The man behind the Boston Marathon bomb explosion is
to face trial today in federal courthouse few miles from the scene of the
attack. This is in utter disregard of calls by the defense lawyer for delay and
change of venue away from Boston. A federal
appeals court Saturday cleared the way for jury selection to begin.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 21, is charged
with 30 criminal counts in the April
2013 bombings, which killed three people and injured 260 others, and for in
the murder of an MIT campus police officer, Sean Collier, a few days after the
bomb attack.
Tsarnaev has
pleaded not guilty. His older brother, Tamerlan, also accused in the crimes,
died in a shootout with police.
He has been in prison since
shortly after the bombing.
U.S. District Judge George
A. O'Toole Jr. has summoned
3,000 people — an unusually large jury pool — to the federal courthouse on
Boston's inner harbor. Because the government has said it will seek the death
penalty if Tsarnaev is convicted, potential jurors will be questioned with the
goal of seating a jury that is, as federal law puts it,
"death-qualified."
"Two types
of jurors must be excluded," said Professor Ira Robbins of American
University's Washington College of Law. "The judge will seek to eliminate
those who are categorically opposed to the death penalty in all cases and those
who believe that if there's a conviction for capital murder, they must impose
the death penalty."
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