Poll
Question:
Assuming he's found guilty *coughs*, how long should Dzhokhar Tsarnaev get?
Option 1: American - Death penalty
Option 2: American - Life w/o parole
Option 3: American - Life with possibility of parole
Option 4: American - > 30 years, but not life
Option 5: American - < 30 years
Option 6: ROTW - Death penalty
Option 7: ROTW - Life w/o parole
Option 8: ROTW - Life with possibility of parole
Option 9: ROTW - > 30 years, but not life
Option 10: ROTW - < 30 years
Option 11: Other - Share with the class, please
I'm curious to see where things fall here. And does the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is only 19 factor into your decision at all?
Easiest poll ever.
Life, with possibility of parole. His age definitely plays into my leaning towards a more lenient punishment than might be appropriate of someone in, say, their mid-20s or something. I don't think it's reasonable to deprive him of his entire life if a successful effort at reforming him can be made.
Quote from: derspiess on July 10, 2013, 02:41:27 PM
Easiest poll ever.
You voted less than 30 years, right? :unsure:
Quote from: merithyn on July 10, 2013, 02:42:06 PM
Quote from: derspiess on July 10, 2013, 02:41:27 PM
Easiest poll ever.
You voted less than 30 years, right? :unsure:
He voted death penalty, because it's not him doing the injecting.
Were I the judge, I would assign him to hang by the neck until dead.
Quote from: Habbaku on July 10, 2013, 02:41:59 PM
I don't think it's reasonable to deprive him of his entire life if a successful effort at reforming him can be made.
That is where I usually fall on these kinds of questions.
But this guy had a mostly comfortable middle class life in New England, access to the best schools, and typical Amurricun friends. If that didn't reform him, what in the prison system will?
I get the point re tenderness of youth, but this was far from an impulse control offense. Very deep depravity was involved.
Went life without parole.
I'm not in favour of the death penalty, so I voted life without parole.
Quote from: Habbaku on July 10, 2013, 02:42:48 PM
He voted death penalty, because it's not him doing the injecting.
Sure, I'd do it. Why not.
How much do we know about the circumstances that led him to do the bombing? I.e. was he pressured into it by an overbearing and charismatic brother or was he the driving force behind it?
Quote from: Jacob on July 10, 2013, 02:58:25 PM
How much do we know about the circumstances that led him to do the bombing? I.e. was he pressured into it by an overbearing and charismatic brother or was he the driving force behind it?
Who cares. The real question is: REGULAR OR EXTRA CRISPY??
I haven't been following this closely; is the death penalty a possibility in this case?
Quote from: Savonarola on July 10, 2013, 03:03:02 PM
I haven't been following this closely; is the death penalty a possibility in this case?
Apparently yes.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/09/boston-bombing-suspect-death-penalty_n_3568605.html
Quote from: derspiess on July 10, 2013, 02:57:23 PM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 10, 2013, 02:42:48 PM
He voted death penalty, because it's not him doing the injecting.
Sure, I'd do it. Why not.
I've going to vote death penalty, and I would even be willing to be the one who prosecutes him and seeks the death penalty. BUt you can hardly be flippant about it
I'm usually not a fan of American justice system, which sentences someone to 20 years in prison for exposing themselves in front of a urinal, and a lifetime registration as a sex offender afterwards, but in this case I think death penalty is clearly appropriate.
Life sentence, with possiblity of parole(however unlikely it is to be used)
Torn apart by the Boston mob.
Quote from: Ed Anger on July 10, 2013, 03:28:38 PM
Torn apart by the Boston mob.
Yeah, that'd work, too.
Life with possibility of parole. I would never rule out parole. Gives the possibility to grant a second chance.
Quote from: Zanza on July 10, 2013, 03:35:22 PM
Life with possibility of parole. I would never rule out parole. Gives the possibility to grant a second chance.
Perhaps if he gets plastic surgery and a new identity.
Quote from: garbon on July 10, 2013, 03:45:26 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 10, 2013, 03:35:22 PM
Life with possibility of parole. I would never rule out parole. Gives the possibility to grant a second chance.
Perhaps if he gets plastic surgery and a new identity.
Even with the possibility of parole, he won't be getting out in a very, very long time. By the time that he does, most people will have forgotten about what he did.
Quote from: merithyn on July 10, 2013, 03:46:30 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 10, 2013, 03:45:26 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 10, 2013, 03:35:22 PM
Life with possibility of parole. I would never rule out parole. Gives the possibility to grant a second chance.
Perhaps if he gets plastic surgery and a new identity.
Even with the possibility of parole, he won't be getting out in a very, very long time. By the time that he does, most people will have forgotten about what he did.
Our media doesn't generally let us forget things that it finds sensational.
Quote from: garbon on July 10, 2013, 03:49:34 PM
Our media doesn't generally let us forget things that it finds sensational.
