Judge George A O’Toole
By Cheryl Dean
January 15, 2016
Judge O’Toole,
You must have been in fine form today as your decisions in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were released. I’m speaking of your rulings in documents 1618, 1619, and 1620. These were in response to motions that had been filed by the defense, requesting a new trial, for some charges to be dropped, a change of venue, restitution, and to protect the privacy of their work product information.
I really thought it would take you much longer, as it has in the past with other request motions. You must feel good knowing that with only the stroke of a pen, you have the power to control and devastate so many people’s lives.
It’s good that you agreed not to allow the attorney/client work product information to be handed over to the prosecution, although I don’t know how you could have done anything else. If the defense was made to hand over that privileged information to the prosecution, the defense could have been disbarred.
You could have saved a lot of time and words by just reminding the prosecution of this when they insisted on having that information.
People noticed throughout this case that you acted a lot like another member of the prosecution yourself, allowing 95% of whatever they wanted or asked for or said. It was all extremely unfair regardless of what you say. Your words are hollow and meaningless.
However, you denied the defense any more protected work product in the future which will include social/legal visits with Dzhokhar’s sisters.
This will have devastating consequences for the sisters. They will now be extremely vulnerable to the corrupt power of whatever FBI agent is present with them when they visit their brother.
The FBI agent can now say anything at all that he wants to say about the sisters. The agent can say that somehow they have violated the SAM’s, and bar them from ever visiting their brother again, the only two people in the entire world who are allowed and able to visit him occasionally.
They will have no way to defend themselves. I’m sure you could care less about this since you admire and believe all that the FBI says, but when this happens, just know that you will be directly responsible for it.
(Maybe you can recall the “red herring” incident that already happened. Luckily a defense lawyer was present and dispelled that nonsense which was drummed up and leaked by the FBI and the prosecution)
You have made a decision on the question of how much restitution Dzhokhar will have to pay. A sum of $101,124,027.00 was levied. It’s too bad Dzhokhar couldn’t have bought a ticket and won the power ball lottery last week, since that’s the only way he could ever pay such a ridiculous amount, or any amount at all for that matter.
Paying with his own life just isn’t good enough, is it? The depth of the punishment never ends and never satisfies you. What next, no pillow or mattress or blanket allowed in his cement cell?
Why not just take away his food and he could slowly starve to death. The US government including the Department of “justice”, and the proudly patriotic brainwashed people of Boston would feel a lot of satisfaction in that.
You all want to see prisoners suffer in dark, painful and traumatic ways. That says a lot about who you are as a nation.
You never stated in your document how much would be deducted from Dzhokhar’s commissary account. Will it be monthly, yearly, what? Will he be left with enough money to still pay for calls to his parents, or is that too much of a luxury for this prisoner?
Calling a foreign country is extremely expensive due to the fact that prison contracts with phone companies, allow the phone company to take advantage of prisoners and charge exorbitant rates for overseas calls.
Prisoners also must pay for stamps, toiletries, aspirins, and extra food etc. Prisons buy very little for those under their care.
Dzhokhar’s family is not wealthy and they no doubt struggle to make sure he has enough funds in his account for his needs. Compassionate supporters have also contributed to Dzhokhar’s account. Do you really think it is fair to take supporters’ contributions and the family’s funds to give to someone else. Why should family and supporters pay this?
Are you and the prosecution afraid that the supporters might not continue to give, knowing that their money will be taken by the government? Is this why you did not say how much on a monthly basis will be taken?
If they do stop giving, I wouldn’t blame them at all. Personally I hope the government never collects a single penny from Dzhokhar. He has already suffered immensely and paid dearly for something that many don’t believe he did, including myself.
You denied the defense motion for a new trial or a new sentencing hearing or a change of venue. You believe he had a perfectly fair trial, in a perfectly fair place, and the appropriate sentence, and since his own lawyer Judy Clarke said “it was him” well that’s good enough for you, so there is no need for a new trial.
This is what you had to say on the venue issue:
I also disagree with the defendant’s implicit assertion that the local coverage of the trial was prejudicial to him simply because there was coverage. Not only was the coverage generally factual in nature, rather than inflammatory, but with regard to the appropriate punishment for his crimes much of it skewed in the defendant’s favor. For example, as trial proceeded, media coverage regarding the appropriate punishment suggested a growing disapproval of the imposition of the death penalty by residents in the Boston area.
