BOSTON — Lawyers for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev asked a federal appeals court again on Tuesday to order the judge to move his trial outside of Massachusetts, arguing he cannot get a fair trial here.
The request was the second time the defense has asked the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to step in and take the decision on whether to move the trial out of the hands of Judge George O’Toole Jr.
The 1st Circuit rejected a similar request last month, before jury selection began.
In their new request, Tsarnaev’s lawyers say their review of questionnaires filled out by 1,373 prospective jurors show that 68 percent already believe Tsarnaev is guilty. They said 69 percent have identified some sort of personal connection or allegiance they have to the “people, places and/or events” in the case.
Three people were killed and more than 260 were injured when two bombs exploded near the marathon finish line on April 15, 2013.
Prosecutors say Tsarnaev, then 19, and his brother, Tamerlan, 26, planted and detonated two pressure-cooker bombs as retaliation for U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following a gunbattle with police days after the bombings.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, now 21, could face the death penalty if convicted.
Tsarnaev’s lawyers argued that since the judge began individual questioning of prospective jurors, additional evidence of bias among jurors has been revealed. The defense cited a variety of personal connections noted by prospective jurors, including an emergency room doctor who treated both Tsarnaev and his brother when they were wounded during a getaway attempt days after the attack; a neighbor of the special agent in charge of the Boston FBI office at the time of the bombings; friends and acquaintances of people wounded; and people who donated to a fund to help victims of the attack.
“It is unrealistic to expect that even the most sincere and scrupulous jurors can shield themselves from the biases and connections that inundate the communities in which they, themselves, live,” Tsarnaev’s lawyers wrote.
The defense also cited remarks prospective jurors had written on their questionnaires or said while being questioned by the judge.