True, but the emotional response will be fairly muted by then.
Quote from: garbon on July 10, 2013, 03:45:26 PM
Quote from: Zanza on July 10, 2013, 03:35:22 PM
Life with possibility of parole. I would never rule out parole. Gives the possibility to grant a second chance.
Perhaps if he gets plastic surgery and a new identity.
He would be in prison for decades, so if he was eventually released, he would be unrecognizable. Giving him a new identity could be part of his parole.
I voted life with the possibility of parole...but thinking about it he probably should die. If he does not it might lead certain people to believe actually following the laws and not kidnapping suspects and exporting them to third world countries to be tortured is being soft on terrorism or something.
This is one of those situations where the death penalty ought to be administered, I'd think.
Life without parole. Clearly sane, clearly malicious, clearly dangerous.
Life with possibility of parole.
Quote from: merithyn on July 10, 2013, 02:40:01 PM
I'm curious to see where things fall here. And does the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is only 19 factor into your decision at all?
life without parole. Death penalty will simply make him a martyr and won't serve justice anymore than prison. Spending a life behing bars vs a quick and easy out, no way.
Quote from: viper37 on July 10, 2013, 04:30:41 PM
Quote from: merithyn on July 10, 2013, 02:40:01 PM
I'm curious to see where things fall here. And does the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is only 19 factor into your decision at all?
life without parole. Death penalty will simply make him a martyr and won't serve justice anymore than prison. Spending a life behing bars vs a quick and easy out, no way.
By the time he gets the needle few people will remember what he did.
Death penalty!
I think that, after conviction but before sentencing, he should commit suicide by leaping out of the paddy wagon returning him to jail at highway speeds. Preferably while on a high bridge.
Quote from: grumbler on July 10, 2013, 04:53:03 PM
I think that, after conviction but before sentencing, he should commit suicide by leaping out of the paddy wagon returning him to jail at highway speeds. Preferably while on a high bridge.
What's in it for him?
Life, no possibility of parole.
Voted death, though life w/o parole would be fine, especially if it would be significantly more expensive to put him to death. Getting him to plead guilty to life w/o parole in exchange for avoiding the death penalty would be a good outcome.
Quote from: Kleves on July 10, 2013, 05:14:24 PM
Voted death, though life w/o parole would be fine, especially if it would be significantly more expensive to put him to death. Getting him to plead guilty to life w/o parole in exchange for avoiding the death penalty would be a good outcome.
How can life w/o parole be more expensive than death?
Quote from: Siege on July 10, 2013, 05:19:21 PM
Quote from: Kleves on July 10, 2013, 05:14:24 PM
Voted death, though life w/o parole would be fine, especially if it would be significantly more expensive to put him to death. Getting him to plead guilty to life w/o parole in exchange for avoiding the death penalty would be a good outcome.
How can life w/o parole be more expensive than death?
Cost of holding multiple appeals.
From what I've read of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (which hasn't been a lot) he sounds like Adolf Eichmann as Hannah Arendt described him; a follower, not a psychopath, not a genius and someone who would rather be a dead villain than a living nobody. Based on my understanding of him the harshest punishment would be life without parole, having him languish as a nobody in prison.
I don't think a parole board would ever parole Dzhokhar no matter how much he reformed; they don't usually on high profile cases. Life with and life without parole would amount to the same sentence.
The death penalty would give his life meaning (based on my understanding of him.) I voted for that, as I figured he may as well have a fulfilling life.
Quote from: Savonarola on July 10, 2013, 05:27:55 PM
The death penalty would give his life meaning (based on my understanding of him.) I voted for that, as I figured he may as well have a fulfilling life.
We don't need to do anything to fulfill his psychological needs. We also don't need to turn him into a martyr. Life without parole.
Based on the artist's sketches they showed on CNN there were some hotties in attendance at the arraignment.
Quote from: grumbler on July 10, 2013, 04:53:03 PM
I think that, after conviction but before sentencing, he should commit suicide by leaping out of the paddy wagon returning him to jail at highway speeds. Preferably while on a high bridge.
This is my favorite answer so far.
I personally don't care one way or the other how emotionally fulfilled such scumbags feel when they're sentenced to die. I just want them dead.
Quote from: DGuller on July 10, 2013, 05:56:10 PM
I personally don't care one way or the other how emotionally fulfilled such scumbags feel when they're sentenced to die. I just want them dead.
Yep.
Quote from: DGuller on July 10, 2013, 04:55:24 PM
Quote from: grumbler on July 10, 2013, 04:53:03 PM
I think that, after conviction but before sentencing, he should commit suicide by leaping out of the paddy wagon returning him to jail at highway speeds. Preferably while on a high bridge.
What's in it for him?