JudgeO’Toole, this is really a pathetic excuse since a “death qualified” jury was chosen. That most people in the state are against the death penalty had no bearing on this case at all. As for the factual and non inflammatory media coverage, does that include the constant media “leaks” by law enforcement officials?
For example, it was leaked that Tamerlan Tsarnaev and possibly Dzhokhar were involved in the Waltham murders, and the defense wanted information on that from the prosecution. You even said you would review that information in camera, and then you denied any of that information to the defense!
In the end the prosecution had to admit there was absolutely nothing connecting either Tsarnaev to those Waltham murders. YOU were complicit in that deception! I think that was very inflammatory and prejudicial, not to mention a very dirty tactic by you and the prosecution, and this is only one example.
I further quote your January 15, 2016 statement:
The point to be made is that, even if the trial jurors saw and absorbed the extensive media coverage during the penalty phase, and I have no evidence whatsoever to believe that they did (and do have their repeated assurances to me that they did not), the coverage was not of a nature that would support a conclusion — or even a justifiable presumption — that the defendant was unfairly prejudiced by such exposure.
You are wrong about this. Juror 83 went public and in the press release for his book it says: “FROM THE MOMENT HE SETS FOOT INTO THE COURT ROOM, Juror 83 is burdened by the knowledge that on the last day of deliberations he will have to decide whether or not another human being dies, and that he will have to live with that decision for the rest of his life.”
This says it all! From the moment he sets foot in the courtroom!! There is not a mention about having to listen to the evidence and decide if Dzhokhar was innocent or guilty, not a word about a possible acquittal!
That juror believed he KNEW the defendant was guilty, it was just a matter of life without parole or the death penalty! Nothing else.
He also said that he would have changed his vote for life, IF he had known that the Richards family didn’t want the death penalty. Just like that he would have changed his vote, not due to anything he heard or saw in court, but just to please the Richards family.
Judge O’Toole, that doesn’t sound like someone who carefully examined the evidence and made his decision based on that. I think this person lacks integrity.
I am amazed to read your further remark on this:
It is now possible to evaluate the jury’s verdicts in this case in hindsight for possible signs of improper prejudice, on the one hand, or expected impartiality, on the other.
In the guilt phase of the trial, the jury found the defendant guilty on all counts in the indictment. In some cases, such an outcome might possibly be a sign of abdication of duty and simple submission to the government’s theory and authority.
This is exactly what happened!
You say:
That concern is absent in this case. Here, the guilty findings were hardly surprising in light of the defendant’s strategy and the overwhelming evidence against him. After all, in her opening remarks, defense counsel essentially conceded that the defendant was guilty of the crimes with which he was charged.
The fact that Judy Clarke said what she did, is very unfortunate, and a sign of incompetence and failure to defend her client. However, her statements made in opening and closing statements were not to have any bearing on the “evidence” or decisions in this case — you said so yourself.
But now even you bring this up as a reason for the jurors to come to the conclusions that they did. Even you, were prejudiced by Judy Clarke’s words, and you have now proven that.
I’m not shocked by this, and actually you have done Dzhokhar Tsarnaev a favor. He will never have to hear you or look at your cold eyes ever again.
His defense, or hopefully a new non government defense, will be able to move forward now and deal with different judges, real judges who may have some integrity, and decency. Someone who isn’t in cahoots with the prosecution. Judges who maybe will follow the law and who won’t stack the deck so high in the prosecution’s favor.
There might even be some judges with compassion, some mercy for the life of a 22-year-old. So thank you for that decision. You are free now, Judge O’Toole. Why don’t you retire and make the world a better place by doing so.
One of Jahar’ friends, Robel Philppos, got sentenced to 3 years and $25,000 fine because he “lied to the FBI.” At Robel’s trial, former Masaachusetts governor Dukakis testified that General Petaeus lied to the FBI, and didn’t get punished, so why punish Robel? His sin was saying that he didn’t recall going to Jahar’s dorm room on April 18th, 2013.
If the judicial system decides to hit with a $25k fine every person who lied about the Marathon this is going to swell the state’s coffers bigtime.
I’m all for it!
Something about liars. You can always just tell.
