According to a recent arti­cle in the New Yorker, it has been dif­fcult select­ing a jury for the tri­al of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is accused of the Boston Marathon bomb­ing. Many of the 1,350 peo­ple who filled out a juror ques­tion­naire have been elim­i­nat­ed from ser­vice based on their writ­ten answers. But even of those who remain, only a few have been found suf­fi­cient­ly impar­tial regard­ing Tsarnaev’s guilt or inno­cence and on poten­tial sen­tences, putting the selec­tion process behind sched­ule. Eventually, 18 peo­ple — 12 jurors and 6 alter­nates — will be seat­ed for the tri­al. Most of those ques­tioned so far have said they believe Tsarnaev is guilty. The judge and lawyers must deter­mine whether those peo­ple can set aside their opin­ions to ful­ly con­sid­er the evi­dence pre­sent­ed at tri­al. One poten­tial juror who was asked whether she could put aside her belief that the defen­dant is guilty, said, ​“I think it’s hard. Because if you have a belief in your head … it’s hard to set that aside. I can try to, but I can’t say that it wouldn’t influ­ence my think­ing. I don’t know that the brain works that way.” Because the death penal­ty is pos­si­ble if Tsarnaev is found guilty, the jurors must also be will­ing to con­sid­er both cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and life in prison. It is also dif­fi­cult to arrive at an impar­tial jury because so many poten­tial jurors have con­nec­tions to the Boston Marathon or to peo­ple who were affect­ed by the bombing.

(M. Gessen, ​“Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and the Presumption of Innocence,” New Yorker, January 22, 2015). See Federal Death Penalty and DPIC’s report, Blind Justice.

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