He'd make the movie that much cooler?
Quote from: derspiess on July 10, 2013, 05:59:06 PM
Quote from: DGuller on July 10, 2013, 05:56:10 PM
I personally don't care one way or the other how emotionally fulfilled such scumbags feel when they're sentenced to die. I just want them dead.
Yep.
:hmm: Now that I think about it, I want him to live until 120.
I don't really care how much longer he lives, as long as a) he never leaves prison, and b) he is left with little to do but contemplate his evil actions in his cell of woe. :)
Quote from: Caliga on July 10, 2013, 06:12:35 PM
I don't really care how much longer he lives, as long as a) he never leaves prison, and b) he is left with little to do but contemplate his evil actions in his cell of woe. :)
He'll correspond with like minded wackjobs and become convinced of the righteousness of his actions. I'd rather risk creating a martyr than that.
If found guilty, whatever the sentencing judge thinks is correct.
He's facing four murders, while he didn't pull the trigger on the dead police officer that doesn't matter when you're an accomplice and he's also legally responsible for all of the murders at the bombing even the ones not from the bomb he laid down because he was part of the criminal conspiracy. There is not really anyway I can see to anything less than life without the possibility of parole. I feel like there are a lot of people who are going to get life with no possibility of parole (or equivalent years sentence) who have never murdered anyone, and many who get such a sentence having only murdered one person. I don't see how equitably this guy could get anything less than life without parole.
Terrorism or bombing causing death I believe qualify as a Federal crime which is the only way he can get death, if he's sentenced in a Federal court I'm fine if the legal outcome is death penalty and I'm fine if he's ultimately only prosecuted in Massachusetts and ends up with just the life w/o parole.
Keep in mind Ariel Castro in Cleveland hasn't murdered anyone and there is a 100% chance he gets a sentence equivalent to life (i.e. hundreds of years incarceration with the parole formula meaning he has to serve hundreds of years before he's eligible, which is essentially life.)
Quote from: Caliga on July 10, 2013, 05:35:59 PM
We also don't need to turn him into a martyr.
:lol:
It is a foolish, foolish people whose strategy for dealing with these sorts of things is based on a million failed evil overlords. Take a page out of the book a real evil overlord: 'No man, no problem.'
My problem with Life w/o parole is that it could change 30 years from now.
Also, if western society collapse, he might become free and organize a militia in Montana called CUT - Church Universal and Triumphant and conquer Idaho and the Dakotas. His militiamen could will be the best heavy cavalry in the plains charging screaming "Cut, Cut, Cut!"
Death.
Quote from: Siege on July 10, 2013, 10:09:36 PM
My problem with Life w/o parole is that it could change 30 years from now.
Also, if western society collapse, he might become free and organize a militia in Montana called CUT - Church Universal and Triumphant and conquer Idaho and the Dakotas. His militiamen could will be the best heavy cavalry in the plains charging screaming "Cut, Cut, Cut!"
So could the Death penalty. We outlawed the death penalty once and everyone on death row was put in for life w/o parole. When the Death penalty was reinstated those people who previously had a death sentence and were now in for life were not put back on death row.
Nobody got the reference form the S.M. Stirling series, The Change.
ROTW - life w.o. parole. Because he deliberately tried to murder random civilians for the purpose of harming society. Why not the death penalty? (which I am not against) 1. It is cheaper to keep him in prison for life than it is to execute him. 2. It is a worse punishment which specifically denies him shaheed-hood. 3. It avoids sympathy for murderous terrorist scum. 4. The issue ends there rather than dragging out on appeal. 5. There are worse crimes out there and the death penalty does need to be reserved for the worst of the worst rather than the merely evil; if you execute too often the death penalty loses it's shock value on society and our enemies.
Lock em up, throw away the key.
Life in front of a firing squad.
Quote from: Siege on July 10, 2013, 10:46:19 PM
Nobody got the reference form the S.M. Stirling series, The Change.
That's because it was an extremely shitting book.
Quote from: Siege on July 10, 2013, 10:09:36 PM
My problem with Life w/o parole is that it could change 30 years from now.
Also, if western society collapse, he might become free and organize a militia in Montana called CUT - Church Universal and Triumphant and conquer Idaho and the Dakotas. His militiamen could will be the best heavy cavalry in the plains charging screaming "Cut, Cut, Cut!"
Unlikely the Montana militiamen will take their orders from a Turk.
Quote from: Malthus on July 10, 2013, 05:26:37 PM
Cost of holding multiple appeals.
Actually, I think it might be that the trial itself is so much more expensive if you're seeking death than if you're "just" trying to get life without parole. In this case, though, the trial is probably already going to cost a fortune, so there might not be any real cost-savings to seeking only life without parole.
Quote from: Siege on July 10, 2013, 10:09:36 PM
My problem with Life w/o parole is that it could change 30 years from now.
