Home Boston Open Letter to the Jurors in the Marathon Bombing Trial

Open Letter to the Jurors in the Marathon Bombing Trial

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tsarnaev-pre-trial-court

By Cheryl Dean

Dear Twelve,

I believe you were used by the court system to achieve the result they wanted in the trial of Dzhokhar (“Jahar”) Tsarnaev.

And you fell in with their plan beautifully.

Following almost a month of “jury selection” drama (well, media drama anyway), you had to sit in the jury box for the 34-day trial. You must have found much of it boring, especially all the technical details given by so-called experts.

Those well-paid persons managed to fill hundreds of pages of text in the individual court trial transcripts — without proving a single thing about who was responsible for the events.

I believe much of the testimony was meant to traumatize you jurors, for example the graphic naked autopsy photos of the deceased. You probably had never seen anything like that before.

And why was so much time devoted to the stories of the injured, and family members, and all the pain they had suffered? Was it sufficient for you to make your decision to convict Dzhokhar?

However ‘strong’ the array of victim testimony and graphic photos, going on for days and days, it did nothing to prove anything about who caused all that.  Did that confuse you?

I believe you let your pre-trial biases take over the rational “impartial” thinking part of your mind. Each of you had said you could be impartial and set aside any preconceived bias about the defendant and what you had been bombarded with from the media and #bostonstrong for two whole years, but that wasn’t possible.

You were being conditioned for your role as jurors. Yes, it was all part of the plan. The continual leaks from official sources (which now we know were lies) helped the prosecution a lot, and Judge O’Toole had no problem with it.

Twenty Five Questions

Still, even considering all the above factors, there are a few questions I wish could be answered. For example:

  1. Did you honestly think those two little ants on the ground at MIT in the grainy farthest away video possible, were really the Tsarnaev brothers, and if so, why?
  2. Did you wonder at all why this video that identified no one was so far away when the campus had many, many surveillance cameras?
  3. Did you really think the video of a car coming into MIT and a reenactment of a car coming out of MIT, was the Tsarnaev’s car? Did you see their license plate number? Did you see what color the car was?
  4. Did you see who was driving? Were you positive it was a Honda Civic? Was the back window still shot out? Did you know there are millions of Honda Civic cars in the US?
  5. Did you know that MIT was crawling with FBI agents on April 18thbefore Officer Collier was shot? It was all over the media. Didn’t you wonder why?
  6. Did you wonder why separate close video of Nathan Harman, the bicycle witness, was available, but no close up video of the murder of Officer Collier?
  7. Did you wonder why there was no blood or gun residue on Dzhokhar or his clothes, considering Collier was shot at close range?
  8. Did you wonder why there was no evidence presented of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body or clothes and possible blood or gun residue on him? After all, the trial was to find out who committed these crimes. Or was it?
  9. Did you wonder why Dun Meng who testified he was very tired, and decided to go for a drive to relax? Does that make any sense?
  10. Did you wonder why there were 16 surveillance cameras at the gas station where he escaped, yet only one video that was not date or time stamped was shown?
  11. Did you wonder why there was no video shown of the front of the SUV showing who was actually in that car?
  12. Did you wonder why his license plate was not shown?
  13. Did you wonder why Dzhokhar was leisurely shopping for snacks while 9,000 cops were looking for him?
  14. Did you wonder why no one is shown pumping gas, and no one is shown paying for that gas and no receipt for gas was shown? Dun Meng testified that gas was put in his car.
  15. Did you wonder why Professor James Fox had to accompany Dun Meng every time he spoke including at the trial?
  16. Did you wonder why James Fox was at the gas station, where Dun Meng escaped to, without Dun Meng, when the owner was being interviewed? Why was he there?
  17. Did you wonder why the only grainy video of Laurel Street was from a resident who was recording on his cell phone from a third story window through a screen?
  18. Did you wonder why not a single cop or FBI agent had any dash cam video or any video of the Watertown shootout? There were 2,400 cops there, most doing nothing.
  19. Did you wonder why it was said over and over by law enforcement that Dzhokhar killed his brother by running over him, yet testimony says Tamerlan was still fighting with police after that?
  20. What did you think when you heard that a run-over man was still combatant even in the ambulance, and that the bullet holes in him were “too numerous to count”?
  21. Did you ever think that police might lie, especially after the medical examiner stated that there was no evidence that Tamerlan was run over by a vehicle?
  22. Did you wonder why unarmed Dzhokhar was shot at from every side of the boat, 228 bullets to be exact, when he had been laying motionless for hours?
  23. Did it ever occur to any of you that the FBI was trying to murder Dzhokhar for some reason? Do you ever wonder how his throat got slit?
  24. -Did you ever wonder why the Guantanamo torture team was sent to Dzhokhar’s hospital bed while he was in critical condition and “interrogated” him for 2 days?
  25. Did you ever wonder why Dzhokhar cried for 2 days after waking up in the hospital? Could it be that he was being tortured by the gitmo team for those 2 days, along with his severe and traumatic injuries?

