Innocence, Evading Justice

"Simply put, information and evidence tending to show that Tamerlan Tsarnaev participated in a triple homicide in 2011, and information depicting the brutality of those murders, is critical to the defence case in mitigation."
"Such evidence would tend to corroborate Tamerlan's dominant role in the charged offences and would place the brothers' respective personal characteristics and relative culpability into stark relief."
Defence lawyers for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

This combination of file photos shows brothers Tamerlan, left, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15, 2013. (Image source: AP/Lowell Sun and FBI, File)

No lawyers defending an accused in a criminal court of law likes to be surprised. They prefer to have all evidence in the hands of the prosecution, on which to build their own case to exculpate their clients from charges brought against them. Standing before a jury when evidence damning to their client is introduced in the courtroom, mouth open like a guppy in surprise at having had no prior notice nor time to build the defence is not known to bode well for a client.

Now that a prosecution witness exists who is prepared to testify that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the remaining duo of the Boston Marathon bombing, was in full knowledge of his older brother Tamerlan's active link to the gruesome murders of three men in Waltham, Massacusshets, found with their throats slit, their bodies fairy-dusted with marijuana, it might be difficult to assert his innocence in simply trusting his brother to pattern him for jihad.

And an enlarged picture of older brother Tamerlan also emerges, that of a brutally psychopathic thug for whom the lives of others means less than nothing in striking a blow for crime on an earlier occasion, and a far more significantly meaningful one for Islamist jihad through his Chechen roots and his exposure to Islamist doctrine and grievances, striking a blow for a universal caliphate that is meant to encompassslave the world.

The younger Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty in the 2013 bombings, despite their success in killing three people and injuring about 260 other unfortunates. A rather spectacularly violent outcome to the two brothers' concoction of pressure cookers transformed into explosive devices. It is anticipated that the baby-faced jihadist's lawyers plan to forward the defence that he acted under the influence of his older brother.

"Even the government has conceded", the lawyers for his defence stated, that evidence relating to his older brother's Waltham killing exploits could be relevant to Dzohokhar's case, if it can be proven that he was aware of his brother's proclivities.