With the Tsarnaev trial going on, I am surprised that I am barely seeing any discussion of the killing & intimidation by the FBI of key witnesses, or of the overblown city-wide militarized lockdown of our entire metropolitan area in April 2013.
The citizens of Boston are in the position to say today that neither will we be terrorized by a few heartless criminals, nor will we intimidated by our own government.
Those of us who listened to the Serial podcast heard how readily the state pursued a lifetime conviction of a Pakistani American man with a case that was utterly baseless and self-contradictory. Today the Federal Government explains away the death of a Chechen American witness through various contradictory accounts and an unwillingness to release autopsy reports.
A few weeks ago I joined many other BMGers and Boston citizens to march for hours in protest of militarized police violence, institutionalized racism, and lack of law enforcement accountability. It seems to me that few recognize the connection between Michael Brown and Ibragim Todashev. Granted, our country’s racist treatment towards people who are black has a much longer history. The current unconstitutional treatment of suspected terrorists and their colleagues is a newer phenomenon. But the issues are linked – our law enforcement exploits our fear in order to act with more and more impunity.
We mustn’t be silent on this topic. Today’s trial is an opportunity to speak up and say that we will not let fear rule this city. We demand accountability and transparency.
jconway says
And it seems he will not be getting the former and will be have to be sentenced to the latter in order for a conviction, in spite of the wishes of the majority of the people of this fine Commonwealth who have repeatedly voiced their opposition to the death penalty.
That said, my personal belief is that he is guilty and deserving of a life sentence without parole. It’s a shame that won’t be an option due to the capriciousness of the US Attorney. We will also see zero public officials stick their necks out for him, such is the nature of this kind of case.
theloquaciousliberal says
First, I certainly agree that the trial out to have been moved (probably out of state) to ensure a less-biased jury pool.
Second, I personally oppose the death penalty in all circumstances. I share your personal belief that he is guilty and deserving of a life sentence without parole. I would have like to see the federal prosecutors accept a plea bargain to that effect rather than a trial.
HOWEVER, I’m definitely confused by this muddled language in your comment:
What are you trying to say here? I think you misunderstand how the trial is now scheduled to proceed?
The plan is for a two-staged (guilt and sentencing) trial. Should the jury unanimously convict on a charge that carries the death penalty in the guilt stage (which currently seems likely), they would still have to vote unanimously to impose the death penalty. If they fail to vote unanimously for execution, then Tsarnaev would receive life in prison without parole.
So…
fenway49 says
Prospective jurors can be dismissed for outright opposition to capital punishment, but not for support for it. That alone skews the final jury toward the death penalty.
In addition, my sense is that there are many people who don’t like the death penalty in general but are willing to make an exception for acts of terrorism or for this case in particular. That moves the jury further in that direction. All I can say is: I’d hate to the be one or two jurors holding out on sentencing this defendant to death.
jconway says
Thanks for clarifying LL.
jconway says
Christopher says
Given the apparent opposition to execution by locals I can easily see at least one of them ending up on the jury. Even if people can be purged for automatic opposition one might come around.
TheBestDefense says
that you and he are in agreement. Or am I misunderstanding the dialog? The disjointed nature of the response mechanism on BMG makes it hard to follow lines of discussion if you do not pay close attention to the timing of the posts.
TheBestDefense says
I think Tsarnaev is going to receive a relatively fair trial, although the mid-December data dump by the prosecution of 12,000 pages of evidence worries me. Maybe I am being naive, but maybe that is because I am not so quick as jconway to declare him guilty before he has had a trial.
However, I want a fairer trial for ME, too. If he is found guilty here in Boston, this trial will not be over. His defense team will appeal the finding, citing venue and a tainted jury pool. It will continue on through multiple layers of appeals on the finding, and if the death penalty is imposed, multiple layers of appeals on the penalty. It would have been far better for the prosecution to have offered a plea deal with an admission of guilt in exchange for a lifetime sentence in a fed-max prison. Then we would have an admitted terrorist in jail forever and would have upheld our Constitutional guarantee of a right to a fair trial. If Tsarnaev is guilty, I want him in jail tomorrow. I want my Constitution protected too. We can have both.
Let’s not blame US Attorney Ortiz for this one. The decision was no doubt made by AG Eric Holder, which raises the question of whether Obama was part of the decision making process. They can still fix this by offering the plea deal I suggested. Let’s end this tragedy ASAP.
Christopher says
…why shouldn’t he have a trial rather a plea deal? For that matter, what is his basic defense. Is he saying he didn’t do it or is he going with something else?
TheBestDefense says
it is here. But his attorney is Judy Clarke, who is well known for being the person you call when you want to avoid the death penalty. She helped broker guilty pleas while stopping the death penalty for 9/11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui, Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Jared Loughner, who carried out the mass shooting that killed six and gravely injured former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
His defense team will not state its defense(s) until much later.
