- Sketch via Art Lien
The start of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev‘s trial proper is slated to begin in less than two weeks. On Monday, Jan. 12, lawyers dismissed over 100 potential jurors as they continue to vet candidates to fill the bench for one of the highest-profile cases in recent memory. As opening statements loom, one has to wonder if Tsarnaev will take the stand.
After jury selection began on Monday, Jan. 5, Mayor Marty Walsh asserted that the case may reopen recently healed wounds for some Bostonians. Perhaps nothing would be more painful for the victims, survivors and their family and friends than hearing directly from the man accused of being partly responsible for the pressure cooker blasts that killed three and injured 264.
Daniel Medwed, a professor of criminal law at Northeastern University School of Law, told BostInno he doesn’t expect Tsnaraev to take the stand. There’s a higher chance he will during the sentencing phase of the trial, but not during cross-examination.
“The cross-examination would be withering,” said Medwed. Of taking the stand during the sentencing phase, he said “the defense team would have to balance the benefit of his testimony against the tremendous cost of allowing the prosecution to cross-examine in a heinous case like this.”
Comparisons to this case have been drawn to that of Timothy McVeigh, who was found guilty of the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995 killing 168 people and injuring north of 600. Tsarnaev’s defense cited the fact that McVeigh’s case was moved to Denver in an attempt to relocate his client’s trial out of Boston in hopes of gathering a more impartial pool of jurors.
“The fact that a jury in Colorado convicted McVeigh for the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City helped to ensure confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the outcome,” Christopher Ott, communications director for the ACLU chapter of Massachusetts, told BostInno.
For his part, McVeigh did not take the stand. In Boston, the recent trial of Whitey Bulger had his victims’ family members and friends, as well as media and those following along, waiting on bated breath to see if he’d take the stand. After much speculation, he, too, decided to forgo the chance.
Someone that could take the stand, though, is Khairullozhon Matanov. The fifth person arrested in connection to the Marathon bombings, Matanov stands accused of lying to investigators and destroying evidence. He was allegedly in contact with the Tsarnaev brothers before and after the bombings, and is thought to have taken them to dinner the night of.
He is entering a guilty plea to destroying evidence. The Associated Press speculates the move may have been made as part of a bargain for which Matanov would receive a lesser sentence if he testifies against Tsarnaev. Paul Glickman, Matanov’s lawyer, did not comment on that.
