Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s requests for lawyer were ignored
Focus on Miranda rights may miss key constitutional abrogation, plus discoveries about Tamerlan's Russia visit
Topics: Boston Explosions, Boston Marathon bombing, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, FBI, Miranda Rights, U.S. Constitution, News
Updated, 11:42 a.m. EST: In attempts to further flesh out a picture of the Tsarnaevs, investigators have reportedly discovered that the elder brother, Tamerlan, killed in a police shootout, may have had links to two now-dead militants in Russia. Via New York Magazine:
According to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Tsarnaev may have been linked to William Plotnikov, a Canadian “boxer-turned-jihadist” (sounds familiar) who died at the hands of Russian forces in the republic of Dagestan last year, while Tsarnaev was visiting…Tsarnaev may have also known, or chatted online, with Makhmud Mansur Nidal, an 18-year-old militant who was reportedly “under surveillance for six months as a suspected recruiter for Islamist insurgents fighting Moscow’s rule in the region.” Nidal was also killed in Russia, in May 2012 during Tamerlan’s six-month visit
Original post: According to reports from the Los Angeles Times, highlighted by Glenn Greenwald this week, the delay in reading Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev his Miranda rights may be the least in possible abrogations in constitutional legal procedure in the FBI’s interrogations. Tsarnaev reportedly requested an attorney repeatedly but was ignored. There has been some debate as to whether the “public safety exception” was appropriately invoked to delay Mirandizing the 19-year-old suspect, but, as Greenwald writes on denying requests for a lawyer, “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.
The Los Angeles Times reported in passing last week that “a senior congressional aide said Tsarnaev had asked several times for a lawyer, but that request was ignored since he was being questioned under the public safety exemption to the Miranda rule.” Greenwald commented that “Delaying Miranda warnings under the “public safety exception” – including under the Obama DOJ’s radically expanded version of it – is one thing… To ignore the repeated requests of someone in police custody for a lawyer, for hours and hours, is just inexcusable and legally baseless.’
Natasha Lennard is an assistant news editor at Salon, covering non-electoral politics, general news and rabble-rousing. Follow her on Twitter @natashalennard, email nlennard@salon.com. More Natasha Lennard.





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