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Verdict Reached In Boston Bombing Trial
An anonymous reader writes "A Boston jury has reached a verdict in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who admitted that he planted a bomb at the finish line of the Boston Marathon that left three dead and wounded 264 others. After deliberating for 11½ hours the jury has found Dzhokhar guilty on all 30 charges brought against him."
Most news analysts had a guilty verdict as a foregone conclusion, with the real question being whether the bomber would face the death penalty. It's strange that it took 11 and a half hours to reach the verdict.
Because (1) news analysts aren't juries, and (2) we try to be careful when considering whether or not to hold a man culpable for mass-murder.
Given his poor defense, I'm really not all that surprised. Though I wonder how it will flesh out in appeals if he gets the death penalty. One might argue the poor quality defense would force a retrial if they can convince an appeals court of incompetence or something like that.
What? This guy PLANTED one of the devices that killed people. I think his defense was poor because the evidence was clear that he was a willing participant in the crime.
No doubt there will be lots of appeals either way. It's the nature of the legal system in it's bend over backwards to protect the rights of criminals and assuring that their due process rights are protected. It's not evidence in the unfairness of a trial, but evidence that we are willing to expend a LOT of effort to make sure things are fair.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's not really strange at all. The jury had 30 counts to slog through. That's a fair amount of paperwork and procedure what with discussion and voting and so forth. And it seems like they were contentious about making sure they understood the law before passing judgment given the questions they asked the judge. Lord knows these verdicts will be scrutinized and appealed. You want to get it right so he doesn't get off on a technicality.
"It's the nature of the legal system in it's bend over backwards to protect the rights of CITIZENS"
Good-bye
11 1/2 hours for 30 charges is only 23 min for each charge.
Remember that they have to deliberate EACH count separately, so if you ask me that was pretty fast.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Agreed. It was the best possible defense, considering the moron scrawled a confessional on the boat he was hiding under. The defense's only hope is to make him out to be a brainwashed follower, with the conveniently dead older brother as some sort of Mansonesque terrorist supergenius.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Given his poor defense, I'm really not all that surprised. Though I wonder how it will flesh out in appeals if he gets the death penalty. One might argue the poor quality defense would force a retrial if they can convince an appeals court of incompetence or something like that.
The defense strategy was never to argue that he was innocent, it was to argue that he should receive life in prison rather than the death penalty. That will mainly occur over the next few weeks in the sentencing phase of the trial. This first guilt phase could've been done on day 1, but the prosecution wanted to grandstand.
"There happen to be a lot of people around who spend an hour on the Internet and think they know a lot of physics."
-Noam Chomsky
Ya'all do realize that the death "penalty" is actually letting the perpetrator get away with the crime, right?
Death isn't a penalty. It is the fate that every newly-minted, mewling, puking baby gets meted out to him or her as a consequence of being conceived. If it's a penalty, then why do so many seemingly loving, beaming parents sentence their own children to that fate by having them in the first place?
The penalty isn't the death, it's the forfeiture of what was going to be the rest of your life. Even in prison you would experience some moments of levity, joy, and peace, as well as many other experiences. The punishment is denying you these experiences, determining your actions have made you unfit not just for society(prison=removal from society), but of life itself. Life is the last thing a person has, the only thing that once gone can never be gotten back, and taking it away early is the ultimate punishment.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
There's process involved with each charge to ensure the jury is doing more than rubber stamping things. It's probably overkill in this particular case but it's important for the judicial system to have the processes in place.
Have you ever actually been in a criminal court? Defending yourself against even an offense as trivial as a speeding ticket is enough to make it blatantly obvious how defendants get railroaded in this country.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Brainwashed follower was about the only defense he had after his actions.
I'm not entirely sure that he has any good choices now. Being executed might be just as good as the million years he's going to be in prison. I suppose I wouldn't pick execution, but holy shit, what a shitty life he has in front of him now, either way.
Good. He earned his shitty future. I'm just sorry that incarcerating him will have almost no effect on the people who will be doing the same sort of thing in the future. People as stupid as he is don't let "consequences" get in their way when they really want to fuck other people over.
The defense, in their opening statement, admitted the defendant committed the crime. A trial to determine his guilt was merely a formality leading up to the penalty phase. Everybody, including the prosecution, defense (and presumably the defendant), and the judge all understood this. But it must be a slow news day, as every media outlet is making this out to be a big deal.
You can't compare a civil offense like a speeding ticket to a criminal trial. The standards of proof are completely different.
In the case of a civil offense, the standard is preponderance of evidence. A cops word is pretty much good enough for that.
In a criminal trial the standard is beyond a reasonable doubt. That means no reasonable person can have a reasonable doubt that you did it. HUGE difference.
