It’s all about the surveillance, stupid. And, oh, man does the prosecution have it.
This week jurors saw a seven minute video combining dozens of Boylston Street stores, restaurants - even shorts clips of video and stills from people’s personal devices. The stitched together clip show the Tsarnaev brothers, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar entering Boylston Street at Gloucester, it shows them casually strolling down the street, then dropping their back backs and moving away. Other dramatic surveillance video this week included the presence of two shadowy figures approaching the car of MIT police officer Sean Collier who was shot dead moments later.
And then, most dramatic of all, the 9-1-1 call and frantic appearance of carjack victim Dun Meng at a convenience store after he had made a daring escape from his own car while being held at gunpoint. Meanwhile, anyone interested in seeing the daily drop of exhibits can find them at the government website.
Certain exhibits are off limits - like images of people on fire or the lifeless body of Richard Martin and his sister Jane on the street with her leg nearby.
Testimony has been riveting as well - for one thing, witnesses have come and gone at a pace much quicker than anyone anticipated. The defense declined to cross-examine any of the bombing victims and only got into the act when the FBI appeared. In fact defense attorney Miriam Conrad made one agent look rather foolish when she skewered him over the origin of many of Tsarnaev’s tweets. The government had made many of the tweets look sinister and threatening while she pointed out most were quotes from rap songs or links to a comedy central sketch.
This week will bring testimony about that epic shootout in Watertown on April 19th - four days after the bombing. The defense has already established Dzhokhar was unarmed yet hundreds of rounds of bullets went off that night. Expect to see more surveillance video, which could be unflattering to the dozens of police officers on the scene.