Also, if western society collapse, he might become free and organize a militia in Montana called CUT - Church Universal and Triumphant and conquer Idaho and the Dakotas. His militiamen could will be the best heavy cavalry in the plains charging screaming "Cut, Cut, Cut!"
He'll be old by then, and cut off from medicine will not survive.
It's guys like this that give Ted Kaczynski a bad name.
Reading the local papers and news this little monster was in court yesterday and there were a number of supporters! Wearing t-shirts with his picture, women fawning over him, or what ever else. They're infatuated with him or something.
Then Some saying there's no evidence! If there was any more evidence the police would have to build another vault to contain it all! One woman quoted in the paper came from Washington State to support him. I guess she's enjoying her vacation or something.
Bunch of hosers supporting this monster. I can't understand that, at, all.
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 09:41:21 AM
Reading the local papers and news this little monster was in court yesterday and there were a number of supporters! Wearing t-shirts with his picture, women fawning over him, or what ever else. They're infatuated with him or something.
Then Some saying there's no evidence! If there was any more evidence the police would have to build another vault to contain it all! One woman quoted in the paper came from Washington State to support him. I guess she's enjoying her vacation or something.
Bunch of hosers supporting this monster. I can't understand that, at, all.
I'd guess that it's denial. It's hard to look at that sweet-looking child and think "monster". I'm having a hard time with it, and I know that he is one. I keep trying to come up with reasons why he would do it that aren't his fault, anything to explain away his decisions.
The facts are, however, that he actively participated in mass murder and terror. Yes, he's young, but not so young as to not understand what his choices were. He deserves to be punished for his crimes no matter how young or how sweet he looks.
Sweet-looking?
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 09:50:23 AM
Sweet-looking?
That messed up hair look makes the ladies swoon.
He looks like terrorist to me.
No difference from the ones I have seen in the wild.
30+ years. It's hypothetically possible he could go Raskolnikov and realize that he did something completely horrible and terrifying when he's older. Without that, life. Frankly, I'm really sympathetic to the death penalty in this case, and don't think my opinion is more valid than the family of the victims.
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 09:50:23 AM
Sweet-looking?
He looks like a kid. Mostly because he is one, but yeah, that's most of it.
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 10:11:19 AM
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 09:50:23 AM
Sweet-looking?
He looks like a kid. Mostly because he is one, but yeah, that's most of it.
He looks like a 20-year old terrorist/murderer to me.
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 10:19:09 AM
He looks like a 20-year old terrorist/murderer to me.
Ahhhyup.
People who do bad things come in all shapes, looks and sizes, obviously. If he were ten years older he wouldn't have his baby face and no one would think twice about his looks to think whether they could consider him being a killer. He just happens to be young, but if he were young and ugly he'd likely not get the same sympathy.
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 10:36:09 AM
People who do bad things come in all shapes, looks and sizes, obviously. If he were ten years older he wouldn't have his baby face and no one would think twice about his looks to think whether they could consider him being a killer. He just happens to be young, but if he were young and ugly he'd likely not get the same sympathy.
:rolleyes: Yep, that's me - swayed by his pretty-boy looks.
Shockingly, Spellus isn't gushing about how he is the hottest terrorist ever. :hmm:
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 10:36:09 AM
People who do bad things come in all shapes, looks and sizes, obviously. If he were ten years older he wouldn't have his baby face and no one would think twice about his looks to think whether they could consider him being a killer. He just happens to be young, but if he were young and ugly he'd likely not get the same sympathy.
If he were 10 years older, I wouldn't be thinking, "Dear god, he's just a kid. How can he possibly have understood what he was doing?"
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2013, 10:44:43 AM
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 10:36:09 AM
People who do bad things come in all shapes, looks and sizes, obviously. If he were ten years older he wouldn't have his baby face and no one would think twice about his looks to think whether they could consider him being a killer. He just happens to be young, but if he were young and ugly he'd likely not get the same sympathy.
:rolleyes: Yep, that's me - swayed by his pretty-boy looks.
Shockingly, Spellus isn't gushing about how he is the hottest terrorist ever. :hmm:
Yeah well Marty has that one covered.
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2013, 10:44:43 AM
:rolleyes: Yep, that's me - swayed by his pretty-boy looks.
Must be a woman thing, then. Sorta similar to the Aaron Hernandez thing.
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 11:59:04 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2013, 10:44:43 AM
:rolleyes: Yep, that's me - swayed by his pretty-boy looks.
Must be a woman thing, then. Sorta similar to the Aaron Hernandez thing.
Aaron Hernandez is kinda hot but certainly not a "he looks sweet".
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 11:59:04 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2013, 10:44:43 AM
:rolleyes: Yep, that's me - swayed by his pretty-boy looks.
