Harvey Silverglate has published an interesting article on whether Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, previously welcomed by one U.S. government agency with fast-track citizenship and now being prosecuted by a different government agency, should be tried in the Boston area or elsewhere.
6 thoughts on “Interesting article on change of venue for the prosecution of a Boston Marathon bomber”
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I disagree with Silverglate here. Where does it say in the Constitution that you are entitled to a change of venue to a place where “polling data indicated that fewer prospective jurors were willing to see the defendant sentenced to death.” ? The Constitution entitles you to an unbiased jury, not one that is actually biased in YOUR favor or against the death penalty. The defense is not actually looking for an unbiased jury – they want one where they will have a better shot. I don’t blame them for trying, but the judge is not obligated to go along with this. If this was about local juries being biased because they were exposed to press accounts, etc. , then the judge should have changed venue, but instead of to one of the most liberal cities in America, he should have changed venue to say some rural county in Texas. Few of the jurors there would know much about the Boston bombing – that would be perfect from the point of view of justice, but the defense might hate it because those people also have nothing against the death penalty either.
… previously welcomed by one U.S. government agency with fast-track citizenship and now being prosecuted by a different government agency, should be tried in the Boston area or elsewhere.
The past forty years of astronomical uncontrolled legal & illegal immigration, has been a huge job creator for government immigration and border control workers, law enforcement, prosecutors, defense lawyers, jailers, and jail builders.
By the way, who is paying for this poll and how much did it cost? How many millions is this trial going to cost? How many decades will Tsarnaev spend on death row and how many appeals will he have before he is finally executed, if ever? Even Silverglate admits that there is little (I would say no) real doubt about his guilt – the evidence against him is overwhelming and the best he can hope for is a life sentence vs the death penalty. So the whole trial is basically a waste of time and money and everyone knows it, yet we insist on going thru the motions, not just the minimum needed for justice but a whole incredibly elaborate show that will cost God knows how many millions we don’t really have anymore. When the Founders said that the accused had a right to counsel and a fair trial, were they contemplating the commissioning of opinion polls to assist motions for change of venue and the whole circus of endless appeals that is coming?
In the olden days (meaning the 1940s, not the 1790s) Tsarnaev would have already been executed by now. The Nuremberg war criminals were arrested in May of 1945. Most were found guilty on October 1, 1946 and executed around October 16, 1946. We are already 18 months past Tsarnaev’s arrest and his trial hasn’t even started yet.
@Jackie: the evidence against him is overwhelming and the best he can hope for is a life sentence vs the death penalty.
Massachusetts does not have the death penalty and if obama gets one more US Supreme Court pick neither will the rest of the country. I wouldn’t be far-fetched to believe that obama could reduce the sentence of every death row inmate before he leaves office, like former MS governor Haiey Barber did in MS a few years ago.
Dzokar is up on Federal charges and there is (a rarely but not never applied) Federal death penalty (see McVeigh). Constitutionally, Obama can only pardon Federal death row inmates, of which there are not many (62, BTW, 60 are men). He has no power to pardon those guilty of state offenses. California alone has 743 on death row (few of whom are ever actually executed).
This comment is off topic, but there is a very interesting article over at Texas Monthly about a town in Texas which has become the venue of choice for a disproportionate number of IP cases. They call it “the small East Texas town of Marshall (which) may be the worst thing that ever happened to intellectual property law.” The title of the piece is “patently unfair”.
Here is a link:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/patent-law-in-marshall-texas