The Boston Marathon bombing trial continues on Monday. On Thursday the court heard from a car-jacking victim, and WGBH Radio’s Phillip Martin says his and other testimony this week may have complicated the defense team’s effort to paint Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as a reluctant participant in actions planned by his older brother, Tamerlan.
On Thursday in court a former Northeastern University graduate student, Dun Meng, identified Dzhokhar Tsarnaev as one of the two men who carjacked him the evening of April 18, 2013. Over the course of nearly two harrowing hours, The Prosecutor asked Meng, “did you ever see Tamerlan yell at his brother?” Meng said “no”. This was an attempt to o undermine the defense argument about the undue influence of the older brother.
On Wednesday, prosecution witness, Nathan Harman, an MIT student, told jurors that he was bicycling across campus and came across Dzhokhar Tsarnaev leaning into the driver's side door of Officer Collier’s car.
Collier’s friend, Sgt. Clarence Henniger, also testified. He said he quickly arrived on the scene and found his fellow officer barely alive and gasping for breath. And in testimony on Monday a Boston cop said he found writing on the wall of the boat where the Chechen immigrant had been hiding in Watertown.
That blood streaked-penciled inscription read in part: "The US Government is killing our innocent civilians. I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished. We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all.” Tsarnaev also allegedly tweeted the day after the bombing: “I’m a stress free kind of guy.”
The prosecution is trying to convince the jury that this is not a picture of someone who’s under pressure from a domineering brother, as the defense is attempting to demonstrate.
The defense had hoped to prove this in part by pointing to the September 11, 2011, murders of three men in Waltham—associates and friends of Tamerlan Tsarnaev—Brendan Mess, Ralph Teken and Erik Weissman. Before the trial began, defense attorneys had asked Judge George O Toole to force prosecutors to turn over all relevant materials in this case, including an alleged confession by Ibragim Todashev, a friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Todashev was shot and killed by an FBI agent in May 2013 in Orlando, Florida, under circumstances still be questioned by the ACLU and other parties.
Just before his death—according to the agent who shot him—Todashev allegedly implicated Tamerlan Tsarnaev in the Waltham triple-homicide. The defense wanted to show that Tamerlan’s alleged involvement demonstrated that he was dangerous and had a major coercive influence over his younger brother.
But Judge O’Toole in November rejected the defense motion, which would have included ordering prosecutors to turn over evidence resulting from the FBI and State Police interrogation of Todashev in Orlando . Prosecutors said they had no such evidence.
“Sooner than later there will be a criminal investigation of these, of this cover-up. And the truth will come out.”
Barry Cohen is a Florida-based attorney for the family of Todashev, who, like the Tsarnaevs, also hailed originally from Chechnya.
“Well the most important thing about this case is that it’s really irrelevant to our case in Orlando, other than the authorities are using it to conceal the investigation from us by claiming that there is an ongoing investigation in the murder of these three people here in Boston. So they’re using that as a way to conceal the investigations from us; both the Department of Justice and the Orlando investigation. So we’ll have to pursue this in the court”.
With the Tsarnaev defense barred from referencing the Waltham triple homicide –an alleged connection to the Tsarnaevs that has not been proven definitively—attorney Miriam Conrad this week attempted to show that the picture of Tsarnaev as a jihadist, painted by an FBI agent, Steven Kimball, was wrong.
Conrad, pointing to Tsarnaev’s other tweets, and said they were about "girls, cars, food, sleep, and homework." The strategy is to try to humanize the defendant and to present him at the age he was then, a 19 year old, easily led by a dangerous and domineering brother. The defense is hoping that this strategy during the sentencing phase of this trial will save the life of Tsarnaev.