Exactly. People miss the point of this all the time. The rights you see granted to criminals aren't there for the benefit of the criminals. They're for YOUR benefit in the event you are brought up on charges but are actually innocent. Which actually happens sometimes.
YOU have the right of appeal in case you, innocent of any crime, are charged and convicted because someone screwed up. It's a consequence, not the intent, that the legitimately guilty also have that right. We can't take it from them without taking it from you because we don't know which is which. If we did have infallible knowledge of who is guilty and who is innocent, we wouldn't need to bother with trials.
You might want to read up on Judy Clark, his attorney. She isn't some schmuck - indeed, she has represented some of the highest profile death penalty eligible cases in the country over the past twenty years.
If the evidence is overwhelming, as it was in this case, it is NOT a good defense to "throw BS" at the jury - the prosecution will simply tear up your defense and leave the jury with a very bad impression of your client.
The "bad impression" part is important when the penalty phase, decided by the same jury, comes up. Ms. Clark was preparing for the penalty phase, hoping to make the jury sympathetic to her client so they would just sentence him to life in prison rather than the death penalty. She, quite correctly, understood a conviction was impossible to avoid on most charges because the evidence shows her client is guilty beyond all rational doubt -- well beyond the "reasonable doubt" standard. Ms. Clark, effectively, used the guilt/innocence phase of the trial to start her argument in the penalty phase.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Most trials are biased against the defendant because most defendants that go to trial are, in fact, guilty. Most police and prosecutors do try to catch the actual perpetrators of crimes-- and don't typically proceed to trial unless the evidence supports at least a reasonable chance of getting a guilty verdict.
Tell that to the guy who just got released from death row 10 YEARS after the evidence came forth that he was innocent.
Won't that make him a martyr?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Every once in a while there is someone who is innocent. My elderly mother was driving the Prius through New Mexico and got a ticket for something like 93 in a 75. Turns out the cop tagged someone else with his radar and didn't feel like chasing them down so he gave the ticket to my mother. Fortunately, my father was able to get the GPS logs from the nav system showing her driving 70 through that whole stretch of road and had the lawyer get the ticket tossed.
But cases like that are rare. For the most part you're right. Most people who get speeding tickets are, in fact, guilty of speeding and trying to work the court system.
The prosecutor might not have been willing to bargain in a high-profile case they knew they could win.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
How do you figure that?
While it is true that kerosene (aka "jet fuel") burning in open air will not get hot enough to melt steel, it will raise steel to the curie point, but that is not the case here. Remember that in order to withstand the temperature of the burning kerosene, most steels are not good enough so many turbojet and turbofan components actually utilize titanium and in some cases tungsten(!) alloys in order to resist the heat, because in a forced-air situation kerosene gets hot enough to vaporize steel.
What you have is many thousands of pounds of kerosene which in open air will soften or even melt kerosene, which dissolved or at least softened many plastics in the building (styrofoam insulation and ceiling panels, PVC insulation in cables, plastic office furniture, plastic carpets, etc.) and those plastics also ignited, not to mention cellulose-based materials (wood, paper) which burns quite hot.
Add in the fact that the towers are structures with very tall vertical shafts distributed throughout the middle portion of the towers (stairwells, elevator shafts, etc) you have created a huge convection situation, which was fueled [sic] by the raging inferno, which only served to add more oxygen to the combustion process causing the towers to form a crude jet engine - as the fire got hotter convection increased, which only added more oxygen to the combustion process. Now, remember that most airliners are mostly aluminum, commercial buildings use a mix of aluminum and steel (aluminum for non-structural studs in partitions, frames in drop ceilings, etc) so that liquified aluminum would come into contact with melting steel and form thermite, making the combustion even hotter, especially with the humongous amount of convection going on.
Ergo, it's no problem to arrive at the conclusion that yes, those planes did in fact cause those towers to implode, and probably could have been predicted beforehand. The planners of that attack were certainly sociopathic and deluded, but definitely not stupid and probably had expected the towers to come down the way they did because of the reasons I mentioned above.
I don't know why people point to kerosene burning in open, still air and say "kerosene can't melt steel" when the whole reason titanium and tungsten are used for jet engines is because kerosene when provided more oxygen absolutely will vaporize steel.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
That's what happens when a good amount of one burning building collapses on top of another. WTC7? That's your smoking gun?
There are a lot of idiots on the Internet who repeat Chomsky quotes without thinking them through, but I'll admit this one is pretty good.
Conspiracy Theory idiots will make conspiracy theories about anything.
Why don't you make conspiracy theories about the school system that fucked up your science education so badly?