And That’s Not All!

OK, that was a lot of questions, but still just a drop in the bucket compared to how many more questions there are.

I don’t know how you could calmly in 14 hours sentence someone who was only a teenager at the time, to death, with such flimsy and dubious “evidence” to say the very least.

There was a whole lot more than just reasonable doubt, and really, shouldn’t there be no doubt before you agree to kill someone!

That really makes you no better than any murderer. Maybe even worse because you had months to find out what really happened and to decide for yourselves if the evidence proved that Dzhokhar was guilty.

“The prosecution actually had no ‘case,’ just a bunch of gory, emotionally wrenching stories from victims who neither saw nor heard Dzhokhar Tsarnaev do anything to cause that pain and suffering. If they had had a case, they would have presented actual witnesses, not victims.” [from Lynn at “Writing the Wrong for Jahar” an excellent website]

Juror 83 and the rest of the jurors said they feared for their safety. Withholding the names of jurors is only done in rare cases; it began as a preventative measure against witness tampering in mafia trials in the 1970s. But former federal judge and Harvard Law School professor Nancy Gertner says O’Toole’s move to keep the documents sealed is unprecedented.

“The judge has to make findings in advance that there are threats.” So far O’Toole has made no such finding. “I don’t see any justification on the records,” said Gertner.

Judge George O’Toole has now declined multiple motions filed jointly by the Boston Globe and WBUR requesting that the jurors’ names be released. So far, the jury list has already been withheld for over 8 months. Why??

As jurors go, you are a pretty pathetic lot. What were you doing during the 14 hours of deliberations? You certainly weren’t looking at the evidence, which was your job, and which you failed miserably at.

Shame on all of you.

— Cheryl Dean is inspecting every bit of the case that resulted in the conviction of Dzhokhar (“Jahar”) Tsarnaev. Gumshoe has already published Cheryl’s open letters to the Prosecutor, the US Attorney General and “Chidings of Great Joy“. Stay tuned for more. Cheryl is not going away.

16 COMMENTS

  1. “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” — Thomas Jefferson.

    I guess Tom didn’t have a mind for mafias.

  2. Trial by jury is the ONLY way to go. I don’t trust judges farther than I can throw them.

    Having said that, you have to remember that juries are drawn from the moronosphere. They are the same people that will laugh at you when you tell them 9-11 was a psy-op. Hell, just take a few examples from your own family and imagine them on a jury.

    However, there are 12 of them. Hopefully, at least one has a clue. There is something else, at any moment you can look at a jury and see that only a few are paying attention. The rest are off thinking about what they are going to do that evening or having a sexual fantasy or writing their shopping list for tomorrow. However, when they get in the jury room, they all add their thoughts and observations and much of the trial gets filled in by those who were awake at any particular time.

    Preparing your case for final submissions by cross-examination and evidence is important. Then when it comes time for final submissions, you have to be able to communicate the concepts to the jury in simple, understandable language that they understand. Analogies, metaphors – anything you can use to communicate concepts to the jury.

    It isn’t a great system, but it can, sometimes, maybe work.

    If your defence team is working for the prosecution – you’re stuffed.

    • Probably it is common for the defense team in US to work for the wrong side, as their bread and butter depends on it if they are “public defenders.” (Or ‘pubic’ defenders if you misspell it.)

