After more than a month, jury selection for the trial of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnev is near an end. On Wednesday night, a court official confirmed that both sides will deliver opening statement on Wednesday, March 4, at 9 a.m.
The entire jury selection has taken much longer than initially expected, mostly due to 100 inches of snow and freezing temperatures Boston’s been subjected to for all of February. It was thought at the onset that the trial proper would begin exactly one month ago today, Jan. 26.
Voir dire, the process in which the judge and both the prosecution and defense question potential jurors to cull a bench of 12 with 6 alternates, has ended. Now they’ll engage in peremptory challenges which allows both parties to dismiss certain potential jury members for reasons that need not be explained.
Northeastern School of Law Professor Daniel Medwed told BostInno that peremptory challenges cannot be used on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex alone.
“The Court has identified a sufficient number of qualified jurors not excusable for cause to proceed to the next stage of jury empanelment, which is the parties’ exercise of peremptory challenges,” said a court official in a statement. “The parties will exercise peremptory challenges as to the pool of qualified jurors on Tuesday, March 3, beginning at 10:00 a.m. in Courtroom 9.”
Last week the defense argued in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals to relocate the trial out of Boston, citing a sweeping bias on the part of the jury pool.
The Court has yet to make a ruling, though it’s worth noting that presiding Judge George O’Toole of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts has repeatedly denied motions for the defense to do exactly that – which is what prompted them to state their case in front of the Appellate Court, a move Medwed told us was seldom granted.
“The Court and the parties will be addressing pending motions and other pretrial matters in the intervening days,” added the court official. “A hearing will be held at 10:00 a.m. Monday, March 2, in Courtroom 9.”