TheBestDefense says
assumption, but perhaps not obvious, is that if he were offered a deal for life in prison without parole instead of the possibility of getting the death penalty, he would have the option of saying no. I make no assumption that he is guilty but prefer to let the accused in an extraordinary and expensive case like this get the choice of saying yes or no to such a deal.
Christopher says
If I were a prospective juror my own honest answer in this case is that I am open, but not committed, to the death penalty if found guilty.
David says
is deciding whether or not to impose the death penalty. They must unanimously vote to sentence to death; any disagreement means no death penalty.
petr says
… I will assert that this is too loose by half, if not more… Ibragim Todashev did not randomly swing into the FBI’s orbit to be arbitrarily gunned down: he had been questioned multiple times in the investigation of a triple murder and was shot during or immediately following another 8 straight hours of questioning by the FBI and Massachusetts State Troopers. That’s hardly the same thing as the random street encounter between Brown and a beat cop. I do not assert that there’s nothing nefarious about his death… but If there is anything nefarious about Todashev’s death it is an entirely different kind of nefarious than those circumstances surrounding Brown’s death
Right back at you. i think you’re being ruled by fear in your assessment of law enforcement and in the generalities you derive. I understand why, and I don’t feel any particular surprise at it… but I am compelled to ask if you think the purpose of a trial is to put our prejudices on a pedestal and genuflect to them…? or if the purpose of a trial is quite the opposite: to assault our prejudices with rigor amongst a fair number of different perspectives and differing agendas? If you believe, as I do, in the latter case, then you should trust to that to get us, at least partway, to the truth.
Gumby says
I didn’t mean to imply that there was anything wrong with bringing the suspect to trial. I am suggesting that the path of discussion should go from “oh yeah, the Boston bomber is in the news,” straight to “remember when law enforcement used the threat of terrorism as a vehicle to lock down our entire city and then kill a witness in Florida with no justifiable explanation?”
You’re right that the circumstances around the two deaths were clearly very different. But the opaque mechanism by which no wrongdoing was found on the parts of law enforcement – that seems quite similar.
I’m not taking a position on the trial itself – I am suggesting that its primary significance is as an opportunity for us to change the subject back to our constitutional rights. Since Boston citizens were the target of the crime, Boston citizens are in the best position to say that “Boston Strong” means not surrendering our rights out of fear.
Maybe the week of the trial is not the appropriate time to bring that up. But I was thinking maybe it could be.
petr says
..there exists a “justifiable explanation” — self defense– you just don’t believe it. i think it is out of fear that you do not believe it. I’m not entirely convinced myself, but it is at least plausible… so I keep my mind open.
One (the Brown shooting) was by mechanism of a Grand Jury. The power of an Attorney General to use a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich is the power to let the ham sandwich go scot free. I don’t like it, but there it is. The other mechanism was investigation by at least two separate agencies (FBI and Mass State Troopers) as well as the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. I do not think they are at all similar. I think you discount the possibility the outcome was on the up and up in the instance of the Todashev shooting because of the real and justifiable outrage over the Brown shooting. I think that is a mistake.
It means, also, not surrendering our wits out of fear.
SomervilleTom says
The “self defense” argument against Mr. Todashev is incomprehensible. We are talking about a something on the order of a dozen agents with an unarmed man. Funny how the recorders were all turned off just before the “attack”. Funny how it was necessary to pump a fusillade of a dozen rounds into the body (many from the back after he was clearly down). Funny how the shooter has a long history of brutal violence with Oakland PD.
There is nothing “independent” about the “investigations”. Each investigation was done by an agency that (a) has nothing to gain and everything to lose by admitting any fault and (b) has NEVER found ANY agent guilty of misconduct.
Let’s not forget that the very same FBI office that “investigated” the Todashev execution also investigated possible misconduct of that office during the Whitey Bulger years. Those “investigations” also came to the same conclusion.
The Boston FBI office is corrupt, and has been so for decades. Mr. Todashev was executed, by a shooter who was apparently recruited for the task. That’s how it looks to me. It looked that way to me LONG before the Brown or Gardner killings.
We disagreed about it then, and I guess we’ll disagree about it now. I’m just telling you how it looks to me. I’m also telling you that I and people like me predicted the killings in Ferguson and NYC, predicted the outcome of those investigations, and predicted the public reaction to them.
This is a serious problem and it isn’t going to go away by chanting “Boston Strong” and clapping our hands like some Peter Pan re-enactment.
methuenprogressive says
That’s almost as silly as your claim you “predicted the killings in Ferguson and NYC, predicted the outcome of those investigations, and predicted the public reaction to them.”