Cheryl, the judge says there was “overwhelming evidence” to convict Jahar. You have already trashed that statement in your several articles at Gumshoe (including “Chidings of Great Joy”).
Would you kindly do us a favor, and put aside any prejudices you may have, and lay out such items that appeared during the Tsarnaev federal trial of 2015 that could reasonably be said to amount to evidence of his guilt.
Please, I am NOT asking you to once again list all that goes in the other direction. And I am not asking Mary Maxwell (as it were) to hold forth about the Court’s secretly working for World Government, as is her wont.
I just would like to see a few bald pieces of evidence. Ones that a sincere juror would have struggled with.
Some will say that Dee McLachlan has brought the case to a crashing halt with her discovery of the square cropped photo. But forgetting that for now, what did the Prosecution have that’s actually valid (or looks like being valid but would need more attacking by the defense). (Pretend for this exercise that a defense actually exists.)
Thank you.
Signed, Alexander Haig for the Day
I think that the evidence that has been discussed on Gumshoe is the evidence that the jurors never questioned, they believed Dun Meng’s unbelievable story, they looked at the grainy distant MIT video, and they believed those two tiny figures were the Tsarnaev brothers.The jurors believed that Dzhokhar dropped a bag near the Forum restaurant that had a bomb in it.
There were two, brand new different brands of white golf gloves on the floor of Dzhokhar’s car that had some blood on them said to be officer Collier’s. Jurors believed this, even though the brothers did not golf, and it was not said that anyone elses DNA was on the gloves. If this evidence was true why wasn’t there any blood of Collier’s on either brother. How did they get the bloody gloves off without getting blood on themselves, and seriously who drives around with bloody gloves in their car after just using those gloves to kill someone. I have yet to hear or see any evidence that is indisputable. Ok, they showed a small pipe bomb that was not detonated sitting on the pavement, and other things like that, but what does that prove, nothing.The only facts so far are that Tamerlan is dead and Dzhokhar was horribly wounded and is now sentenced to death.
I asked a question. I got an answer. Thank you, Ms Dean.
I’m guessing no one knows better than “Judge” O’Toole how wrong and unfair the entire prosecution was. He knows that what they accused Dzhokhar of never actually happened, that the entire event was phony, a drama played out in public and in secret at the same time. But he was just one cog in a very large wheel. All the players were in on this one — police, mayors, governors, senators, FBI/CIA/Homeland Security, both heads of the U.S. “Justice” Dept., and even the president seemed to participate in the project. In other words, from the local level all the way up to the president, they all put their faces on the record in this case in support of an official narrative — and amazingly not one of them was even the slightest bit credible and apparently even that was too slick for most of the American public. Very few people seem to have put their thinking caps on from the time the event happened until now.
It appears that many of these players have sold their souls to the devil, so to speak. We have no way of knowing how many of these individuals signed on to this fraud willingly, but I’m sure there will come a time when each and every one of the participants will be forced to face the consequences of their actions. For O’Toole and the rest of the court jesters, there will probably be a mass disbarment, a confiscation of personal assets, and a cessation of any retirement or other benefits at minimum — if fairness is to take its proper place in the world again.
The bigger picture concerns me very much, but I also have tremendous concern for Dzhokhar and his family, as well as the families of all of the other innocent “kids” who were falsely prosecuted and/or murdered and/or deported for all sorts of other actions that never occurred. I’m concerned that they’ve locked up Dzhokhar and thrown away the key, since no one is even allowed to see him and to know whether he’s alive or not or how he’s being treated. In fact, I’m concerned about every individual who’s been sentenced under terrorism laws and been locked up in this particular prison. What they’ve done with these people is cruel and unusual punishment and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that they’re all innocent of the charges against them.
Regarding the Waltham murders, it seems blatantly obvious that this was a contract “hit” and it appears that “authorities” desperately wanted to pin it on Tamerlan and maybe Dzhokhar and perhaps Ibragim Todashev. It seems crystal clear to me that none of them would have had anything to do with something like that. But that wouldn’t have stopped “authorities” from trying to pin it on them anyway.
What I want to know is, who are the people who claim to be victims of this fraud. Are they all CIA assets or what? Actors? Is/was there actually an Officer Sean Collier? What happened to him? Was he sacrificed for the sake of the prosecution (similarly to Officer Tippit in Dallas) or was there something more going on?
