U.S. public defender in Boston seeks to represent bomb suspect

[CaféAuLait]

U.S. public defender in Boston seeks to represent bomb suspect

BOSTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Public Defender Office in Boston is seeking to be appointed to represent Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.

The office commonly defends individuals who cannot afford their own attorneys in criminal cases. An official there, Charles McGinty, said its attorneys have not spoken to Tsarnaev and will have to be appointed to represent him by a federal judge. "That's why we're trying to advance the appointment to be as soon as possible," he said.

U.S. public defender in Boston seeks to represent bomb suspect - chicagotribune.com

I thought maybe it might be some well known defense attorney looking to defend this guy but instead we have U.S. Federal Public Defender Office there clamoring to be appointed his attorney by a judge.

Sure he needs an attorney, may a judge have had to appoint him an attorney at a hearing and it be a public defender, maybe but why the rush?

 

[Rozman]

Fifteen maybe twenty minutes of fame.

 

[waltky]

Remaining Mooslamic terrorist being treated in Jewish hospital...

Boston bomb suspect hospitalized under heavy guard
Apr 20,`13 -- Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lay hospitalized in serious condition under heavy guard Saturday - apparently in no shape to be interrogated - as investigators tried to establish the motive for the deadly attack and the scope of the plot.

People across the Boston area breathed easier the morning after Tsarnaev, 19, was pulled, wounded and bloody, from a tarp-covered boat in a Watertown backyard. The capture came at the end of a tense day that began with his 26-year-old brother, Tamerlan, dying in a gunbattle with police. There was no immediate word on when Tsarnaev might be charged and what those charges would be. The twin bombings killed three people and wounded more than 180. The most serious charge available to federal prosecutors would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction to kill people, which carries a possible death sentence. Massachusetts does not have the death penalty.

President Barack Obama said there are many unanswered questions about the bombing, including whether the Tsarnaev brothers - ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the U.S. for about a decade and lived in the Boston area - had help from others. The president urged people not to rush judgment about their motivations. U.S. officials said an elite interrogation team would question the Massachusetts college student without reading him his Miranda rights, something that is allowed on a limited basis when the public may be in immediate danger, such as instances in which bombs are planted and ready to go off.

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern about that possibility. Executive Director Anthony Romero said the legal exception applies only when there is a continued threat to public safety and is "not an open-ended exception" to the Miranda rule, which guarantees the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. The federal public defender's office in Massachusetts said it has agreed to represent Tsarnaev once he is charged. Miriam Conrad, public defender for Massachusetts, said he should have a lawyer appointed as soon as possible because there are "serious issues regarding possible interrogation."

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Saturday afternoon that Tsarnaev was in serious but stable condition and was probably unable to communicate. Tsarnaev was at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where 11 victims of the bombing were still being treated. "I, and I think all of the law enforcement officials, are hoping for a host of reasons the suspect survives," the governor said after a ceremony at Fenway Park to honor the victims and survivors of the attack. "We have a million questions, and those questions need to be answered."

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See also:

Boston suspects' Chechen family traveled long road
Apr 20,`13 -- The two brothers accused of blowing up homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon came from a Chechen family that for decades had been tossed from one country to another by war and persecution.

Their father and former neighbors from Kyrgyzstan - home to many Chechens who were deported from their native villages by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin - tell of a family often on the move in search of safety and a better life. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in a shootout, and his 19-year-old brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured alive, had moved to the United States about a decade ago with their parents and two sisters. By all accounts, the younger brother had many friends, but his older brother felt alienated from American society and in recent years had turned increasingly to Islam. Although neither spent much time in Chechnya, a province in southern Russia that has been torn apart by war and an Islamic insurgency, both strongly identified themselves as Chechens. They took up boxing and wrestling, two of the most popular sports in Chechnya, where people are proud of their warrior traditions.

The brothers' story begins in Tokmok, a town about 60 kilometers (35 miles) from the capital of Kyrgyzstan, a country in Central Asia that was once part of the Soviet Union. Stalin rounded up the Chechens and shipped them east during World War II, seeing them as potentially disloyal. Their father, Anzor Tsarnaev, was born in Kyrgyzstan. "This was a very good family," Badrudi Tsokoev, a fellow Chechen who lived next door to the Tsarnaevs, said Saturday. "They all strove to get a higher education, to somehow set themselves up in life."

