'Female
DNA' found on Boston bomb
Investigators
have reportedly found female DNA on at least one of the bombs used in
the Boston Marathon attacks.
30
April, 2013
Investigators
on Monday removed bags of evidence including some containing DNA
samples from the home in Rhode Island where the widow of suspected
bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev has been living, according to a person
familiar with the investigation.
FBI
agents spent hours at the home of Katherine Russell's parents in
North Kingstown, Rhode Island, and came out carrying bags marked as
DNA samples, a person familiar with the case said.
Investigators
are hunting for evidence that suspects Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Russell's
dead husband, and his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev made and set
off two bombs at the finish line of the race two weeks ago.
The
Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that investigators have found
female DNA on at least one of the bombs used in the attacks.
The
FBI declined to comment on the matter.
Police
said the Tsarnaevs set off twin bombs on April 15 that ripped through
the crowd watching the race on Boylston Street, killing three and
injuring 264. The Tsarnaevs three days later led police in a wild car
chase through metropolitan Boston, throwing grenades and exchanging
gunfire as the officers closed in.
Russell,
24, said through her lawyer last week that she was doing everything
she could to assist officials with the investigation.
Her
lawyers have not said anything else, but a person familiar with the
matter said the legal team has been negotiating how much access
authorities will have to their client.
FBI
agents have been seen at the Russell house and at her lawyer's office
several times since she returned to Rhode Island from Massachusetts
on Friday, April 19, after her husband was killed. On Monday
afternoon she was seen leaving the house with her lawyers and was
later seen leaving her lawyers' offices in Providence, Rhode Island.
Russell
and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, lived with their young daughter in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Police have said they found bomb material
in that apartment.
Her
lawyers have said she didn't know much about her husband's activities
because she spent most of her time working as a health aide near
Boston while he was home watching the child.
Hunting
beyond Boston area
Two
law enforcement officials said both the FBI and local law enforcement
agencies are now looking beyond the Boston area to try to identify
associates or confederates of the Tsarnaev brothers.
The
Wall Street Journal said officials familiar with the case cautioned
that there could be multiple explanations for why the DNA of someone
other than the two bombing suspects could be on remnants of the
exploded devices. The genetic material could have come, for example,
from a store clerk who handled materials used in the bombs or a stray
hair that ended up in the bomb, the newspaper said.
Also
on Monday, an autopsy on Tamerlan Tsarnaev determined precisely how
he died after a bloody shootout with police but the results can't be
made public until the body is claimed, a spokesman for the
Massachusetts Medical Examiner said.
Authorities
and the public have been waiting to learn whether Tsarnaev died in a
hail of police bullets or when he was run over by Dzhokhar when the
younger Tsarnaev fled in an SUV they had stolen.
Tamerlan
Tsarnaev had stepped outside the SUV to shoot at police when he was
hit by gunfire and was then run over by his brother when the younger
Tsarnaev escaped. He was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Deaconess
Medical Center.
"The
Medical Examiner has determined the cause of death," said Terrel
Harris, spokesman for the Massachusetts Office of the Chief Medical
Examiner, but added that these findings will not be made public until
the body is claimed and a death certificate is filed.
Russell
would be permitted to claim the body from the medical examiner, the
spokesman said.
Dzhokhar,
19, was captured on April 19 and has been recovering from bullet
wounds at a prison medical centre outside Boston.
The
brothers' parents, now living in Russia, said on Sunday that they
have abandoned initial plans to come to the United States to claim
their older son's
body and visit their younger son
Report:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's repeated requests for a lawyer were ignored
There
is zero legal or ethical justification for denying a suspect in
custody this fundamental right
Glenn
Greenwald
29
April, 2013
The initial
debate over
the treatment of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev focused on whether he should be
advised of his Miranda rights or whether the "public safety
exception" justified delaying it. In the wake of news reports
that he had been Mirandized and would be charged in a federal court,
Icredited
the Obama DOJ for
handling the case reasonably well thus far. As it turns out, though,
Tsarnaev wasn't Mirandized because the DOJ decided he should be.
Instead, that happened only because a federal magistrate, on her own,
scheduled a hospital-room hearing, interrupted
the FBI's interrogation which
had been proceeding
at that point for a full 16 hours,
and advised him of his right to remain silent and appointed him a
lawyer. Since then, Tsarnaev ceased answering the FBI's questions.
But
that controversy was merely about whether he would be advised of his
Miranda rights. Now, the
Los Angeles Times, almost in passing, reports something
which, if true, would be a much more serious violation of core rights
than delaying Miranda warnings - namely, that prior to the
magistrate's visit to his hospital room, Tsarnaev had repeatedly
asked for a lawyer, but the FBI simply ignored those requests,
instead allowing the interagency High Value Detainee Interrogation
Group to continue to interrogate him alone:
"Tsarnaev
has not answered any questions since he was given a lawyer and told
he has the right to remain silent by Magistrate Judge Marianne B.
Bowler on Monday, officials said.
