According to reporting on MSNBC, a government official has claimed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was questioned in the hospital and said that he and his brother had no help from any overseas organizations, that they conceived the attack on their own, that they were motivated by religious fervor, and that they learned how to make the bombs by doing research on the internet. Anyone who suggested that we weren’t being shown footage of the actual placement of the backpack at the site of the explosion because it would prejudice the jury pool should consider the effect of questioning this man without reading him his rights and then leaking his confession to the world. How does leaking his confession impact the potential jury pool?
When he was read his rights, it was by an actual federal judge in a makeshift courtroom set up in the hospital. When asked if he had any money for counsel, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev said, “no.”
So, he has money for college and money for a car and money for an apartment and money for guns and money for ammunition and money for bomb components, but he doesn’t have any money for a lawyer so the taxpayers have to pick that up for him. That’s very nice.
I am already disgusted by this story. Obviously, I am extremely pissed off that the attack took place in the first place. I’m angry with elements of the media for screwing up repeatedly in their reporting. Wrongly announcing an arrest. Publishing the names and pictures of the wrong suspects on the front-page. Not asking obvious questions of the government. It’s been a disgrace. I’m pissed at the right-wing reaction and their willingness to politicize literally everything. And I am pissed at the administration for allowing doubts to arise because they didn’t give us the evidence of guilt that they had, because the complaint against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev didn’t have a single mention of the murder of the MIT police officer, and we haven’t been told why the Tsarnaev brothers were falsely accused of an armed robbery at a gas station. And now they have gone and actually prejudiced the jury pool by leaking a confession that won’t be admissible in court.
At least the FBI did a good job of figuring out who they were and the police did a good job of tracking them down. And at least we didn’t torture anyone. At least we are treating the suspect as a U.S. citizen. But I’m still annoyed.
