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Defense Begins Last Chance To Save Life Of Boston Marathon Bomber Tsarnaev

Defense Begins Last Chance To Save Life Of Boston Marathon Bomber Tsarnaev

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

BOSTON — Hoping to save Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from the death penalty, lawyers for the convicted Boston Marathon bomber aggressively portrayed his older brother, Tamerlan, as the brains and muscle behind the 2013 terrorist attack, revealing for the first time that Tamerlan initially planned to strike in Russia but returned to this country because he could “not find a holy war” there.

Defense attorneys also argued to the jury that a sentence of life in prison with no chance of parole would be an even harsher punishment for the 21-year-old Russian immigrant, who after the attack that left three people dead and more than 260 others wounded had voiced a desire to die as a martyr.

Showing jurors pictures of the federal “supermax” prison in Colorado — where Tsarnaev would probably serve out his sentence — defense attorney David I. Bruck zoomed in on a picture of a small window grate that he said allowed just a small amount of sunlight each day.

“He goes there and he’s forgotten,” Bruck said. “No more (media) spotlight, like the death penalty brings. His legal case will be over for good, and no martyrdom. Just years and years of punishment, day after day, while he grows up to face the lonely struggle of dealing with what he did.”

For much of the day, the defense focused on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s activities, promising to reveal classified FBI reports about the older brother’s six-month trip to Russia.

“In January 2012,” Bruck said, “Tamerlan left his family to go to Russia and ‘go into the forest’ to join radical jihad fighters. He had been planning to wage jihad in Russia. He told people he had gone overseas to die, but returned because he said he could not find a holy war.”

The defense also displayed emails Tamerlan sent from Russia to Dzhokhar, describing his growing religious beliefs.

“I am doing well,” he told his younger brother. “I am educating myself more and more. In order for an Islamic society to emerge, Islamic spirit and thinking must reign amongst the population. And here in the Caucasus there are still very many people who live in ignorance.”

In another email to Dzhokhar, Tamerlan praised former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden as a “lion with a tender heart.” He attached a link to articles describing bin Laden’s “Apocalyptic Dream of America.” Tamerlan told his brother the articles were “a must read.”

When he returned to Boston, Bruck said, Tamerlan “was picking fights with people about religion. He was aggressive and extreme, and walking around dressed in flowing white robes like a Muslim sheik. …Tamerlan was a very tough guy, a boxer. He was suspended from high school and arrested for assaulting a fellow student, and he assaulted his girlfriend.”

Bruck said Tamerlan scanned the Internet, viewing pictures of Middle East massacres and insurgents. Tamerlan, Bruck said, wanted to learn about “men who must stand up and fight. That was his world.”

Defense witnesses testified they noticed a change in Tamerlan after he returned from Russia.

A former acquaintance, Robert Barnes, said he ran into Tamerlan at Angelo’s Pizza in Cambridge, Mass. Tamerlan wore a beard and a long white robe, he said, and boasted that he no longer drank alcohol or smoked pot. “I can’t or don’t do that stuff anymore,” he told Barnes.

Barnes said Tamerlan “had some criticisms about what the United States government does abroad. … He was definitely very passionate about it.”

Loay Assaf, a visiting iman at a Cambridge mosque, said Tamerlan interrupted Friday services twice.

Once Tamerlan shouted at him as the iman discussed the upcoming November 2012 elections, Assaf said. “The older brother stood up and he was shouting at me. He was so angry and saying, ‘This is not Islamic, this is wrong.’ He kept repeating this.”

In January 2013, Assaf was comparing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with the Prophet Muhammad when Tamerlan jumped up, screaming.

“He was fired up. Very hot,” Assaf said. “You could see his face was red. … Even his stance was a fighting stance. You could tell he was a boxer. And he kept saying, ‘This is not Islamic,’ ‘This is not right’ and ‘You’re a hypocrite.’ ”

Judith Russell, a Rhode Island registered nurse and Tamerlan’s mother-in-law, said: “Over time, he became much more religious. He would talk about it every time.”

The family opposed his six-month trip to Russia. “We thought it was very selfish because it was a vacation, basically,” she said.

Gina Crawford of Rhode Island, a close friend of Tamerlan’s wife, Katherine, said she texted her shortly after the Boston bombings.