Must be a woman thing, then. Sorta similar to the Aaron Hernandez thing.
Aaron Hernandez is kinda hot but certainly not a "he looks sweet".
Hence the "sorta".
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 12:20:57 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 12:03:20 PM
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 11:59:04 AM
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2013, 10:44:43 AM
:rolleyes: Yep, that's me - swayed by his pretty-boy looks.
Must be a woman thing, then. Sorta similar to the Aaron Hernandez thing.
Aaron Hernandez is kinda hot but certainly not a "he looks sweet".
Hence the "sorta".
I guess sorta in the sense that they aren't really similar.
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 12:25:14 PM
I guess sorta in the sense that they aren't really similar.
:mellow:
They are similar in that the suspect's looks are apparently important enough to certain people that they feel the need to mention it almost as a mitigating factor in their guilt.
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 12:26:50 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 12:25:14 PM
I guess sorta in the sense that they aren't really similar.
:mellow:
They are similar in that the suspect's looks are apparently important enough to certain people that they feel the need to mention it almost as a mitigating factor in their guilt.
Oh well, I've not actually heard anyone say that re: Hernandez.
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 12:28:19 PM
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 12:26:50 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 12:25:14 PM
I guess sorta in the sense that they aren't really similar.
:mellow:
They are similar in that the suspect's looks are apparently important enough to certain people that they feel the need to mention it almost as a mitigating factor in their guilt.
Oh well, I've not actually heard anyone say that re: Hernandez.
Ah, you missed the link and/or thread.
Enjoy...
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/07/01/baffoe-lets-mock-people-attracted-to-aaron-hernandez/
ah, gotcha.
Dunno who Aaron Hernandez is, but again, it's not about how cute Tsarnaev looks or not. It's about how young he is. At least for me.
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 01:17:23 PM
Dunno who Aaron Hernandez is,
:huh: I thought you followed football.
Quotebut again, it's not about how cute Tsarnaev looks or not. It's about how young he is. At least for me.
Cute, sweet-looking-- same thing IMO.
I am pretty HOTT, but females and gays still give me shit over here.
Is it because I'm jewish?
Because I am definitively hotter than any muslim.
Quote from: derspiess on July 11, 2013, 01:28:06 PM
Cute, sweet-looking-- same thing IMO.
Maybe for Siege.
Quote from: Siege on July 11, 2013, 01:44:59 PM
Because I am definitively hotter than any muslim.
False.
Quote from: Siege on July 11, 2013, 09:55:30 AM
He looks like terrorist to me.
No difference from the ones I have seen in the wild.
He doesn't look a damn thing like Menachem Begin.
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2013, 02:53:04 PM
He doesn't look a damn thing like Menachem Begin.
Menachem Begin looked like a giant nerd. :)
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 01:17:23 PM
Dunno who Aaron Hernandez is, but again, it's not about how cute Tsarnaev looks or not. It's about how young he is. At least for me.
He plays for the Patriots. Also I think he might have killed some people.
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2013, 04:08:57 PM
He plays for the Patriots. Also I think he might have killed some people.
Oh, him. Didn't know he'd killed people. Suppose I should read up on that, eh?
According to my quick analysis of the 2012 sentencing guidelines, he's eligible for 190 years plus death.
Quote from: Scipio on July 11, 2013, 05:38:14 PM
According to my quick analysis of the 2012 sentencing guidelines, he's eligible for 190 years plus death.
Which one would he serve first?
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 05:28:29 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2013, 04:08:57 PM
He plays for the Patriots. Also I think he might have killed some people.
Oh, him. Didn't know he'd killed people. Suppose I should read up on that, eh?
That seemed kind of secondary compared to playing for the Patriots.
Quote from: Ed Anger on July 10, 2013, 03:28:38 PM
Torn apart by the Boston mob.
See that's thinking ED.
Make a reality TV show ala "Running Man". Put it on PPV and give the proceeds to the victims. Win Win really.
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2013, 05:42:29 PM
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 05:28:29 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2013, 04:08:57 PM
He plays for the Patriots. Also I think he might have killed some people.
Oh, him. Didn't know he'd killed people. Suppose I should read up on that, eh?
That seemed kind of secondary compared to playing for the Patriots.
Except that he doesn't play for the Patriots anymore.
Quote from: Scipio on July 11, 2013, 05:38:14 PM
According to my quick analysis of the 2012 sentencing guidelines, he's eligible for 190 years plus death.
So basically something close to copyright term.
;)
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 05:52:16 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2013, 05:42:29 PM
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 05:28:29 PM
Quote from: Razgovory on July 11, 2013, 04:08:57 PM
He plays for the Patriots. Also I think he might have killed some people.
Oh, him. Didn't know he'd killed people. Suppose I should read up on that, eh?