      I said in my article about the current Royal Commission that it was so impressive to watch a non-adversarial courtroom. In Europe most countries have judges who are Inquisitorial — they seek the answers to the case. Same with our RC.

      Call me disloyal but I think it may be time to scrap the nonsense of the fighting between the two sides’ lawyers and all the angst it causes thie clients. Whaddaya say, Terry?

  4. I would have expected to see a defense attorney for Tsarnaev asking many of the questions you list here – asking them of whatever prosecution witness had taken the stand saying this video proves the government’s claims about the Tsarnaevs.

    However, like the disclaimer “no animals were harmed in the making of this film” it can be said of this trial “no cans of worms were opened in this mock-pursuit of justice for the Boston Marathon bombing.”

    I especially loved the question regarding the fact that close up video of the biker riding by was available but none presented showing the actual murder. That portion of video was obviously supposed to prove the biker saw who and what he claimed he saw as he whizzed by in the night…

    Or-

    Was no video of the actual murder of Collier offered because he was shot elsewhere and his body placed in his cruiser then car positioned between those two buildings?

    Was that what all the FBI activity on the MIT campus was prior to the discovery of Collier’s body in his cruiser? Were they there as a diversion for anyone on campus so Collier’s body & cruiser could be left without being observed until the FBI were ready for it to be observed?

    And does this possibility finally explain why the cruiser was destroyed? Was it because more careful examination would have revealed Collier was killed elsewhere then placed for discovery in his cruiser?

    Honestly, the whole series of events and the continuing attempts to cover up seem taken straight out of a recent episode of “The Blacklist.”

    Where’s Reddington when you need him…

    Great job on this one Cheryl!

    • Dear Cheryl, maybe you should ask Dee to put numbers on your 25 questions so we can talk about them. Number 2 is a humdinger: why use the surveillance camera that showed the two mice at a great distance?

      The above Commenter, Iwasleah10years, has found the biggie, Number 5. I had never heard of the fact that police were swarming around MIT campus before the killig of Collier.

      I also had always been told that Boston police (or any publicly paid police) cannot do their patrol work on private property. The campus police, in my day, were but security guards. Yet i did see in Collier’s obituary that he was a regular cop, at MIT.

      We don’t need to put up with the fact that there was an unexplained swarm on April 18th. We can demand that the relevant police boss explain what his/her men were up to.

      Simple as that.

      • It sounds easy but even a US senator wrote to James Comey, head of FBI to ask why the feds were all over the MIT campus, and he never got an answer. This was all over the media. The regular boston cops said they knew nothing of the feds at MIT that evening. Maybe the feds set up the murder of collier, or did it themselves, then set things up, then taped 2 of their own agents walking towards the cruiser, and that started everything. The only reason anyone knew the feds were there, is that another MIT cop (Clarence Henniger) innocently spilled the beans. He said all the cops on campus that night knew about it.
        Eventually the feds had to admit they were there, but said they were there on a completely unrelated situation. I laughed out loud when I read that.

  6. Regarding #13
    If Dzhokhar was a mature, hardened career criminal he MIGHT have enough ice in his veins to casually shop for snacks while knowing the law was fast closing in. But would a young kid have the b’s to do that? I think not. Dzhokhar walks into the store at a pace that belies the fact he and his brother have a hostage in the SUV. As he roams the aisles he seems to have nothing on his mind beyond trying to remember if Danny said he preferred plain or peanut M&Ms…

    Contrast this behavior with the day he was almost blown up by a bomb he seems just as frightened by as everyone else he ran away with: it could be argued he was so rattled that Tamerlan didn’t even trust him to drive his own car, putting big brother behind the wheel instead on the drive to the grocery where little bro again shows his state of mind by buying the wrong milk. Instead of putting their own spin on the grocery store video they let it be presented to show Dzhokhar & his brother were so cold they calmly went to buy milk after blowing up people at the marathon.

    There were so many opportunities for the defense to create reasonable doubt the size of Mt. McKinley and they passed up each and every one of them.

    The reason has to be deliberate.

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