Katherine told her “Tamerlan was at home in Cambridge,” Crawford said. Then Katherine added about the Boston attack, “A lot more people are killed in Syria.”

(c)2015 Tribune Co., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Handout image shown to jurors on March 18, 2015 in Boston, courtesy of the US Department of Justice, shows an evidence photo of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at his home in Cambridge

Boston Marathon Bomber’s Lawyers Try To Explain His Crude Gesture

Boston Marathon Bomber’s Lawyers Try To Explain His Crude Gesture

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

BOSTON — Defense attorneys for convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Wednesday tried to downplay prosecution claims that their client had shown anger and defiance at the U.S. when he raised his middle finger at a surveillance camera, and said he may instead have been upset or depressed over a conflict with a guard.

That image of Tsarnaev has become a crucial piece of evidence in the trial’s penalty phase, in which the jury must decide whether to sentence him to death or life in prison with no possibility of parole.

Wednesday was the second day jurors saw the image, which dates from July 10, 2013. On Tuesday, prosecutors showed them a photo, which turned out to be a still from a video.

Defense lawyers won permission to show two minutes of the video, which clearly shows an anxious then-19-year-old Tsarnaev pacing around his jail cell, sitting and standing, fussing with his hair, scratching his neck and clearly agitated.

At one point, he approaches the front of the cell and talks to someone, presumably a guard. One of Tsarnaev’s attorneys, Miriam Conrad, suggested to jurors that he may have wanted to lodge a complaint about the way he was being treated.

But Deputy U.S. Marshal Gary Oliveira, who testified to authenticate the photo and video, said he did not know what Tsarnaev was unhappy about. That left Conrad and the defense team with the option of exploring the incident further when they open their case in the penalty phase next week.

“Had anything occurred right before this that he was reacting to?” Conrad asked Oliveira. “Did anything occur which he seemed to be reacting to?”

“Not that I know,” Oliveira said. “I don’t recall.”

The video was made before Tsarnaev’s arraignment on charges of killing three people and wounding more than 260 others with two pressure-cooker bombs at the marathon finish line, and killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer days later as he and his elder brother, Tamerlan, tried to flee. Tamerlan was killed during the ensuing manhunt and Dzhokhar was wounded.

Tsarnaev, now 21, was convicted this month for his role in the attack. The defense contends that Tamerlan was the leader and Dzhokhar his acolyte.

It was the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.

Also Wednesday, the government introduced more testimony from victims and their families.

Joe and Kelley Rogers rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital after learning their son, MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, had been shot five times, including once between the eyes.

“He was shot to pieces,” Joe Rogers said of his stepson. “And he’s laying there. They don’t really clean him up much yet. And my wife is touching him and his blood is coming up in her hands.”

Collier’s death left his mother suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and unable to work as a medical administrator. His siblings cannot sleep, Rogers said, and some moved away from Boston. Family holidays and vacations are grim. “It’s been a terrible two years,” he said.

Eric Whalley of Boston lost sight in one eye. A ball bearing remains embedded in his brain. His wife, Ann, lost a heel from her foot. Together, they endured about 40 surgeries.

“There was an almighty boom and the smell of fireworks,” he testified. “We were blown backward. My wife was blown behind me.”

Neither one realized the other had survived until three days later, when they were reunited in a hospital.

“She thought I was dead. I thought she was dead,” he said. “I just held her hand and we realized we were both in this together. We were alive.”

(c)2015 Tribune Co., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

One of the blast sites on Boylston Street near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon is seen in Boston, Tuesday, April 16, 2013, one day after bomb blasts killed three and injured over 140 people. FBI agents searched a suburban Boston apartment overnight and appealed to the public for amateur video and photos that might yield clues to who carried out the Boston Marathon bombing. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

Prosecution Says Boston Bomber Is As Guilty As His Dead Brother

Prosecution Says Boston Bomber Is As Guilty As His Dead Brother

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

BOSTON — The federal jury in the trial of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is set to begin deliberations after prosecutors and defense lawyers on Monday offered rival narratives over who was to blame for the April 2013 terrorist bombings at the annual racing event.

Government prosecutor Aloke Chakravarty said Tsarnaev and his brother, Tamerlan, conspired together in the bombings and that Dzhokhar intentionally placed his pressure-cooker bomb next to the small feet of several young children.

