By Marc J. Randazza
I want a new trial for Tsarnaev – because FUCK Dzhokhar Tsarnaev!
I don’t personally know anyone who got hurt in the Tsarnaev bombing. I don’t even know anyone who was in the zone of danger. Nevertheless, when I heard about the Marathon bombing, I wanted to cry and crush something at the same time. These motherfuckers bombed my home. It is as if they burned Paul Revere’s house, or bombed Fenway Park, or sank the U.S.S. Constitution, or put tomatoes in my chowder. It wasn’t just a bomb in a crowded place. This was a “fuck you, Boston” of biblical proportions.
I got this far into writing this, and it came back to me – that quickened breath, that pounding heartbeat, that desire to put my hands around Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s throat and bash his head into his cell wall again and again and again so that the last thing that fucking prick hears is the sound of his own skull cracking mixed with my voice screaming at him.
That is what I, personally, want. And yet, I want him to get a new trial. I would never support a government that let me, or anyone else, enjoy my desired outcome.
I want him to receive the fairest trial, the greatest due process, and the kindest punishment that we can tolerate. If that happens to be death, so be it. Let even that death be without cruelty, violence, or anger.
If you are reading this, and at any point your reaction is “he does not deserve” whatever I may advocate for, well … keep reading, you might get smarter.
I don’t give a shit what Tsarnaev deserves. He deserves to be tortured. He deserves an agonizing death. He deserves to have watched his brother die. He deserves to be strapped to a table, with his ass up in the air, and then to be put right in the prison yard in the incorrigible rapist section of a maximum security prison, with everyone in that cell block informed that every time they violate him, they get a day off their sentence.
Yet, I care more about my Constitution than I care about my desire for hideous retribution. Justice is not just giving a bad guy what he deserves. Justice is also about limiting that desire for severe retribution. Justice is who stands in between the bad guy and the good people who want to do bad bad things to him. Because if we do not give Tsarnaev a fair trial and a righteous punishment, we can do it to anyone else. They can do it to you.
You see, I want to do worse things to Tsarnaev than Tsarnaev ever did to anyone else. I feel that if I did these things, if I let loose the savage instincts inside me, I would feel the bliss of no longer restraining that brutality and that hatred, and I would likely have the cover of it being seen, by many, as somehow justified. It may be justified – but it would not be justice.
Now imagine a jury pool made up of the kind of people who wanted to declare war on the Dominican Republic because a guy there shot David Ortiz. Literally every man in New England has given his wife or girlfriend a hall pass to have sex with Tom Brady. Even the most homophobic guy in Boston would suck Tom Brady’s dick while humming Danny Boy atop a float in the St. Patricks' Day Parade if Bill Belichick told him it was necessary to the Patriots’ being able to score in the red zone. If a defendant is a Yankees fan, that defendant probably should suppress that evidence because it would mean that at least one juror would immediately pronounce him guilty.
Yet, these bastards think that someone who blew up the Boston Fucking Marathon can get a fair trial in Boston?
Not only was he tried in the very place he fouled, but even the jurors were not clean. One of them tweeted out dozens of statements after the bombings, including “Congratulations to all of the law enforcement professionals who worked so hard and went through hell to bring in that piece of garbage.” If that’s how you start off as a juror, you’re not unbiased. Could we not find a juror who hadn’t openly expressed how he felt about the defendant? Maybe not in Boston, we couldn’t.
”Juror 138, meanwhile, posted about being called to jury duty on Facebook. Friends commented on his post, and hours after he’d been instructed not to, he continued to post about jury selection and the case. Posts included friends telling him to “play the part” and “get on the jury” to send Tsarnaev “to jail where he will be taken care of.” He replied with details about jury selection and being “ten feet” from Tsarnaev.
When asked by the court about talking or posting about the case, he said he hadn’t. (source)
They might as well have put a gag ball in Lady Liberty’s mouth and fucked her up the ass on the courthouse steps.
What makes it really offensive is that there was no reason to do it this way. The case was airtight. Tsarnaev wasn’t going to walk even if you tried him in the most Boston-hating jurisdiction in America. We moved Timothy McVeigh’s trial to Denver, despite the fact that he was never going to walk free no matter where they tried him. Why? Because when he got that needle put in his arm, we wanted it to be after he got every goddamned bit of due process that our system deserves. And, to this day, there is nobody who can seriously question whether McVeigh got a fair shake.
Tsarnaev’s execution will always be tainted if he does not get a new trial.
Justice is only served by due process. Without due process, without a fair trial, without removing even the appearance of impropriety, Justice is kept out of the room, and replaced with the remorseless goddess of revenge — Nemesis.
I love Boston not just because it is my home town, but because of what it stands for – it was the cradle of American liberty, if that means anything anymore. Tsarnaev attacked a symbol of that symbol. That left a wound that Nemesis can not heal. If we fail to keep Justice in the room, if we stain even the slightest bit of due process in seeking her divine guidance, then what the fuck is the point of these symbols? What the fuck is the point of the Revolution and the Constitution if we can't hold up due process right there, steps from where the whole damn conspiracy started?
Tsarnaev needs due process not because he deserves it, but because we deserve it.
Because when that piece of shit finally goes down, I want it perfect. I do not want Tsarnaev to go to his grave with one person able to credibly say that he deserves any second guessing or sympathy. I want him utterly and completely destroyed.
I want due process for him, not because I care about what happens to him. I want due process for him because that is the ultimate "fuck you" to him. And, as an added benefit, we keep Justice right where she belongs.
Copyright 2017 by the named Popehat author. https://www.popehat.com/2019/12/13/randazza-tsarnaev/
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