Tsarnaev defense asks judge to strike down death penalty (as Unconstitutional)
Defense attorneys for accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev today asked a federal judge to declare the federal death penalty unconstitutional for a number of reasons, including the fact that Massachusetts itself does not permit capital punishment.
The attorneys also argued that the federal death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishment’’ because there is the possibility that innocent people will be executed and there is a history of a “seemingly ineradicable pattern of racially disparate enforcement.’’
The attorneys, in a filing in US District Court in Boston, noted that the First US Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected similar arguments raised in the case of serial killer Gary Sampson in 2007. But the attorneys argued that new developments, including changes in the law and public revulsion over events such as the recent botched execution in Oklahoma, argued for US District Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. to take a new look.
“The vulnerability of this particular death penalty prosecution to Eighth Amendment challenge is all the greater in light of recent legal authority and scholarship that cast doubt on the power of the federal government to impose the death penalty in states, like Massachusetts, that have abolished it,’’ the attorneys wrote.
The attorneys argued that the Eighth Amendment was not just intended to secure indiviual rights but also to constrain the power of the federal government.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/07/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-wants-death-penalty-eliminated-defense-can-show-grand-jury-instructions-were-flawed/UdABkTwRIpq7XGP4yKmXwJ/story.html
Do the right thing Judge O'Toole! End the death penalty!
= new reply since forum marked as read