“They chose Patriot’s Day,” Chakravarty said. “They chose Marathon Monday. They chose a day when the eyes of America were on Boston. They chose a day when people were on the sidewalks.”

But defense lawyer Judy Clarke, while acknowledging the tragic loss of life and conceding her client’s involvement in the bombings, argued that Dzhokhar was under the control of his older brother, a theme that is likely to recur in the punishment phase of the trial.

“The evidence is that Tamerlan built the bombs,” she said. “Tamerlan led and Dzhokhar followed. … He bought into his older brother’s plans and his actions.”

U.S. District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. asked jurors to begin deliberations Tuesday morning.

The jury was impaneled a month ago, chosen to decide the fate of the defendant in the worst terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

Three people died on Boylston Street, including an 8-year-old boy. More than 260 were injured; including 17 who were left amputees. Several days later, during a police manhunt, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Officer Sean Collier was shot to death.

Tamerlan was killed in that shootout. Now Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, if convicted, faces a death sentence.

Chakravarty showed the jury videos and photographs, pictures of the dead and dying, copies of Tsarnaev’s tweets and his Web searches for jihad material, as well as an enlarged image of his “confession” written on the inside of a boat. It was meant to remind the jury of the wealth of evidence pinning the bombings on the 21-year-old.

“He wanted to terrorize this country. He wanted to punish America for what it was doing to his people,” the prosecutor said. “And that’s what he did.”

Chakravarty, his face to the jury and his back to Tsarnaev, said: “That day they felt like they were soldiers. They were the mujahedeen.”

He said the brothers marked off two spots near the race finish line and separately detonated pressure-cooker bombs. Dzhokhar placed his bomb next to several youngsters. “He can’t help but see the row of children,” Chakravarty said of Dzhokhar. “But he puts his bomb there.”

The prosecutor said Dzhokhar called Tamerlan on a cellphone before they detonated bombs filled with nails, metal shards, BBs, and other ammunition. They spoke for 19 seconds. “To tell him (Tamerlan) things are a go,” the prosecutor said. “He told him he was in position. He told him it was go-time.”

They both were, he said, “fully engaged in their conspiracy. They knew what they were doing.”

Evidence showed Tamerlan was heavily radicalized, and Chakravarty stressed that Dzhokhar was just as deep into al-Qaida propaganda. “He got the stuff. He read the stuff. He believed in the stuff, and he acted on the stuff,” the prosecutor said.

“This was cold and calculated,” he said. “It was intentional. It was to make a point, that we will not be terrorized by America anymore. We will terrorize you.”

Finally Chakravarty held up portraits of the dead, and described their injuries.

Officer Sean Collier, 27. “Shot five times, three of them in the head, one between the eyes.”

Krystle Campbell, 29. “Massive blast injuries to her lower extremities. Parts of her body were shredded by the bombing.”

Lu Lingzi, 23. “She received blast injuries all over her body. Her leg was torn open. … She bled out.”

And Martin Richard, 8. “His entire body was shattered, broken, eviscerated, burned. There wasn’t a part of this boy’s body that wasn’t destroyed.”

For the defense, Clarke acknowledged the horrors of that afternoon. “We have come face to face with tragedy, suffering, and grief, in dimensions none of us can imagine possible,” she told the jury. “We would never have thought this devastation would touch our lives so directly.”

In painting Tamerlan as the conspiracy leader, she said her client was much less involved, describing him as a struggling, teenage college student. “He was 19,” she said. “He was an adolescent and doing adolescent things.”

Clarke concluded by signaling that the defense team, co-led by federal public defender Miriam Conrad, all but expects a guilty verdict. But she said that in the penalty phase of the trial that will follow, the defense would explain more about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his troubled relationship with his older brother.

“We are not asking you to go easy on Dzhokhar,” she told the jurors. “We are not asking you not to hold him accountable or responsible for what he did.”

The bombings, she said, “deserve to be condemned and the time is now. You will do what is right and what is just, and your verdict will speak the truth.”

In a brief rebuttal, lead prosecutor William Weinreb said both brothers were equally guilty. He rejected the defense’s suggestions that Tamerlan was the mastermind as “an attempt to sidestep responsibility, not to accept responsibility.”

