Jury selection to begin in Boston Marathon bombing trial
Jury selection is expected to begin Monday in the federal capital murder trial of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is charged with 30 counts, including 17 that could result in the death penalty if he is convicted in the April 15, 2013 bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line that killed three and injured over 260 people, the Boston Globe reports. The Associated Press summarizes the charges that Tsarnaev faces.
Federal prosecutors say the defendant and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, also were involved in the fatal shooting days later of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer in Cambridge, for which the defendant is charged as well. The older brother died during a police chase before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured.
U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. and five-lawyer teams representing both the government and the defendant are likely to spend about a month selecting jurors from a list of 1,200 names, so the actual trial may not begin until February.
A federal appeals court in Boston on Saturday rejected an intervention request by the defense team, which has unsuccessfully argued that it needs more time and that the trial should be held somewhere other than the city in which the bombing occurred. Bloomberg News and the Boston Globe have stories about the divided ruling by the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Pretrial publicity includes a Boston Magazine story published last month, “Inside the Mind of a Killer.”
The Associated Press, CNN, NBC News also have stories about the pending trial.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Bombing suspect charged at bedside, to be tried in civilian courts”
ABAJournal.com: “Unabomber lawyer Judy Clarke is appointed to represent Boston Marathon bombing suspect”
ABAJournal.com: “Boston Marathon bombing suspect pleads not guilty to 30 charges”
New York Times (reg. req.): “Boston Marathon Bombing: What We Know So Far”
