Boston bombing, or the O.J. Simpson murder case, or the (allegedly) wrongful deaths of George Floyd, Michael Brown, Rayshard Brooks, or any of the other BLM icons.  Until we find intelligent life on some far-flung planet in a distant solar system that has absolutely no connection to our world and allow them to be our arbiters, we would probably be better off using a 'Magic 8 Ball' or throwing dice, like in a "Dungeons and Dragons" game, and letting random chance decide someone's fate.

-"BB"-

[Long Run]

One post after Tsarnaev's capture called him a 'piece of garbage'.

[/quote]

Well, libel is not among the juror's sins.

[liberty]

If he didn’t get a fair trial, doesn’t he at least deserve another trial? After all, he is a man of color, where is BLM?

[Joe Guy]

If he didn’t get a fair trial, doesn’t he at least deserve another trial? After all, he is a man of color, where is BLM?

What color is he?

[Long Run]

He confessed to a number of the crimes, so there is no need to retry those; only the contested death-penalty charges are up for retrial. Hard to disagree with the appellate opinion that if this case did not qualify to be moved then what case qualifies for a change of venue.

[Big RR]

From what I can see, the last execution in Massachusetts was in 1947, so it is unlikely that he will ever be executed regardless of how the penalty phase is decided. It makes me wonder whether the DA wants to waste the time and money to have another penalty trial, or whether they would just give him life without parole.

[BoSoxGal]

From what I can see, the last execution in Massachusetts was in 1947, so it is unlikely that he will ever be executed regardless of how the penalty phase is decided. It makes me wonder whether the DA wants to waste the time and money to have another penalty trial, or whether they would just give him life without parole.

I’m not sure that’s even relevant, since he’s not subject to a Massachusetts death penalty - which no longer exists. He’s subject to a federal death penalty, and the feds under Barr have recently started a bit of a killing spree of federal death row inmates. Given the president is tweeting on it, and it is a high profile case that stirs a lot of emotion not just locally but nationwide, I wouldn’t be surprised if Barr pushed the local USA’s office to move forward on a retrial ASAP, for the ‘law & order’ political points that would score.

[Big RR]

Thanks BSG; I stand corrected. I didn't recall it was a federal charge, and I had thought Massachusetts had a death penalty law on the books, even though it wasn't enforced. I was wrong on both counts.

[liberty]

If he didn’t get a fair trial, doesn’t he at least deserve another trial? After all, he is a man of color, where is BLM?

What color is he?

I should have typed it like this: After all, he is a “Person of Color” where is BLM? He is Caucasian of course; “Person of Color” is some of the stupidest shit the left has ever come up. The only requirement to be a "Person of Color" is not to be of northern European ancestry. Many Caucasian peoples and the Chinese are considered people of color. Hell, the Northern Chinese are as white most Alabama crackers. It is as stupid as the claim that the ancient Egyptians were a black nation; which was proved wrong by the 2017 genetic test of ancient Egyptian mummies. All Caucasians, regardless of skin color, are closely related; they are my genetic cousins.