He added, “These crimes were a two-man job. They were co-conspirators. They were partners. And that makes them equally guilty.”

(c)2015 Tribune Co., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Rebecca Hildreth via Flickr

Boston Marathon Bombing Jury Hears Details Of Boy’s Death

Boston Marathon Bombing Jury Hears Details Of Boy’s Death

By Richard A. Serrano, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

BOSTON — From the witness stand at the Boston Marathon bombing trial, the city’s chief medical examiner slipped on a pair of white latex gloves Monday and gingerly prowled around in a large cardboard box.

It was no accident that Dr. Henry Nields was the government’s final witness in the first phase of the capital murder trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Before resting the government’s case, a somber assistant federal prosecutor methodically led Nields to slowly pull item after item from the box and show each one to the jury.

The contents told, clinically and legally, the heartbreaking story of a little boy’s death.

Martin Richard, 8, was one of three spectators to die from the twin pressure-cooker blasts near the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013. He wanted to be a runner someday, like his father, but instead became the smallest victim of the worst terrorist attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11.

No other sound was heard in the courtroom as Nields and prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini went over the boy’s clothing and discussed his injuries and death.

When a series of autopsy photos was shown, some jurors wiped at tears. Others appeared angry; all looked shaken.

Nields began by describing Martin as 53 inches tall and 69 pounds.

Peering into a box marked Government’s Exhibit 1592, Nields pulled out Martin’s long-sleeve green T-shirt, bloodied and torn, with a gash on the left side. He took out a gray short-sleeved undershirt with the New England Patriots logo across the chest, also gashed on the left side.

He held up Martin’s black belt. Someone had used it as a tourniquet to try to stop the boy’s bleeding from his nearly severed left arm.

He held up Martin’s black jacket, again with the gash on the left. Finally, with two hands, Nields displayed the boy’s black-and-blue running shoes.

Martin had come to watch the marathon with his family, including his 6-year-old sister, Jane, who lost a leg. His mother, Denise, lost part of her vision. She and his father, Bill, were in the courtroom Monday.

Pellegrini questioned Nields in detail about the boy’s injuries.

There were four abrasions on his face, others behind his left ear and another on his neck. His upper chest and abdomen were nearly torn apart. Pieces of his small intestines were exposed. Two ribs were fractured, his left kidney torn and exposed, and his liver lacerated.

The boy’s spleen and pancreas were cut, and his abdominal aorta was lacerated. “Most of (the aorta) was cut in half,” the doctor told the jury. “But not completely.”

Martin’s right lung was damaged and his lower spine broken and torn. His legs, arms and hands were covered in cuts and bruises. So was his back. His buttocks were severely burned. Small nails, metal pellets and a piece of wood were recovered from his right chest cavity.

Was any part of his body unscathed? Pellegrini asked.

“All of the areas had injuries,” the doctor said.

Nields identified and sometimes opened small evidence envelopes containing shrapnel from the bombs: 6-inch-long nails, three dozen wood, metal and Styrofoam fragments, and a thumb-size gray-white metal shard. Pellegrini handed some of them to the jurors.

How did Martin die? she asked.

“Cause of death was blast injuries to the torso and extremities,” Nields said. “The manner of death was homicide.”

What did that mean? she asked.

He died “essentially from loss of blood,” the doctor said.

Was it painful?

Nields was careful. Obviously the boy died within seconds. “But,” he said, “I would say overall the injuries were painful.”

Defense lawyers, who have conceded that Tsarnaev, 21, left a bomb near the boy’s feet, had no questions for the medical examiner.

Later Monday afternoon, Tsarnaev’s lawyers began to present the defense case, trying to counter government assertions that their client was an equal partner with his older brother in carrying out the bombings. The defense maintains that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed during the manhunt a few days after the attacks, cast a long shadow over his younger brother and was the mastermind behind the attacks.

To bolster that claim, the defense presented cellphone records to show that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was not with his brother when Tamerlan Tsarnaev purchased some of the bomb parts.

Seventeen of the 30 charges against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carry the death penalty. The defense hopes to save his life by placing the bulk of the blame on his brother.

(c)2015 Tribune Co., Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: One of the blast sites on Boylston Street near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon as seen in Boston, Tuesday, April 16, 2013, one day after bomb blasts killed three and injured over 140 people. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)