Federal prosecutors asked a judge Monday to bar Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev from seeing some of the gruesome autopsy photos of the three people killed in the attack, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In a court filing, prosecutors said Tsarnaev should only be allowed to look at autopsy photos that will be used during his trial and sentencing, the Times reported. They said he should not be allowed to see the many other photos that will not be used against him in court.
"Allowing photos of the mutilated bodies of the victims to be viewed by the man accused of mutilating them would needlessly re-victimize the family members in the same way that innocent children who are photographed pornographically are revictimized whenever those photos are seen by others," prosecutors wrote, according to the Times.
In their motion, prosecutors say they told the defense that if Tsarnaev were allowed to view all the photographs, the government would continue to make them available for lawyers' review but would not provide copies, the Times reported.
They said Tsarnaev's lawyers "refused to accept any limitation on Tsarnaev's ability to view the autopsy photos and repeated their demand for copies of all of them," according to the Times.
Tsarnaev, 19, has pleaded not guilty to 30 federal charges, including the use of a weapon of mass destruction, the Times reported. More than half the charges carry a possible death sentence.
Prosecutors allege that he and his brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, built two pressure cooker bombs and placed them near the finish line of last year's marathon according to the Times. Twin explosions killed two women and an 8-year-old boy and injured more than 260.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following a shootout with police several days after the April 15 marathon, the Times reported. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being held in a federal prison as he awaits a trial scheduled to begin in November.
