Tag: boston marathon bombing
The Strange Justice Of A Misidentified Suspect And The Media

The Strange Justice Of A Misidentified Suspect And The Media

Mark Hughes was innocent. Yet for a while on Thursday night, he became the most notorious criminal in the United States.

Hughes brought along his rifle to a Dallas gathering protesting the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. He marched peacefully the entire time, with the legally gun strapped onto his back.

However, once the Dallas Police Department identified Hughes as a suspect in the tragic shooting that occurred later that night, a mass digital witch hunt began.

The DPD posted Hughes’ photo on Twitter, passed out copies to reporters, and described Hughes physically in a press briefing, ordering civilians not to approach him. His face appeared on dozens of national and local television networks. (The photo is still on Twitter as this article goes to press, after over 40,000 retweets.)

https://twitter.com/DallasPD/status/751262719584575488?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Justice must be served, and it must be served quickly. But if nothing else, Hughes’ case shows that in hyper-public tragedies like the Dallas shooting, the noble impulse to locate killers in impossibly large public gatherings can shine a spotlight on the wrong people.

It’s a strange kind of justice indeed when seemingly every publication and network accuses an innocent protester of slaughtering five police officers; when the desire to avenge this killing surpasses the need for accuracy.

Of course, a “person of interest” is different than a suspect is different than a criminal. And a man with a gun near a mass shooting is bound to raise questions. But in the age of instant online alerts, an accusation like the one made by Dallas police — and dutifully magnified by a cooperative media — can spread like wildfire. At that point, the court of public opinion rules.

As a handful of publications noted, the false allegations against Hughes bear an eerie parallel to the efforts to identify the Boston marathon bombers.

Reddit and Twitter users speculated in the immediate aftermath of the bombing that its perpetrator was a missing Brown University student, Sunil Tripathi, who was later found dead of unrelated causes. Over a police scanner, someone mentioned the name Mike Mulugeta (who was not a real person). Suddenly, an unclear chain of events and tweets lead journalists from BuzzFeed, Politico, and Newsweek to announce Mulugeta and Tripathi as prime suspects.

The New York Post, meanwhile, published a photo of another two men on its cover, alleging that they were the bombers. How the Post ended up publishing that photo is legally contested, but the paper said in court that Boston police had told them to identify the men.

The Daily Beast also misidentified a suspect at a San Bernardino shooting last December, publishing the photo, employer and property records of the shooter’s brother rather than the shooter himself. A similar circus ensued on social media.

Unlike Hughes, none of these suspects were unequivocally named by police, but, like Hughes, their names and faces soon emerged everywhere. The frantic search for a shooter — any shooter, it seemed — after the attacks began created misinformation on a massive scale. 

Hughes turned his gun into police almost immediately, and another suspect was identified. (Perhaps paradoxically, Hughes was helped by another mass media craze: one documenting that he was not, in fact, the shooter.) But did his photo need to be blasted over the airwaves and pasted over Internet to begin with?

Photo from Dallas Police Department Twitter

Boston Bomber Speaks Out For First Time: ‘I Am Sorry For The Lives I Have Taken’

Boston Bomber Speaks Out For First Time: ‘I Am Sorry For The Lives I Have Taken’

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

BOSTON — Speaking for the first time publicly about the explosives he and his brother set off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon two years ago, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apologized for the bombings and to the victims of the worst terrorist attack in the U.S. since Sept. 11.

“I am sorry for the lives I have taken, for the suffering I caused, for the damage I have done — the irreparable damage,” he said.

In a slight voice and apparently racked by nerves ahead of his formal sentencing, Tsarnaev thanked his defense team and praised the survivors and relatives who spoke in the courtroom earlier “with strength, with patience, with dignity.”

“They told how horrendous this was,” he acknowledged.

Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, detonated two pressure-cooker bombs at the race’s finish line in April 2013, killing three and wounding more than 260. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed days later in a massive manhunt for the bombing suspects. Tsarnaev told investigators days after the bombing that they were motivated by extremist Islamic beliefs and that the attack was in retaliation for the U.S. military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wednesday’s remarks were a departure from Tsarnaev’s behavior during his trial and even earlier in the day, when he showed no emotion during heart-wrenching testimony from victims and the exhibition of the photographs and videos from the bombing. He did not testify.

“I also asked Allah to have mercy upon me and my brother and my family and I pray to Allah to bestow his mercy upon victims and their families,” Tsarnaev said, noting his own Muslim faith.

In emotional remarks earlier Wednesday, victims of the bombing talked about the lasting damage they suffered.

Tsarnaev, referred to only as “the defendant” by victim after victim, remained still throughout. He gave no sign that he was listening as runners and spectators spoke of invisible injuries and the horror of learning that loved ones were grievously wounded.

One woman confessed to remaining too afraid to sleep, but went on to say she had forgiven Tsarnaev.

Other victims expressed anger. Elizabeth Bourgault, who ran in the race, told those gathered: “The defendant will now die for what he did. Whatever God the defendant believes in will not welcome him.”

A prosecutor had to help hold up Liz Norton, whose two children were gravely wounded. “Who could harbor so much evil and so much hate?” she asked Tsarnaev.
Jennifer Maybury, whose nephew lost both legs, told him: “That day changed the course of an entire family.”