Have you hit your head?
howlandlewnatick says
I expect it will be another orchestrated show trial. We won’t learn why the fellow in Florida was executed. We won’t learn who the clean-shaven paramilitaries with the skull patches, khaki trousers, black backpacks that bugged out of the area when the bombs went off were. What happened to the eyewitnesses that said a policeman announced there would be two loud booms and not to panic as it was just a test? We’ll never know. Purpose of raking gunfire on the unarmed defendant in the boat? Was it to L H Oswald him? Dunno. Was this a government sting gone wrong again? Anybody’s guess.
Certain I am we will see more show business that truth in the performance.
“Questions that will free you might have answers that will imprison you again.” —― Nema Al-Araby
methuenprogressive says
We know it wasn’t the CIA robot bunnies, none survived 9/11.
howlandlewnatick says
I wonder what Peter Buxtun of the Tuskegee experiments would say. Or Edward Snowden? Russell Tice of NSA? Private Manning? Bunny Greenhouse? Daniel Ellsberg?
Surely there will always be people to believe in Saddam’s Nooks (sic). Or that we don’t torture. Then there was the attack in the Gulf on Tonkin…
“Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.” –Mark Twain
methuenprogressive says
There’s a coupon for Reynolds Wrap.
http://www.reynoldskitchens.com/coupons/
methuenprogressive says
It is nonsense to connect the two.
SomervilleTom says
Just like there’s no connection between the 372 school shootings since 1992. None whatsoever.
Are you also an investor in the Cape Cod Tunnel?
methuenprogressive says
Please proceed.
bob-gardner says
In both cases it was the victim who was investigated, not the shooter. The shooter’s identity was kept secret as long as possible, while a narrative about the victim was constructed and put out to justify the shooting in each case.
Has anyone noticed that the government has now officially denied in court papers that Todashev had anything to do with the triple murder in Waltham?
Gumby says
Not sure about Todashev, but here’s a link to the court document where the Feds say, end of p7,
“…the government has no evidence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev actually participated in the Waltham murders….”
They don’t say he wasn’t involved, they say there’s no evidence. Yet the narrative remains, without any evidence.
Now imagine you heard that the Russian KGB had killed an unarmed man “in self defense” alone in a room while 11 other KGB officers didn’t watch, and that they claimed that man was about to confess to a long-unsolved murder, and was also about to implicate another dead enemy of the state as well.
You would say “Nice try, KGB. It is far more likely that you are covering something up and needed that man dead.” But when it’s our own FBI doing exactly that, it all the sudden sounds crazy.
TheBestDefense says
Tsarnaev has been indicted under 30 counts of using weapons of mass destruction and murder, none of them related to Todashev or the Waltham murders.
SomervilleTom says
That’s the point, TBD.
Of course there’s no evidence relating Mr. Tsaernaev to the Todashev or Waltham murders — the FBI has spent years killing and deporting people to make sure of that. Of course all the evidence points to Mr. Tsaernaev, that’s been the FBI party line from the get-go.
As far as I’m concerned, the tragedy that happened at the Boston Marathon did NOT involve a “weapon of mass destruction”. In my view, that language exemplifies the issue that joins Mr. Todashev and Mr. Brown. A “weapon of mass destruction” is a nuclear bomb. An airplane filled with jet fuel that is flown into a skyscraper. “Mass destruction” is something that kills THOUSANDS.
I think, as a society, that we need the ability to treat amateur wannabe “terrorists” differently from professional, trained, and well-funded agents of hostile entities. That is especially true when the suspect is the only living link to yet another shameful FBI episode that the FBI would VERY MUCH like to keep buried.
methuenprogressive says
There’s a coupon for Reynolds Wrap.
http://www.reynoldskitchens.com/coupons/
TheBestDefense says
the first use of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” was made in 1937 in reference to the killing of civilians at Guernica during the Spanish civil war. It is not about killing thousands as you state; it is about the killing of innocents.
The citation I used is the the one under which Tsarnaev is charged: 18 U.S. Code § 2332a. You can choose a different definition but I will usually opt for the historic and the legal definitions, not one you create.
petr says
… that while the numbers of dead at Guernica are disputed — with casualty estimates ranging from one hundred fifty to one thousand six hundred– the bombardment served as “proof of concept” for the then-nascent tactic of aerial bombardment and was a precursor to the coming thousands upon thousands — of innocents — who would die thereafter.
I think the Tsarnaev brothers were limited in their destructive capabilities by their own limitations in resources, both intellectual and financial perhaps, but that doesn’t speak to their intent to cause “mass destruction”
TheBestDefense says
agreed
centralmassdad says
I guess I had assumed that these two’s support for unlimited powers to Surveillance and Police State was limited to whitewashing the record of various former Massachusetts elected officials.
Now it seems that they really do hold these illiberal views. They are like J. Edgar’s ghost, manifest on an anonymous message board, commenting on the issues of our time.