For federal prosecutors, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is the perfect monster for the post-9/11 era. He’s an accused terrorist; authorities say he downloaded al Qaeda literature on his laptop before he and his brother set off two pressure cooker bombs at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon.
No cameras are allowed at the Tsarnaev trial. But CNN’s Ann O’Neill will be there every day. Think of her as The 13th Juror, bringing insights here weekly. And follow @AnnoCNN on Twitter daily.
Massachusetts abolished the death penalty more than 30 years ago and last carried out a death sentence in 1947. But a place that hanged 26 people for practicing witchcraft can’t deny its brutal, eye-for-an-eye past.
Still, there’s plenty of ambivalence about capital punishment in Boston’s DNA, and that makes picking a jury to decide Tsarnaev’s fate all the more challenging. The state might not have the death penalty, but the feds do. And they think Tsarnaev is a poster boy for capital punishment. His crimes, if he is convicted, include the murder of an 8-year-old boy — raising the bar for heinousness and cruelty.
Asked whether they’d be able to sentence Tsarnaev to die by injection, the answers from his potential jurors range from “absolutely” to “no way” to somewhere in between: “I’m not wicked opposed to the death penalty.”
The people with the strongest opinions — those on the extreme ends of the juror questionnaire rating scale — are the least likely to make the jury here. But as the past 19 days of juror quizzing has shown, there’s a whole lot of middle for such a hot-button topic.
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His resentencing trial is scheduled to begin September 15. By then, the Tsarnaev trial should be over. But just like in Tsarnaev’s trial, the judge and prosecutors in Sampson’s case will be sure to take their time questioning potential jurors to make sure they don’t create another cause for retrial.
One of Tsarnaev’s defense attorneys, Miriam Conrad, engaged in an intense exchange with a proud former sailor over his posts on Facebook. One included a photo of a sign with a slogan often invoked by U.S. Marines: “It’s God’s job to judge the terrorists. We just arrange the meeting.”
Could they be a sign of bias?
The man, who now teaches middle school math and science, bristled at the defense attorney’s questions. “I have formed the opinion that terrorists deserve the death penalty,” he fired back, repeatedly addressing Conrad as “ma’am.” And then he added, “I don’t believe in revenge. I believe in justice.”
No cameras are allowed at the Tsarnaev trial. But CNN’s Ann O’Neill will be there every day. Think of her as The 13th Juror, bringing insights here weekly. And follow @AnnoCNN on Twitter daily.