That seemed kind of secondary compared to playing for the Patriots.
Except that he doesn't play for the Patriots anymore.
EDIT: Why do I keep doing that?
Well we are off season. But you are right, they released him last month on account of this killing thingy. Tom Brady is still at large.
Quote from: 11B4V on July 11, 2013, 05:45:31 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on July 10, 2013, 03:28:38 PM
Torn apart by the Boston mob.
See that's thinking ED.
Make a reality TV show ala "Running Man". Put it on PPV and give the proceeds to the victims. Win Win really.
Or shove beer cans up his ass until he dies.
Quote from: Ed Anger on July 11, 2013, 06:00:29 PM
Quote from: 11B4V on July 11, 2013, 05:45:31 PM
Quote from: Ed Anger on July 10, 2013, 03:28:38 PM
Torn apart by the Boston mob.
See that's thinking ED.
Make a reality TV show ala "Running Man". Put it on PPV and give the proceeds to the victims. Win Win really.
Or shove beer cans up his ass until he dies.
Think of the one legged victims ED. That money from the show, would get them their new leg(s).
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 10:56:50 AM
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 10:36:09 AM
People who do bad things come in all shapes, looks and sizes, obviously. If he were ten years older he wouldn't have his baby face and no one would think twice about his looks to think whether they could consider him being a killer. He just happens to be young, but if he were young and ugly he'd likely not get the same sympathy.
If he were 10 years older, I wouldn't be thinking, "Dear god, he's just a kid. How can he possibly have understood what he was doing?"
I can understand that, his youth being a factor. But it's just one factor, he still planned and executed what he did. I have a hard time getting past that. His young age doesn't sway me. He's well old enough to have known what he was doing, and even being under the influence of someone else doesn't absolve him IMO. He didn't have to go along. He had everything. A good life, going to college, American friends, living well, government benefits. But he still wanted to go on this tear, to kill. Planned it all out with his brother, a horrid attack to kill and maim. Then bragged about it. In fact, given the heinous actions he's all the worse.
As for prison time. I don't figure he's going to reform, because as I said he already had everything going for him, a good life and all, but his intentions were quite otherwise.
Quote from: Habbaku on July 11, 2013, 10:44:43 AM
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 10:36:09 AM
People who do bad things come in all shapes, looks and sizes, obviously. If he were ten years older he wouldn't have his baby face and no one would think twice about his looks to think whether they could consider him being a killer. He just happens to be young, but if he were young and ugly he'd likely not get the same sympathy.
:rolleyes: Yep, that's me - swayed by his pretty-boy looks.
Shockingly, Spellus isn't gushing about how he is the hottest terrorist ever. :hmm:
Yeah Habs, I obviously wasn't talking about you. But many girls and women have commented on his looks and seem infatuated with him, forgetting or overlooking what he's alleged to have done, which was absolutely terrible. Some have said he's too young, so shouldn't have to spend the rest of his life wasting away in prison. I guess they should think about the eight year old boy and others he killed, plus those maimed whose lives are very much changed.
On a related note, a friend in work knew the family of the boy who was killed.
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 10:56:50 AM
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 10:36:09 AM
People who do bad things come in all shapes, looks and sizes, obviously. If he were ten years older he wouldn't have his baby face and no one would think twice about his looks to think whether they could consider him being a killer. He just happens to be young, but if he were young and ugly he'd likely not get the same sympathy.
If he were 10 years older, I wouldn't be thinking, "Dear god, he's just a kid. How can he possibly have understood what he was doing?"
Not in the eyes of the law. Perhaps his family should have raised him better.
Yeah, not sure I buy the age angle. Bombing a crowd does not qualify as a youthful indiscretion.
I just want to say that Meri's attitude in this thread is a good example of why it's absolutely ludicrous that an alledgedly advanced society lets women have a say in the making of laws.
Quote from: Neil on July 11, 2013, 08:02:44 PM
I just want to say that Meri's attitude in this thread is a good example of why it's absolutely ludicrous that an alledgedly advanced society lets women have a say in the making of laws.
BUT HE LOOKS SO SWEET
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
Its not like he's 15 years old. Send him to Rikers.
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
Read it again. "How can *he* possibly have undestood what he was doing?"
(BTW Meri, nice job not splitting the infinite. :ccr)
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 11, 2013, 08:10:56 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
Read it again. "How can *he* possibly have undestood what he was doing?"
(BTW Meri, nice job not splitting the infinite. :ccr)
Of course, I could just read this post of hers.
Quote from: merithyn on July 11, 2013, 09:46:04 AM
I'd guess that it's denial. It's hard to look at that sweet-looking child and think "monster". I'm having a hard time with it, and I know that he is one. I keep trying to come up with reasons why he would do it that aren't his fault, anything to explain away his decisions.
