Boston Marathon bombing victims say Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s attempt to get his old legal team back together is a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Tsarnaev, locked up in a Colorado Supermax, has an Aug. 21 court date in Boston where his lawyers will begin to try to keep him out of the electric chair.
That status conference is before before federal Judge George A. O’Toole Jr.
“Who’s paying for this?” said Liz Norden. “He blew up innocent people and we’re told it’s no one’s business to know how much his lawyers cost? It makes no sense.”
The Department of Justice has denied a Herald public records request for Tsarnaev’s legal bill while his case drags on in the courts.
Norden has attempted to make every hearing in a solemn show of support for the victims of the bombing, including her two boys who lost their right legs that terrible day on Boylston Street on April 15, 2013.
Marc Fucarile, woke up in a hospital with his right leg mostly gone and his left one possibly next, said Monday the seemingly never-ending case against the bomber is an insult to the city.
“Stop wasting taxpayers’ dollars just for greedy lawyers,” he said of Tsarnaev’s appeal of his death penalty sentence. “He was already judged by his peers. There should be no question he deserves the death penalty.
“Let’s just cut off this cash cow,” he added.
The bomber has questioned the bias of two jurors in his 2015 death penalty trial and won a partial victory in the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
The appeals court stated “the district court’s investigation fell short of what was constitutionally required” over this one issue. If bias is shown, the court adds, Tsarnaev will be “entitled to a new penalty-phase proceeding.”
The alleged bias is over social media postings about the bombing made by two jurors.
The appeals court has added “regardless of the outcome, (Tsarnaev) will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Now the bomber is moving quickly to assemble his legal team, with Boston attorney William Fick filing an appeal to return to the case now that he is in private practice.
Tsarnaev is “legally indigent,” Fick writes, and the courts should allow him back on the case “in order to serve the interests of justice, judicial economy, continuity in representation.”
His motion also states attorneys Daniel Habib, Deirdre von Dornum, and Mia Eisner-Grynberg from the Federal Defenders of New York, are on his side of the bench. It’s not clear if all the lawyers are working pro bono or submitting a bill.
The New York group does offer free help to “persons charged with federal crimes who cannot afford to hire an attorney.”
The case remains in the Seaport federal court before the same judge as the alleged bias of two jurors is re-examined, the court announced Monday. Still, Tsarnaev does have a chance to avoid death.
The bombing killed Martin Richard, 8; Krystle Campbell, 29; and Lu Lingzi, 23. More than 260 people were injured and maimed. MIT Police Officer Sean Collier, 27, was shot execution-style days later by the Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan, killed hours later in a firefight in Watertown.
Boston Police Officer Dennis Simmonds, 28, injured in the Watertown shootout, died in April 2014.
Tsarnaev is locked up in the Federal Correctional Complex Florence in Colorado — a Supermax called the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”
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