NBC News is reporting that attorneys for accused Boston Marathon Bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are discussing a possible deal in which federal prosecutors might consider waiving the death penalty in exchange for a “full accounting” of the attack that left three people dead and 264 people injured.
Citing legal sources, correspondent Pete Williams reported on “NBC Nightly News” that prosecutors and lawyers for Tsarnaev “have begun very early discussions about a possible deal in which he could avoid the death penalty in return for a full accounting to the FBI of what happened and why as investigators continue working to find those answers for themselves.”
[…]
The suspect suffered multiple gunshot wounds before being taken into custody in a dramatic confrontation with police four days after he and his older brother, Tamerlan, reportedly detonated two bombs near the finish line of the famed race. The elder brother was subsequently killed in a shootout with police.
Meanwhile, Williams also reported that an FBI team conducted a search of the house where Tamerlan’s widow, Katherine Russell, has been living in Rhode Island since the attack.
While Russell has said she was shocked by the attack and had no idea her late husband was planning it, law enforcement officials took a sample of her DNA for comparison against a sample of female DNA found on a fragment of one of the pressure cooker bombs that exploded on April 15, according to Williams.
He cautioned, however, that the DNA may have come from employees at one of the stores where the parts for the bombs were purchased.
Attorney General Eric Holder on Saturday defended the decision to read the surviving suspect his Miranda rights, insisting that the decision was “totally consistent with the laws that we have.”
Early on April 22, U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler showed up at the hospital unannounced with a federal prosecutor and public defender while Tsarnaev was being questioned by the FBI.
“The decision to Mirandize was one that the magistrate made,” Holder told CNN as he arrived at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington over the weekend.
Tsarnaev was under interrogation for about 16 hours when Bowler read him his Miranda rights, according to news reports. The FBI thought it had 36 to 48 hours to question Tsarnaev under the pre-Miranda public-safety exemption.
Without getting too into the weeds here, let’s put this on the table right away: Holder is, to a certain extent, correct: Congress wrote the very laws self-serving posers like McCain and Graham are busy railing against, laws that had the specific effect of creating very narrow categories for those who can be treated as unlawful enemy combatants.
Still, where Holder shows his true colors (and reveals his honest contempt for defending this country) is in his rush to shorten the public safety exemption and have an injured Tsarnaev the younger brought counsel — hell, brought a frickin’ magistrate — directly to his bedside. So his suggestion that he’s doing everything in his power to help prevent further terror attacks is a falsehood: it was within his power to give the FBI an additional 12 hours to question Tsarnaev, and Holder made sure that they were denied that contingency.
Meanwhile, the patsy held on a parole violation who we were told by way of a YouTube trailer had started a massive protest that resulted in the Benghazi attacks and the death of an American ambassador and 2 SEALS — a story that turned out to be an intentional lie — is still in prison.
None of which should be surprising with an AG who spent the years before his ascension under Obama with a firm that specialized in defending Muslim terrorists.
As for Tsarnaev and his plea deal, I’m fine with prosecutors tabling the death penalty in exchange for information that would help us catch additional plotters, if indeed they exist (which they do) and Tsarnaev knows of them and can lead us to them (which I’m not certain he would).
My only stipulation? Is that he loses his legs.
It ain’t quite an eye for an eye, but it’s certainly a punishment a fundamentalist could understand.
My only stipulation? Is that he loses his legs.
I’d prefer Holder lose his [metaphorical color of authority] legs, but then, who’ld expect Holder to negotiate his own [official] demise?
Heaven forfend a jihadi should die on his watch. Just so long as the born-alive abortion products are properly disposed of.
I want to know who put the idea in Judge Bowler’s head to Mirandize Tsarnaev at the time she did, since the article is written in such a way as to suggest that Holder is defending the decision, but not the timing per se.
Frankly, I’m surprised they got to question the guy for 16 hours. That idiot fucking federal prosecutor, whatever her name is, should never have announced that they were going to invoke the public safety exception on National TV like that.
“The decision to Mirandize was one that the magistrate made,”
Smells suspiciously like “The decision to facilitate the transportation of firearms to the Mexican drug cartels was one that the men in the field below me made” to me.
She didn’t get there with a US Attorney in tow without a green light from Holder himself. He’s big on defending terrorists which apparently makes prosecuting them a bit tricky.
Considering the arrests of Richard Jewell and the odd Elvis impersonator on terrorism charges, I will steadfastly maintain that everyone deserves the right to counsel and a trial. Further, chopping off limbs sounds a little too sharia-ish to me and undoubtedly runs counter to the constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. We do not have to destroy the village to save it, nor do we have to join the likes of Deval Patrick or Michael Bloomberg to means regardless of ends.
Perhaps these things have been written in jest or they just peg the irony meter a little too low for my sensitivity settings, but it is getting more difficult to be sure.
If Gilligan were anything but a Muslim, I would entertain the idea of taking the death penalty off the table in exchange for useful intel.
However, Speedbump’s brother is a Mohammedin and, therefore, is likely educated in the ways of taqiyya, so he can never be trusted.
Miranda is only a factor if you are planning to use the perps statements in a trial.
Why didn’t we just say “we aren’t going to use any of this against you in trial, we have enough evidence to fry your scrawny ass a couple of times over, but if you have any info we can use we might possibly think about letting you spend the next 50 years thinking about what a worthless little prison bitch you are instead of killing you now.”
Then interrogating the fuck out of him for a couple weeks, then turning him over to the legal wonks.
Compare and contrast.
That’s a whole lot of coordinating going on there. Notice who is missing, FBI.
As in, “You decide: do what you’re told, or be fired with prejudice.”
One way to be sure is to subject him to a really enhanced interrogation.
You know, the sort that causes him to leave this world the same way he came into it: naked, covered in blood, and screaming.
Technically correct, but massively disingenuous. Holder, and Obama, forced the magistrate’s hand by their rush to file federal charges, long before they needed to.
McGehee,
Yeah, that too.
As long as he suffers and dies, eCurmudgeon, I don’t care how he gets there [I’m a great believer in putting Muslim heads on pikes at the city limits].
At least using your method has a chance of yielding some useful information.
This one isn’t worth keeping alive. He seems but a tagalong, a follower not leader; any info he has was given to him in morsels by his brother, who had only enough given to him by his contacts to keep him occupied.
I’d rather see him get a trial. Then an execution.
The McVey Ending seems appropriate enough.
Miranda is bullshit anyway. Your rights are your rights; you either bother to educate yourself what they are or you don’t.
Exactly. The Miranda warning is merely a reminder of the Fifth Amendment. Those rights apply whether they recite the warning or not.
Give him a semen collector and let him work for walrus breeders for the rest of his life. He should have a long career centered on Walrus dongs and making them squirt for science and nature preservation. And there should be a justin.tv real time stream of him working every day so jihadists can commune with their martyr.
Perhaps, but it would be better if we replaced lethal injection with the more traditional gallows.
It was good enough for the Nazis at Nuremberg. It was good enough for Saddam Hussein. It’s good enough to use in this case…
Holder et al are going to botch the investigation & prosecution. The only surprises will be in how they do it. This is the guy who tried hard to try KSM in NYC civilian court, the worst idea ever.
I was thinking more along the lines of enhanced medical techniques. Cleaning his bullet holes with a wire brush and turpentine.
Then letting Gosnell be his prison doctor.
Honestly, I think Dzhokhar should have been read his Miranda rights, just before he was waterboarded. “You have the right to remain silent [snicker]..”
WTF?
The Obama Administration’s incompetence is boundless, EBL.