Prosecutors, defense lawyers spar over jury selection in Tsarnaev trial D. Tsarnaev Federal prosecutors and lawyers for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev sparred in legal filings on Monday over jury selection in the highly anticipated trial, which could bring the death penalty. In 1 filing in federal court in Boston, prosecutors opposed a defense request to be allotted 30 peremptory challenges in the case. Peremptory challenges are objections that typically bar potential jurors from serving, without any explanation needed from the lawyers. The jury in Tsarnaevs trial will decide whether he receives the death penalty if convicted of playing a role in the April 15, 2013, bombings, which killed 3 people and wounded more than 260. The defense and prosecution are each entitled to 20 peremptory challenges in a typical federal capital trial, the government said Monday. Tsarnaevs request for 10 additional challenges to offset adverse pretrial publicity should be denied, prosecutors argued in the filing. In perfectly plain language that leaves no room for interpretation, Congress specified that a defendant in a capital case is entitled to exactly 20 peremptory challenges, the court document stated. In a separate filing on Monday, defense lawyers asked that every potential juror in the pool of more than 1,000 who makes it past initial screening be questioned individually to check for bias. Prosecutors instead want those candidates to be questioned in groups of 50, with additional individual interviews as needed. Group questioning is especially unlikely to ferret out biased jurors who are eager to serve in order to implement their own agendas - whether to convict, to impose a death sentence, or simply to be a part of a famous criminal case, defense attorneys wrote, noting that Governor-elect Charlie Baker identified Tsarnaev in a Boston Globe column in October as the living person he most despises. In a state that just elected as governor a candidate who publicly designated the defendant as the living person [he] most despise[s], . . . such concerns [about bias] are not unfounded, defense lawyers said. Tsarnaevs trial is scheduled to begin Jan. 5. Source: Boston Globe, December 9, 2014 Read more: deathpenaltynews.blogspot/2014/12/prosecutors-defense-lawyers-spar-over.html#ixzz3LaFdxA1i
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 10:26:22 +0000
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