The facts are, however, that he actively participated in mass murder and terror. Yes, he's young, but not so young as to not understand what his choices were. He deserves to be punished for his crimes no matter how young or how sweet he looks.
:hmm:
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
It seemed like she was trying to say that he probably didn't understand what he was doing since he was so young and innoccent and whatnot. I'm just saying it's a bad idea for women to be allowed to vote, or sit in a legislature, or work certain types of responsible job.
Quote from: Neil on July 11, 2013, 08:14:37 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
It seemed like she was trying to say that he probably didn't understand what he was doing since he was so young and innoccent and whatnot. I'm just saying it's a bad idea for women to be allowed to vote, or sit in a legislature, or work certain types of responsible job.
That's why it is better to read what people have actually written rather than dreaming up what you think they are saying. :P
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:16:16 PM
Quote from: Neil on July 11, 2013, 08:14:37 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
It seemed like she was trying to say that he probably didn't understand what he was doing since he was so young and innoccent and whatnot. I'm just saying it's a bad idea for women to be allowed to vote, or sit in a legislature, or work certain types of responsible job.
That's why it is better to read what people have actually written rather than dreaming up what you think they are saying. :P
What would lead you to think that?
Women never say what they mean anyway.
"I'm not mad. Really."
Yeah, right.
I think he "should" get LWOP. The scare quotes meaning that I'm not making up my own fantasy-land American penal code; in a country where juveniles could until very recently get LWOP for committing burglary and robbery, and plenty of adults still do get life without parole under crazy "three strikes" laws, conspiring to commit a terrorist attack should pretty clearly get you the most severe punishment short of death. Probably if big bro were still around, I'd say he "should" get death, they way they split the difference with John Muhhamad ("DC Sniper").
If I were making up my own fantasy penal code, I'm not sure what I'd give the Tsarnaevs, since they're the rare case. Probably something close to the max in my scheme, life with parole review at various intervals; I don't know if you should ever be let out after doing something like this, but certainly the opportunity to earn privileges and improvements in condition of confinement (contact visits and more of them, furloughs and work release -- though probably not for most terrorism conspiracy crimes), should be part of a parole review. Or just straight to the firing squad for national enemies/irredeemable baddies (the Ideologue approach), and then a sensible and humane prison system for the rest of the penal system.
Quote from: KRonn on July 11, 2013, 07:46:33 PM
I can understand that, his youth being a factor. But it's just one factor, he still planned and executed what he did. I have a hard time getting past that. His young age doesn't sway me. He's well old enough to have known what he was doing, and even being under the influence of someone else doesn't absolve him IMO. He didn't have to go along. He had everything. A good life, going to college, American friends, living well, government benefits. But he still wanted to go on this tear, to kill. Planned it all out with his brother, a horrid attack to kill and maim. Then bragged about it. In fact, given the heinous actions he's all the worse.
As for prison time. I don't figure he's going to reform, because as I said he already had everything going for him, a good life and all, but his intentions were quite otherwise.
I understand that. I said that I have a hard time thinking monster when I see him, not that I don't get what he did.
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
I appreciate that you actually read what I post, g. :hug:
Quote from: merithyn on July 12, 2013, 12:17:30 AM
Quote from: garbon on July 11, 2013, 08:07:10 PM
I thought Meri was just saying that it is even harder for her to understand what he did given his age. I didn't think she was saying that he should get lenient treatment because of that.
I appreciate that you actually read what I post, g. :hug:
:hug:
Meri, stop being a weenie already. Goddamn.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on July 12, 2013, 06:15:27 AM
Meri, stop being a weenie already. Goddamn.
If you haven't figured out by now that I'm a weenie, you'll never learn. :P
I will always believe the best in people until proven otherwise, and even then, I'll hope that there's a good reason for why they acted that way. It's part of my charm. :D
So she gushes over that little Joker shit, but never bothers to give me the benefit of the doubt. Figures :glare:
Quote from: derspiess on July 12, 2013, 08:57:40 AM
So she gushes over that little Joker shit, but never bothers to give me the benefit of the doubt. Figures :glare:
You'd be amazed at how often I give you the benefit of the doubt, derspiess. I'm ever the optimist, no matter how many times I'm let down. :sleep:
I'm young-looking, maybe. Maybe that means that you should give me the benefit of the doubt.
Quote from: derspiess on July 12, 2013, 08:57:40 AM
So she gushes over that little Joker shit, but never bothers to give me the benefit of the doubt. Figures :glare:
Try being young and cute. :P
I'm old and cute. Does it count?
Quote from: Siege on July 12, 2013, 10:58:19 AM
I'm old and cute. Does it count?
