After a brief hiatus due to Winter Storm Juno, the legal teams both for and against alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Judge George O’Toole will continue with jury selection on Thursday, Jan. 29.
The last time voir dire (the questioning of prospective jurors by a judge and attorneys in court) took place was on Monday and up to that point jury selection was already running behind schedule. When the search to fill the bench commenced on Jan. 5, it was thought that the trial proper would start on Jan. 26.
On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz, on behalf of the government, filed opposition papers to the defense’s third attempt to relocate the trial out of Boston.
The defense argued that jury selection thus far has proven to be a biased affair, with a majority of potential jurors having already established, in their minds, a verdict of guilty. They contend that it will be almost impossible for Tsarnaev to receive a fair trial from an impartial jury.
Ortiz’s office, however, states the defense’s motion “confirms that in a nationally-publicized case like this one, fair and impartial jurors are as likely to be found in the Eastern Division of Massachusetts as anywhere else, and that a thorough and searching voir dire is the appropriate way to identify them.”
The defense’s motion was accompanied by a memo containing statistical data pertaining to potential jurors’ judgements. But once it was dispatched over social media, Judge O’Toole sealed it.
“Great care has been taken to maintain the integrity of the proceedings and to protect the privacy of jurors, including by keeping the completed questionnaires confidential and non-public,” Judge O’ Toole recorded in an electronic order. “The memorandum in support of the motion quotes from the confidential juror questionnaires, attributing the quotes to specific prospective jurors who are identified by juror number, including jurors who have not yet been interviewed in the course of the public voir dire proceedings. This was improper.”
Judge O’ Toole has yet to rule on the defense’s motion.
Despite the courtroom proceedings taking longer than expected, Judge O’Toole is perfectly content with how their shaping up.
“We’re making good progress,” he said on Monday, just prior to the snow delay. A total of 98 jurors have been questioned to date, averaging 14 per day. Judge O’Toole had initially hoped that number would be closer to 40 per day.