A federal jury voted last month that Tsarnaev, 21, a Russian immigrant, should be put to death. On Wednesday, a judge formally sentenced Tsarnaev to six death sentences and 10 terms of life in prison without parole.

In the federal court system, there is an automatic appeal of the verdict and death sentence. But Tsarnaev will soon be moved to a federal facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he will become the youngest inmate waiting to be put to death.

The last federal execution was carried out 12 years ago when Louis Jones Jr., a decorated Army soldier, was put to death for kidnapping and killing a female enlistee.

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

AFP Photo

Death Penalty For Tsarnaev Hurts Boston

Death Penalty For Tsarnaev Hurts Boston

Why was 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sentenced to die in a state so generally opposed to capital punishment? A recent Boston Globe poll found that only 19 percent of Massachusetts residents wanted the Boston Marathon bomber put to death. The state hasn’t seen an execution since 1947.

That sentence happened because national politics took the matter out of local hands. The federal government forced a death penalty trial. Only those open to a death sentence were allowed to serve on the jury. That made the jury members unrepresentative of the local population and the outcome preordained.

The sentence has eroded a sense of unity — the notion that a community can stand up to an awful crime without compromising its moral objection to capital punishment. And it goes against national trends.

Americans’ support for the death penalty has sharply declined. Not long ago, about 80 percent of the American public favored it. A poll last year found 52 percent preferring life behind bars over execution.

Even some conservative states, such as Nebraska, are witnessing serious moves to end the death penalty. Opposition takes several forms: That capital punishment offends the pro-life ethic — as forcefully stated by Pope Francis. That executing someone who was wrongly convicted is an unspeakable horror. That the drawn-out and expensive appeals process that typically follows a death sentence serves no one, including the victims.

A discomfiting oddity of capital punishment is that whether and how it is applied depends on the place. The flamboyant cruelties of the Islamic State’s beheadings and the antiseptic lethal injections in death penalty states seem variations of the same thing.

In 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled the electric chair unconstitutional. The current debate includes the shortage of drugs for lethal injections. These are discussions one shouldn’t want to have.

Many Americans, Bostonians included, remain adamant that criminals like Tsarnaev need to be eliminated, without much concern for the means. “I don’t think there’s any punishment too great for him,” Boston mayor Martin Walsh said after the sentencing.

And some who generally oppose the death penalty say they would make an exception in the case of terrorism. They describe the Tsarnaev brothers’ rampage as more an act of war than a multiple murder.

We must question, though, whether by defining a heinous crime as a politically inspired act, we are further inflating already grandiose misfits into historic figures. Fears that executing Tsarnaev will elevate the former college student into martyr status are not unfounded.

That his twisted admirers might respond with violence should not be a concern in meting out justice. Let that be said. But how much more diminished Tsarnaev would be if he were simply stored behind bars with the serial rapists and the holdup men.

The gruesome pomp that would surround a Tsarnaev execution could further move the marathon bombing focus from the crime and its victims to the criminal. That helps explain why some of the affected families have opposed a death sentence.

Bill and Denise Richard, whose 8-year-old son was murdered and whose 7-year-old daughter lost a leg in the bombing, have been among them. “For us,” they wrote, “the story of Marathon Monday 2013 should not be defined by the actions or beliefs of the defendant, but by the resiliency of the human spirit and the rallying cries of this great city.”

In sum, they don’t want Tsarnaev made more important than he is.

The marathon’s finish line, once a place to leave flowers, now evokes more complicated emotions. But the society that suffered the carnage did not have a say in the sentencing. That is one consolation for those Bostonians pained by the outcome.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com. 

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

Boston Marathon Bomber Is Sentenced To Death

Boston Marathon Bomber Is Sentenced To Death

A federal jury in Boston has sentenced Dzohkhar Tsarnaev to death. The jury reached its unanimous decision Friday afternoon.

The 21-year-old Tsarnaev was responsible, along with his older brother Tamerlan, for the April 15, 2013, attack on the Boston Marathon. The bombing left three people dead, including an eight-year-old boy, and over 200 injured.

This is the same jury that last month found Tsarnaev guilty of all 30 charges against him, 17 of which were capital charges, meeting the legal requirements for the death penalty. These charges included conspiracy to use, and possession of, a weapon of mass destruction, possession and use of a firearm, and bombing of a public place.

The 12-person jury deliberated for 15 hours, according to MSNBC.

During the sentencing phase of the trial Tsarnaev’s defense attorneys emphasized that Tsarnaev had been in thrall to the influence of his older brother, Tamerlan, who died in a standoff with police. Defense attorney David I. Bruck argued that life in the federal “supermax” prison would have been sufficient punishment, and would deny Tsarnaev the publicity he would receive from a protracted appeals process.

During arguments, Bruck showed jurors a picture of the cramped, virtually sunless cell Tsarnaev would spend the rest of his days.

“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.”

Judy Clarke, Tsarnaev’s chief defense attorney, a leading expert on capital punishment, had previously represented, and saved from death row, Theodore Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” and Zacarias Moussaoui, the self-described “20th hijacker” of the 9/11 attacks.

Tsarnaev would be the first prisoner executed by the U.S. federal government since 2003.

This post has been updated.