Tsarnaev Gets Death

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts had no death penalty, so Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was tried by the feds.  Because the Boston Marathon bombing, together with the subsequent murder of MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, was, without question, a heinous crime causing terrible harm to so many.  Yet, death?

In a sweeping rejection of the defense case, the jury found that death was the appropriate punishment for six of 17 capital counts — all six related to Mr. Tsarnaev’s planting of a pressure-cooker bomb on Boylston Street, which his lawyers never disputed. Mr. Tsarnaev, 21, stood stone-faced in court, his hands folded in front of him, as the verdict was read, his lawyers standing grimly at his side.

Judy Clarke and her team did an extraordinary job trying to prevent a sentence of death. The primary thrust was that Dzhokhar, the younger brother, was under the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan. It was a well-grounded argument, but the jury rejected it.

With its decision, the jury rejected virtually every argument that the defense put forth, including the centerpiece of its case — that Mr. Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, had held a malevolent sway over him and led him into committing the crimes.

According to verdict forms that the jurors completed, only three of the 12 jurors believed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had acted under his brother’s influence.

They similarly rejected the assertion that Tsarnaev was remorseful for what he had done.

Beyond that, the jury put little stock in any part of the defense. Only two jurors believed that Mr. Tsarnaev had expressed sorrow and remorse for his actions, a stinging rebuke to the assertion by Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun and renowned death penalty opponent, that he was “genuinely sorry” for what he had done.

Or perhaps the decision to execute Tsarnaev wasn’t so much a rejection of the mitigating argument proffered by the defense, but a consequence of a death qualified jury that failed to reflect the sensibilities of the community.

The Tsarnaev verdict goes against the grain in Massachusetts, which has no death penalty for state crimes. Throughout the trial, polls also showed that residents overwhelmingly favored life in prison for Mr. Tsarnaev.

Bearing in mind that the alternative to execution wasn’t a slap on the wrist, but the slow death penalty of life in prison without any possibility of ever walking out, he would be sentenced to death either way, fast or slow.  But that the jury chose fast despite the “overwhelming” sense of the community that execution is not the answer suggests that there were forces at play, in contrast to the extraordinary efforts of the defense to save Tsarnaev from execution, that could not be overcome.

This was not a Massachusetts jury. This was a death qualified jury. And they did their job and sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death.  In retrospect, maybe he never had a chance.

23 thoughts on “Tsarnaev Gets Death

  1. Scott Morrell

    It seems like they picked a jury that was within the 20 or so percent that favors the death penalty in Massachusetts. Hence, it really doesn’t matter if the jurors live in a state against the death penalty. All that matters is that they find 12 or so jurors out of the 20% who are “ok” with the death penalty. In essence, it seems irrelevant if a state has the death penalty or not. There are always enough jurors to make that moot.

      1. Alex Bunin

        Right. Having been on the receiving end of a federal death sentence (later overturned), in Vermont, it is actually worse picking a capital jury in a nondeath state. All the locals have no problem expressing their opposition to the death penalty and get struck by the government. That just leaves the pure killers.

        1. Scott Morrell

          That was my point. The fact that a state is against the death penalty not only is meaningless since the entire state are not jurors, but it could actually hurt the defense since the many jurors that voice their moral opposition will immediately get booted off. All that is left are the ones most likely to impose it and have even a stronger view pro death in a “liberal” state. The bias swings opposite conventional wisdom and I am surprised so many commentators on the cable news shows got this all wrong.

          Their shock and disbelief was due to the majority people of Massachussets being so opposed to the death penalty. Clearly these “pundits” did not think it out like the author and you on this board.

          1. SHG Post author

            You realize that this is like the guy who has a new-found interest in medicine telling the world-renown brain surgeon how to cut?

      2. Bartleby the Scrivener

        …and it’s absolutely contemptible.

        Pre-qualification of a juror to the satisfaction of the prosecution eliminates the possibility of jury nullification, which I (a non-lawyer) think is part of the power of a jury.

    1. Ted Folkman

      While the jury was “death-qualified,” the jurors actually expressed a range of views about the death penalty during the voir dire. WBUR has [Ed, Note: Link deleted per rules.] summarized some of the responses of the folks chosen as jurors. Here is the summary of what Juror #588, who was seated as an alternate, had to say :

      On questionnaire she wrote that she was personally opposed to the death penalty, but has to consider it because it’s required by the law. During questioning she said, “I think I could, but it’s nothing that’s ever came up so I can’t definitively say yes or no because I’m not sure.”