"Until
that point, Tsarnaev had been responding to the interagency High
Value Detainee Interrogation Group, including admitting his role in
the bombing, authorities said.A
senior congressional aide said Tsarnaev had asked several times for a
lawyer, but that request was ignoredsince
he was being questioned under the public safety exemption to the
Miranda rule."
Delaying
Miranda warnings under the "public safety exception" -
including under the Obama DOJ's radically
expanded version of it -
is one thing. But denying him the right to a lawyer after he
repeatedly requests one is another thing entirely: as fundamental a
violation of crucial guaranteed rights as can be imagined. As the
lawyer bmaz comprehensively details in this
excellent post,
it is virtually unheard of for the "public safety"
exception to be used to deny someone their right to a lawyer as
opposed to delaying a Miranda warning (the only cases where this has
been accepted were when "the intrusion into the constitutional
right to counsel ... was so fleeting – in both it was no more than
a question or two about a weapon on the premises of a search while
the search warrant was actively being executed"). To ignore the
repeated requests of someone in police custody for a lawyer, for
hours and hours, is just inexcusable and legally baseless.
As
law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky explained
in the Los Angeles Times last
week, the Obama DOJ was already abusing the "public safety"
exception by using it to delay Miranda warnings for hours, long after
virtually every public official expressly said that there were no
more threats to the public safety. As he put it: "this exception
does not apply here because there was no emergency threat facing law
enforcement." Indeed, as I documented when
this issue first arose, the Obama DOJ already unilaterally expanded
this exception far beyond what the Supreme Court previously
recognized by simply decreeing (in secret) that terrorism cases
justify much greater delays in Mirandizing a suspect for reasons well
beyond asking about public safety.
But
that debate was merely about whether Tsarnaev would be advised of his
rights. This is much more serious: if the LA Times report is true,
then it means that the DOJ did not merely fail to advise him of his
right to a lawyer but actively blocked him from exercising that
right. This is a US citizen arrested for an alleged crime on US soil:
there is no justification whatsoever for denying him his repeatedly
exercised right to counsel. And there are ample and obvious dangers
in letting the government do this. That's why Marcy Wheeler was
arguing from the start that
whether Tsarnaev would be promptly presented to a federal court - as
both the Constitution and federal law requires - is more important
than whether he is quickly Mirandized. Even worse, if the LA Times
report is accurate, it means that the Miranda delay as well as the
denial of his right to a lawyer would have continued even longer had
the federal magistrate not basically barged into the interrogation to
advise him of his rights.
I'd
like to see more sources for this than a single anonymous
Congressional aide, though the LA Times apparently concluded that
this source's report was sufficiently reliable. The problem is that
we're unlikely to get much transparency on this issue because to the
extent that national politicians in Washington are complaining about
Tsarnaev's treatment, their concern is that his rights were not
abused even further:
"Lawmakers
were told Tsarnaev had been questioned for 16 hours over two days.
Injured in the throat, he was answering mostly in writing.
"'For
those of us who think the public safety exemption properly applies
here, there are legitimate questions about why he was [brought before
a judge] when he was,' said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), a former
federal prosecutor who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.
"Rep.
Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the committee, wrote Atty. Gen.
Eric H. Holder Jr. asking for a full investigation of the matter,
complaining that the court session 'cut off a lawful, ongoing FBI
interview to collect public safety information.'"
So
now the Washington "debate" is going to be whether (a) the
Obama DOJ should have defied the efforts of the federal court to
ensure Tsarnaev's rights were protected and instead just violated his
rights for even longer than it did, or (b) the Obama DOJ violated his
rights for a sufficient amount of time before "allowing" a
judge into his hospital room. That it is wrong to take a severely
injured 19-year-old US citizen and aggressively interrogate him in
the hospital without Miranda rights, without a lawyer, and (if this
report is true) actively denying him his repeatedly requested rights,
won't even be part of that debate.
As Dean Chemerinsky wrote:
"Throughout
American history, whenever there has been a serious threat, people
have proposed abridging civil liberties. When that has happened, it
has never been shown to have made the country safer. These mistakes
should not be repeated. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be investigated,
prosecuted and tried in accord with the US Constitution."
There
is no legal or ethical justification for refusing the request for
someone in custody to have a lawyer present. If this report is true,
what's most amazing is not that his core rights were so brazenly
violated, but that so few people in Washington will care. They're too
busy demanding that his rights should have been violated even
further.
UPDATE
In
March of last year, the New York Times' Editorial Page Editor, Andrew
Rosenthal - writing
under the headline "Liberty
and Justice for Non-Muslims" - explained: "it's rarely
acknowledged that the [9/11] attacks have also led to what's
essentially a separate justice system for Muslims." Even if
you're someone who has decided that you don't really care about (or
will actively support) rights abridgments as long as they are applied
to groups or individuals who you think deserve it, these violations
always expand beyond their original application. If you cheer when
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's right to counsel is denied, then you're enabling
the institutionalization of that violation, and thus ensuring that
you have no basis or ability to object when that right is denied to
others whom you find more sympathetic (including yourself).
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