These are the things that keep ordinary people from being able to believe that a government would perpetrate such horrendous frauds on its citizens and others. They’re so outrageous that they seem unbelievable.
Dear Speculator247, Thanks very much for sticking up for the truth, and for caring about those “kids.”
If I may comment in reverse order, first about the “Did Collier ever really exist?” I have been urging Dee to let this website, Gumshoe, steer clear of all talk about “Nothing happened; no one died” etc.
None of us has a way of seeing whether the facts are true. My reason for wanting to develop only the court-related (or, in Dee’s case, photograph-related) stuff is just a policy move so that Gumshoe will be known for handling stuff that we can really sink our hands into, and not invite the criticism that “Gumshoe deals in Tarot-card reading.”
That said, I suspect the Waltham murders did not happen, just as I suspect that the Sydney siege guy, Man Haron Monis, did not “help to set his ex-wife on fire in a stairwell.” But also we at Gumshoe can’t delve into research for such things. And why should we? The ones who first mouth such facts need to provide the evidence.
I have noticed that when they pick a patsy they load him up with crimes committed BEFORE the main event. Adam Lanza first stopped off to shoot his Mom; Martin Bryant in OZ in 1996 stopped off to kill an elderly couple “before lunch” as it were, and as you say there was Officer Tippett’s death so Oswald could be blamed for it.
I note that in Cheryl Dean’s letter to O’Toole, she accuses him of floating the Waltham idea and then refusing to be pinned down on it. I’d like to give this behavior a name. Perhaps “to Walthamize?” or “to stairwellize”?
Our fave “non-event” at Gumshoe is the Bella Vista incident. Dee actually got the NSW media liaison man to admit the event never happened. This means the person who lied committed a crime. Not that lying itself is a crime, but in many settings it is.
Yes, Speculator, it is amazing what you say as to ALL the officials putting their face to it. Have they no shame? I would like to know what they were threatened with. By the way, I don’t yet know what they might still threaten me with, and whether I would bow to their demand to shut up. If you see me shut up soon, please assume it was not because I had a change of heart….
They are currently threatening Cherri Bonney – which really does show they lack common sense, as she is the last one they are going to be able to “turn.” (Remember “Saving Private Ryan”? They should make a movie “Turning Cherri Bonney.” A scream.)
I now reply to your dream list: “For O’Toole and the rest of the court jesters, there will probably be a mass disbarment, a confiscation of personal assets, and a cessation of any retirement or other benefits.”
Um. Nope, not exactly. There cannot be a mass disbarment as the rules of disbarment – and thank God there are such rules – show how to deal case-by case.
As for confiscation of assets, most states do have terrible asset forfeiture laws related to drugs and money laundering but not (that I know of) for obstruction of justice. The punishment for that is 10 years in prison. (With discretionary SAMs…)
As for cutting off their benefits, there would have to be advance provision for this. I was surprised to find, re Victorian police, that a resignation ends the pension rights. See Denis Ryan’s “Unholy Trinity.” He tried to report child sexual abuse by the Church and ended up pensionless – but at the Royal Commission someone has asked that he now be compensated. Yay!
The fact is that in America the Constitution says that Congress may establish the punishment for treason and Congress did do so. It’s encoded at 18 USC 2381. “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them [such as by planting bombs at the finish line] is guilty of treason and shall suffer death….”
So Jahar is not the only person facing a lethal injection. But note that the officials you named can still plead diminished responsibility if they were coerced or mind-controlled. Surely Obama is mind-controlled. He had a whacko youth.
From the Department of Let’s Try Not To Be Embarrassed comes this message:
My publisher in Oregon says he can no longer warehouse my 2011 book, Prosecution for Treason, and will give five cartons of 32 books each, to any good home. Gratis, US only.
After you own them you can sell them on Amazon as used.
Pls email me mary.maxwell@alumni.adelaide.edu.au if you want a carton.
Otherwise it’s firewood city.
With major apologies for my inability to upload today’s article.
But at least I can access this Comments section, so here I offer an item that Cherri referred me to, which is perhaps part of the buildup to the 20th anniversay of official lies about Port Arthur
(I don’t mean this vid is protesting the lies. It is sinking them in ever deeper with a reenactment of “Bryant.”)