Day three of the trial of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev commenced on Monday, constituting what will be the first full week of witness testimony. One man called to the stand Monday afternoon was FBI forensic audio and visual analyst Anthony Imel, the first witness the defense team for Tsarnaev opted to cross examine.
Thus far, all 20 witnesses called to testify by the prosecution have been questioned by them and them alone. Not once has the defense elected to cross-examine a witness, making today’s decision to do so all the more peculiar.
The defense hasn’t been vocal, save for several procedural motions and multiple objections, since their opening statements when they admitted Tsarnaev’s direct involvement in the bombing.
Almost every witness between then and now has been directly linked to one of the spots where the two bombs exploded on Boylston Street – either as a victim, an aid or an investigator.
“Presumably the defense feels as if it has nothing to gain and potentially a lot to lose by cross-examining the victims who are very sympathetic and compelling witnesses,” explained Northeastern School of Law Professor Daniel Medwed.
Imel, though, provided the defense an opportunity to attempt to bolster their argument: that Tsarnaev was heavily influenced by his older brother Tamerlan, the supposed primary architect of the bombing.
As a forensic audio and visual analyst for the FBI, Imel combed through every single piece of surveillance footage and still images recovered from Boylston Street establishments. One issue posed by these videos and photos is that the timestamps they display are not completely accurate.
“[Timestamp accuracy is] limited to whomever records that video and what they put in that individual system of the camera itself,” said Imel.
Imel explained to the prosecution that he compiled video surveillance and was able to create an interactive map of how the Tsarnaev brothers made it to the spots of detonation and from the Marathon route.
One of the videos he included in his compilation depicted Dzhokhar on the phone with Tamerlan, prior to the explosion of the first bomb as per the time stamp on the video.
A look at the call log for the two pre-paid cell phones indicates that a call was made from a phone listed to “Jahar Tsarni” at 2:49:06 p.m. and an incoming call to his phone at 2:51:19 p.m.
Miriam Conrad, public defender for Tsaranev, had Imel reiterate that the times listed on the video we only approximate and therefore he couldn’t definitively say if the calls made to and from Tsarnaev to Tamerlan came before or after explosions.
The basis of Conrad’s argument is that Dzhokhar acted at the behest of his older brother and that a phone call just before the explosions exemplifies a certain malice on Tamerlan’s part, and Dzhokhar by association.
If the calls came after the explosions as Conrad suggested due to the time inconsistency, perhaps Tamerlan – and therefore Tsarnaev – acted with less cruelty.
“The defense seems to be playing the long game, essentially conceding guilt and trying to establish credibility with the jury with an eye toward convincing them to spare [Dzhokhar] Tsarnaev’s life at sentencing,” added Medwed. “It is a sound tactic in gruesome capital cases that lack much in the way of a factual defense; it makes little sense to belabor the horrific details through cross and much more sense to instead focus on the end game: sentencing.”
