Convicted Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his lawyers filed a motion Monday saying Tsarnaev deserves a new trial to ensure an impartial jury.
According to the 22-year-old bomber's lawyers Judy Clarke, David Bruck and Miriam Conrad the 12 jurors who sentenced Tsarnaev to death were unfairly influenced by the media coverage following the 2013 attack that killed three people and injured more than 250 others.
"A new trial in a different venue is required due to continuous and unrelenting publicity combined with pervasive connections between jurors and the events surrounding the Boston Marathon bombing that precluded impartial adjudication in both appearance and fact," Tsarnaev's lawyers wrote in a 39-page document submitted to the U.S. District Court in Boston, reports People.
While admitting that, "He did it," during the opening statement, the legal team argued that events memorializing the bombings that happened during Tsarnaev's trial were a reason for seeking a re-trial at a different venue.
"The extraordinary salience of the Marathon Bombing and their aftermath in the life of Boston and the surrounding communities, the basis of the defendants' motions for change of venue before trial, continued unabated during the actual trial and sentencing," the filing states. "The totality of the circumstances demonstrates that it was error to deny a change of venue," reports Boston Herald.
The media frenzy that developed with the arrival of Tsarnaev's Russian relatives made it even more difficult for him to receive impartial treatment from jurors.
"The media coverage was prejudicial. Many articles conveyed outrage over the supposedly high travel expenses for the witnesses. Put simply, prejudicial media coverage, events, and environment saturated greater Boston, including the social networks of actual jurors, and made it an improper venue for the trial of this case," the filing says according to Boston Magazine.
Convicted in April and sentenced to death in May, Tsarnaev is currently being housed at ADX Florence in Colorado.