The brothers' grandfather had died tragically when a shell exploded as he was scavenging for metal that could be sold as scrap, neighbors said. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the family moved to Chechnya, only to have war break out in 1994 between Russian troops and Chechen separatists fighting for an independent homeland. Dzhokhar was born in 1993 and shares the name of Chechnya's first separatist leader.

The fierce battles, which reduced much of Chechnya to rubble, sent the Tsarnaevs fleeing back to Kyrgyzstan with their two young sons, a daughter and another one on the way. "As soon as the war started they came back," said Nadezhda Nazarenko, another former neighbor in Tokmok. The children's mother "described how they were in clothes they would wear only around the house and fled the bombing, managing only to grab their documents and a few things." Neighbors said Anzor Tsarnaev, who had studied law and previously served in the prosecutor's office, worked hard to provide for his family. "Soon they began to live well and renovated their home," Nazarenko said. "The children did well in school and were well behaved."

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[Noomi]

I always wonder how someone can expect to get a fair trial when their public defender is completely useless.

 

[auditor0007]

The kid will need a public defender because nobody will pay for his defense. I hope he gets a good public defender and that public defender does his/her job and puts out the best defense possible for this kid. And for people who would threaten anyone on the defense team, they should be dealt with harshly. The point is not that anyone believes that this kid is not guilty but that every person deserves to be represented by a competent attorney, including this punk. He should be convicted despite a good defense.

 

[CaféAuLait]

The kid will need a public defender because nobody will pay for his defense. I hope he gets a good public defender and that public defender does his/her job and puts out the best defense possible for this kid. And for people who would threaten anyone on the defense team, they should be dealt with harshly. The point is not that anyone believes that this kid is not guilty but that every person deserves to be represented by a competent attorney, including this punk. He should be convicted despite a good defense.

How do you know he does not have the money to pay for his own defense? Or a family member or an unknown benefactor would not pay for his defense? There has not even been a hearing yet to determine such. I've seen a lot of strange things, I saw people feel sympathy for those who appear guilty and give them money or support them through other acts.

 

[blackcherry]

Let's wait and see whether the star witness in this False Flag circus lives to tell the tale .

 

[Politico]

Your foil hat fell off cherry.

 

[there4eyeM]

The trial is going to be in the US, isn't it? He is innocent until proved guilty, isn't he? Our system of justice assures and demands that he be treated fairly, doesn't it?

The important thing is to discern how the perpetrator arrived at such a point and if there are connections to others, not revenge.

 

[CaféAuLait]

The trial is going to be in the US, isn't it? He is innocent until proved guilty, isn't he? Our system of justice assures and demands that he be treated fairly, doesn't it?

The important thing is to discern how the perpetrator arrived at such a point and if there are connections to others, not revenge.

Of course he deserves all those things. The point is I usually do not hear a public defenders office proclaim they are going to petition a judge to be his attorney BEFORE it has even been deemed he is in need of one.. What if he has a family attorney? What if he has money to afford one? I just thought it strange that the public defenders office is trying to "advance" the appointment by petitioning the judge when they themselves state they have not even spoken to him. Another thing that seems to happen in these cases is some high profile attorney will offer services as well.

 

[TemplarKormac]

Stinking laws. He needs to exit this mortal plane as soon as humanly possible.

 

[TemplarKormac]

I always wonder how someone can expect to get a fair trial when their public defender is completely useless.

When they have you on tape setting bombs in front of innocent people, I'd wager the trial wouldn't be fair, I wouldn't even touch that case to be honest, the evidence is too overwhelming. It would be a waste of taxpayer money to defend someone who is clearly and evidently guilty of acting as an accomplice to murder.

 

[Noomi]

I always wonder how someone can expect to get a fair trial when their public defender is completely useless.

When they have you on tape setting bombs in front of innocent people, I'd wager the trial wouldn't be fair, I wouldn't even touch that case to be honest, the evidence is too overwhelming. It would be a waste of taxpayer money to defend someone who is clearly and evidently guilty of acting as an accomplice to murder.

It doesn't matter how much money it costs, he needs a lawyer and he needs to be represented, no matter how much evidence there is. Even if he confesses to the crime, he must still have a lawyer.