BOSTON (AP) — Lawyers for the Boston Marathon bombing suspect have asked a judge to dismiss the indictment against their client, saying there aren’t enough minorities and younger people in the jury pool.
Lawyers filed a motion Thursday saying the selection process violated Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s (joh-HAHR’ tsahr-NEYE’-ehvz) constitutional right to have a jury that represents a “fair cross section of the community.”
They say blacks, people under 30 and Boston residents were underrepresented in the group of potential jurors questioned by the judge.
The prospective jurors were chosen from a population of about 5 million in eastern Massachusetts.
Jury selection is nearing a close. Court officials say the trial could begin next week.
A federal appeals court hasn’t yet ruled on a defense request to move the trial out of Massachusetts.
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The next defense motion will be for the Court to organize a reunion of the O.J. Simpson jury.
Maybe Dzhokhar should have (allegedly) planted the bomb somewhere with a more representative jury pool?
It’s a valid point. Might be better to have a jury pool of people who were in the area when the bombing occurred. Or would they prefer Al Qaeda be the jury?
Hey, its’ the lawyers job to “reach” for things. I seriously doubt anything will come of this.
The lawyers are defending a death penalty case where guilt is not in question, so they are throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. They are experienced enough to know that minorities (however you define them) are no guarantee of any measure of lenity. Minorities, especially poor ones whose lives are stable enough to allow them to appear in jury pools, resent crime as much and more than most jurors, as they are more often victims of crime than affluent whites. This guy wants affluent white liberals who sympathize with any “cause” on his jury, and not fellow hard working Muslims who feel even more targeted because of fools like him. Oh, and just a guess, you will not find a lot of opposition to the death penalty in Muslim communities, liberal or not.
There’s quite a pile of ignorance in your comparison, or rather your failed punny attempted quip. You’ll need chemical baths and showers and to burn your clothing just to make a decent start at ridding yourself of the stench.
There was electoral and other politics involved in the decision by Mayor Garcetti’s father to move that trial from Santa Monica into LA city, and that move activated a long-standing resentment by just about any jury in the latter towards the LAPD. On top of that, the lead prosecutor, a very talented one, had a heart attack and the case was left in the hands of lawyers not up to the task, plus the judge lost control of the process. But the key error was in moving the trial, because that meant Simpson was NOT going to be tried by a jury of peers but a jury of admirers.
The motion that’s the subject of this story is pretty much standard fare in capital murder cases, even one’s nowhere near as notorious as this one; and the general result is they get turned down without the ruling helping the appeal.
But the subject of the appeal to change venues is a legitimate concern. The prosecution’s decision to resist that motion is political, and not good political, it’s wrong, and if it’s not reversed there’ll be needless bad repercussions.