“Even the very worst among us deserves to be fairly tried and lawfully punished,” a judge wrote.
www.newyorker.com
Significant to note that the Circuit Court recently sent the case back for further investigation of the impartiality of the two jurors who were objected to after they were determined to have given misleading answers.
United States v. TSARNAEV, Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit 2024 - Google Scholar
So, in the Tsarnaev case, the District Court dismissed jurors who weren’t sufficiently open to the death penalty, even if they said they were, and retained jurors who believed that the defendant was guilty. On the issue of the
process that allowed those jurors onto the panel in the first place, the Supreme Court said it was legally sufficient and moreover that it wasn’t subject to meaningful review.
I don’t want to overstate the significance of the rulings so far, but my point is that law as it pertains to jury selection and impartiality are so toothless that the district court judge basically said, “A juror called the defendant garbage and didn’t disclose it? That’s not a problem.” “Oh, another juror’s friends are telling him to play it straight to get on the jury and help make sure the defendant is ‘taken care of?’ Also fine.” That case was expected to take months, if he had any reason to think there was a clear cut rule limiting his ability to do that, he’s got every incentive to rule in favor of the defendant. And it seems like he wasn’t totally wrong because the case is still in limbo nearly a decade later.
If you’re upset about the process (and possibly the result) that Trump received in jury selection, your beef is with the system, not this individual case.