      None of the others are as clear as this, but many of the jurors were trying to convey openness and lack of certainty, it seems to me.

      While the verdict plainly did not represent the will of the people of Boston or the Commonwealth, if the polls are to be believed, I do think, having heard and read about the voir dire, that Tsarnaev did have a fair shot with this jury.

      1. SHG Post author

        If it’s a jury of ones peers, there is no rationale for a death qualified jury. And don’t rely too heavily on media reports about what goes on in jurors’ heads. It will only lead to misery.

        Rarely do you learn what’s really going on in people’s heads, but you know here that every member of the jury was willing to one thing: put a man to death. That alone distinguishes them.

  2. pml

    ” In retrospect, maybe he never had a chance.

    He had all the chances in the world not to do what he did and to stop his brother also. So why should we feel anything for him. He got what he asked for.

    1. SHG Post author

      This is reddit level trolling, good only for some chuckles. If you want to troll here, you’re going to have work much harder than this.

      1. pml

        SHG, Not trolling at all, or didn’t intend it to be seen that way.

        My point is that he had lots of chances to avoid this consequence. So he choose his road to travel, why shouldn’t he be legally sentenced as he was.

        1. SHG Post author

          Because you know better than to offer the simplistic, infantile rationalization that would get you laughed off of reddit. Or maybe you don’t.

        2. Bartleby the Scrivener

          I’m no lawyer, but I cannot believe one can receive sufficient due process to be deprived of one’s right to life. I therefore don’t think one can legally receive an administrative execution.

          1. SHG Post author

            Don’t feed the trolls doesn’t mean everyone but the non-lawyers. When someone writes something as facially ridiculous as pml, it really doesn’t call for a response that takes it seriously. N’est pas?

  3. Marc R

    I know there was a lot of pretrial activity on the venue but how was the jurisdiction not attacked. American citizen, in college, commits a crime with no foreign or even out of state co-conspirator and the Feds take over. ATF can obviously get jurisdiction but similar bombs (minus victims versus rural areas) often get local charges.

    Once they got a death qualified federal jury it was over. These were the people who would conceivably give it for a simple homicide much less a terror act. I was hoping for life but I didn’t see it any other way.

    1. SHG Post author

      Many non-lawyers don’t realize that there is such a thing as a death qualified jury, or what it means. As for jurisdiction, there’s so much overlap in federal and state jurisdiction that it’s a losing battle.

    2. Alex Bunin

      The offense met several definitions as a federal capital crime, so jurisdiction was no problem. Virtually all the acts took place in the District of Massachusetts, so venue is a loser also. Even if a murder takes place in a different district, as long as it is a continuing crime through multiple districts, venue can be established in any of them.

  4. RAFIV

    Although this in no way vitiates the simple truth that a death qualified jury will, by its nature, be predisposed to finding for the penalty, I don’t think it the verdict was as far from the mainstream as the Globe would suggest. The Globe’s poll was critcized by some in the local media as being an outlier. Indeed, an April 22 Suffolk University poll found 47 in favor of death, 45 opposed and 8 undecided. And Suffolk polls are usually sound barometers in the Commonwealth.

  5. grberry

    There were four sets of charges for which a death sentence could have been imposed. He only got the death sentence for one of the four, the jury declining the death sentence in the other three. He got it for the bomb he placed, not for the bomb his brother placed, the killing of the MIT police officer, or the other events of the failed escape attempt. But he had been convicted on all counts for all four sets. That doesn’t look to me like a pre-determined conclusion, that looks like a jury that actually applied judgment to the evidence.

    And Rafiv is right that the poll cited here was an extreme outlier, and that polls generally showed a closely divided citizenry.

  6. cathy

    Very impressive comments to your interesting article. I’ve seen some of the most vicious comments to date, all regarding this case, and the majority were at Boston Media outlets like Boston dot com and the Boston Globe and other Mainstream outlets.
    Strange enough, I’ve seen the cruel and sick comments almost disappear overnight. I thought it strange, too, that in Boston and MAssachusetts, about 75-80% of populace does not agree with death penalty, Yet almost all the comments represented the “kill him” crowds. Just my observation….

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