Should we try Tsarnaev in the USA?

Nogbad said:
I think it would be unwise to jettison the concept of innocent until proved guilty unless you quite like the idea of Judge Dredd stomping around the streets. One may forfeit rights on conviction in court but up until that point the principle of innocent until proved guilty should remain. The alternative makes it far too easy for those of ill will to start dropping all sorts of things between the "Once" and the "you forfeit all rights"
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I agree. This is exactly the kind if case -- public sentiment is high, little if any sympathy for the accused -- where a very bad legal precedent could be set. Which could then be used in the future in a case where public sentiment is not especially high, and there is a lot of sympathy towards the defendant.

I'm pretty confident that it won't be what happens here. No matter how much people despise Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his brother, I think enough officials understand the "slippery slope" concept to avoid it.

I hope so!
 
newyorkguy said:
CNN is reporting it's likely Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will face federal charges. Link

In other words, instead of being tried on several counts of murder (the state charge), he will be tried for an act of terrorism (the federal charge). The penalty for the latter includes the death penalty.
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I think the death penalty is a bad idea. He deserves it... but he also surrendered... at some point you might need other like him to surrender...
 
ravdin said:
Here's further information about Miranda:

http://www.volokh.com/2013/04/20/tsarnaev-and-miranda-rights/

To sum up:

1. It's lawful for the government to intentionally violate Miranda as long as they don't attempt to submit the suspect's statements in court.

2. Agents are free to question Tsarnaev outside of Miranda for intelligence gathering purposes if they don't cross the line of coercing statements from him.

3. Even if Tsarnaev is questioned outside of Miranda, and the information gathered from him doesn't fit the "public safety" exception, he can still be asked to repeat his incriminating statements after he has been read his rights. If he were to agree to this, it's very likely a court would allow his statements to be submitted as evidence.

By the way, IANAL so apologies in advance if I didn't get all of this quite right.
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Yes. The govt. can question people till the cows come home.

But no one ever has to answer those questions. Never. Not until the 5th Amendment is repealed.

The only difference is that once the Miranda Warnings are read, anything you say can be used against you in court as evidence of a crime. Without the warnings being read, NOTHING you say can be used against you as evidence of a crime.

That's why its best to spill your guts before the cops have a chance to read you your rights. :)
 
Caper said:
I think the death penalty is a bad idea. He deserves it... but he also surrendered... at some point you might need other like him to surrender...
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He's looking at at least five or six decades in solitary confinement at Supermax. If it were me I'd rather be executed. That's one of the many reasons I'm opposed to capital punishment for Tsarnaev or anyone else for that matter.
 
newyorkguy said:
The AG probably said if Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was so classified he would be turned over to military officials. I believe that is a key difference. As an enemy combatant he would be in the military system not civil.
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Being a former AG does not neccessarily mean that he has a bleeding clue about anything, especially if we are talking about the clown that Bush the lesser appointed to that post to thank him for fixing his DUIs.

The only people I want to see sent to Gitmo are Gonzo and Yoo.
 
ravdin said:
He's looking at at least five or six decades in solitary confinement at Supermax. If it were me I'd rather be executed. That's one of the many reasons I'm opposed to capital punishment for Tsarnaev or anyone else for that matter.
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The fine line of cost verses revenge/punishment. Although I agree with the sentiment, I don't think it's worth the tab.
 
Caper said:
I think the death penalty is a bad idea. He deserves it... but he also surrendered... at some point you might need other like him to surrender...
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I'm not sure he necessarily surrendered. He may have simply lost so much blood that he passed out or was too weak to resist arrest.
 
zeggman said:
I'm not sure he necessarily surrendered. He may have simply lost so much blood that he passed out or was too weak to resist arrest.
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This is most-likely true. He was bleeding when he got in the boat. He engaged the police after he was discovered. He did not surrender, the police said they were going to wait him out.
 
brodski said:
I find it ironic that you express your shock as a UK citizen. As a UK citizen I I remember that my government interred hundreds of other UK citizens for years without trial, and I know how popular it was. It was very wrong, but I can understand where the sentiment comes from.
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Not only that: the most publicised trials of alleged Irish terrorists were to a remarkable extent gross miscarriages of justice. But in any case resembling the current Boston outrage the question of subverting or avoiding due process of law would surely not have arisen, albeit that a politically-motivated abuse of the justice system might have been perpetrated.
 
Just for the record, I'm pretty sure that the UK has not interred anyone without trial, at least within the last hundred years.
 
Rat said:
Just for the record, I'm pretty sure that the UK has not interred anyone without trial, at least within the last hundred years.
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Oh yes, the United Kingdom has indeed used Emergency Powers to detain IRA and other terrorism suspects without charge or trial for some time.
 
ravdin said:
He's looking at at least five or six decades in solitary confinement at Supermax. If it were me I'd rather be executed. That's one of the many reasons I'm opposed to capital punishment for Tsarnaev or anyone else for that matter.
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I don't know if that is a good Idea... I don't mind the supermax idea... but I would try and give him some kind of life... tv maybe video games... anything else his family wants to pay for.
 
Caper said:
I think the death penalty is a bad idea. He deserves it... but he also surrendered... at some point you might need other like him to surrender...
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He didn't surrender as far as I am aware. Do you have some evidence of this?
 
Travis said:
MSNBC is reporting that Senator Lindsay Graham is saying we shouldn't put the surviving Boston Marathon bomber on trial and should instead ship him off to Gitmo for interrogation and indefinite detention without a trial or access to lawyers.

What are your thoughts on this?

Personally I'm against it. I think we tread a dangerous path when we start declaring some crimes to be above the normal legal procedures.
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I'm against it for a couple of reasons. One is that I'm against the whole concept of Gitmo in and of itself. It is a dangerous path that we've already started down by declaring "terrorists" to be in a criminal class that is outside of any normal legal procedures.

The second is whether or not these brothers are even "terrorists." I haven't turned on the news for a couple of hours so maybe there have been some new developments but the most damning information I've heard is that one of the brothers said that he didn't have any American friends and that maybe Russia asked the American government to look into the older brother. But has anybody established a political or some other such motivation for what the brothers did? Have they been definitively linked to any Chechen separatist or anti-American or pro-Islamic movements of any sort?

They weren't born in America. They have funny sounding names that lack the English language pattern of vowel placement. Their family members have heavy accents. They used a crude explosive device to kill people at random. But whether or not they are "terrorists" depends upon their motivation. Right now the only difference between the two brothers and somebody like Adam Lanza or James Holmes is the choice of weapon.

To say that the brothers are "terrorists" because they used an IED instead of a gun to kill innocent strangers at random and because of that we should ship the one brother off to Cuba where our judicial system can mete out punishment without being inconvenienced by that annoying Constitution we have here on the mainland doesn't make sense to me.

The brothers are murderers first and foremost. Boston courts can handle murder suspects.

So, as usual, I disagree with Lindsay Graham.
 
Rat said:
And didn't inter them. Well, I suppose they interred Bobby Sands without trial.


Thanks. I can sleep again now.
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Took them a while to get your play on words. But I think it only too probable that persons were indeed "interred without trial" by being assassinated by the government either directly or in collusion with loyalist elements during the Irish troubles. That large numbers of people were internedis no secret. That foolish policy was a failure.
 
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