Just hours after jury selection began in the Boston Marathon bombing trial, CNN reported that lawyers for suspected bomber Dzokhar Tsarnaev have spent the last few months in talks with prosecutors about a possible plea bargain.
According to Justice Department officials close to the talks, Tsarnaev’s lawyers are trying to get Carmen Ortiz, the U. S. Attorney in Massachusetts, to agree to a deal in which Tsarnaev will plead guilty and accept a sentence of life in prison without parole for his role in the April 15, 2013 bombing. However, the talks have stalled because the Justice Department is unwilling to take the death penalty off the table. Attorney General Eric Holder will have to personally approve any decision to remove the death penalty as an option. Neither Ortiz nor Tsarnaev’s lawyer, Judy Clarke, have commented on these reports.
I was baffled at Holder’s decision to seek the death penalty for Tsarnaev, and I’m equally baffled that the Justice Department is unwilling to budge on it. Even if I supported the death penalty, I would have strongly advised against seeking it in this case. Tsarnaev’s head has been turned by radical Islamist talk, and he undoubtedly believes that if he dies while fighting a jihad, he’ll have an all-expenses-paid ticket to heaven. If he ends up in the gurney, Islamists everywhere will make him a martyr. Moreover, if prosecutors agree to a plea deal, it will spare the families and survivors of that bombing a lot of undue pain. To my mind, the fact Tsarnaev is seeking a plea bargain takes one of the justifications Holder used for seeking the death penalty off the table–that Tsarnaev showed no remorse.
Earlier this morning, retired federal judge Nancy Gertner told NPR’s “Morning Edition” that she was holding out hope for an 11th-hour plea bargain. Gertner said that it would not only bring closure to the victims and their families, but allow the sentencing phase to be focused more on the victims than Tsarnaev’s background and beliefs. To her mind, the evidence against Tsarnaev is so overwhelming that “the case is over.” If that’s the case, then it would be in everyone’s interest to accept a guilty plea, send him to prison for life, and be done with it.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC on Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