Plz consult mechon-mamre.org
Siege, you aren't cute though. :(
I was once young but never cute. Was able to get by on... luck? :unsure:
So, this poll has 36 votes by Americans and only 18 by non-Americans. I blame Berkut and Seedy bullying all the Euros in the foreign policy discussions over the years.
I voted as an American. No one asked for photo ID.
Quote from: The Brain on July 12, 2013, 03:02:14 PM
I voted as an American. No one asked for photo ID.
:lol:
Quote from: The Brain on July 12, 2013, 03:02:14 PM
I voted as an American. No one asked for photo ID.
:lol:
:lol:
Wanna see my picture on the cover
Wanna buy five copies for my mother
Wanna see my smilin' face on:
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fl1.yimg.com%2Fbt%2Fapi%2Fres%2F1.2%2FrskTWmbCaeUR1ZmcZBfwng--%2FYXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9NTU5O2NyPTE7Y3c9OTkyO2R4PTA7ZHk9MDtmaT11bGNyb3A7aD0zNTY7cT04NTt3PTYzMA--%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fmedia.zenfs.com%2Fen_us%2Fgma%2Fgma%2FHT_rolling_stone_cover_Dzhokhar_Tsarnaev_thg_130717_v4x3_16x9_992.jpg&hash=a0b996dda8d4e9a4315d9bc5522f119e4e261b6d)
:lol:
Gotta admit the dude is very pretty.
Okay, Yi.
He looks like a gay. :)
No he doesn't.
Quote from: garbon on July 17, 2013, 03:32:15 PM
No he doesn't.
I dunno about you but I'm kind of an expert on gays so I respectfully disagree. :cool:
Quote from: Caliga on July 17, 2013, 03:35:00 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 17, 2013, 03:32:15 PM
No he doesn't.
I dunno about you but I'm kind of an expert on gays so I respectfully disagree. :cool:
Being a closeted homosexual doesn't make you and expert Cal :rolleyes:
Quote from: Caliga on July 17, 2013, 03:35:00 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 17, 2013, 03:32:15 PM
No he doesn't.
I dunno about you but I'm kind of an expert on gays so I respectfully disagree. :cool:
:lol:
Quote from: katmai on July 17, 2013, 03:44:52 PM
Quote from: Caliga on July 17, 2013, 03:35:00 PM
Quote from: garbon on July 17, 2013, 03:32:15 PM
No he doesn't.
I dunno about you but I'm kind of an expert on gays so I respectfully disagree. :cool:
Being a closeted homosexual doesn't make you and expert Cal :rolleyes:
Well I guess it could make him an expert on closet cases.
We should bring back crucifixion.
Quote from: Savonarola on July 17, 2013, 02:46:58 PM
Wanna see my picture on the cover
Wanna buy five copies for my mother
Wanna see my smilin' face on:
:lol:
Great song.
Pretty good, sure. I don't know about brilliant though. :hmm:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/17/boston_bomber_rolling_stone_cover_with_dzokhar_tsarnaev_is_good_journalism.html
Quote
Rolling Stone's Boston Bomber Cover Is Brilliant
By Mark Joseph Stern
Posted Wednesday, July 17, 2013, at 4:16 PM
Rolling Stone has unveiled its next cover, featuring a dreamy photo of Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and many people have erupted in outrage. Some critics say the image depicts Tsarnaev as a kind of celebrity; others believe it turns him into a martyr. Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick called the cover "out of taste," while CVS has banned the issue "out of respect for the victims of the attack and their loved ones." A smaller chain of New England stores is also boycotting the magazine for "glorify[ing] evil actions." Never mind that the picture itself once appeared on the front page of the New York Times; when Rolling Stone uses it, they're "tasteless," "trashy," and "exploitative."
As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple points out, the image is exploitative—but it isn't just exploitative: It's also smart, unnerving journalism. By depicting a terrorist as sweet and handsome rather than ugly and terrifying, Rolling Stone has subverted our expectations and hinted at a larger truth. The cover presents a stark contrast with our usual image of terrorists. It asks, "What did we expect to see in Tsarnaev? What did we hope to see?" The answer, most likely, is a monster, a brutish dolt with outward manifestations of evil. What we get instead, however, is the most alarming sight of all: a boy who looks like someone we might know.
Judging from the article itself, the image is disconcertingly apt. The story, a two-month investigative report by Janet Reitman, tracks Tsarnaev's tragic, dangerous path from a well-liked student to a monster, focusing on the increasing influence of radical Islam. (The headline on the cover suggests as much; those immediately outraged by the picture might do well to read the accompanying text.) That slide from likable teenager to troubled murderer is a potent narrative—and not a new one. Time magazine profiled the Columbine shooters through a similar lens, calling them "the monsters next door" on their cover and asking, "What made them do it?"
Few people complained, however, when the Columbine shooters graced the cover of Time, perhaps in part because that magazine is devoted primarily to news, whereas Rolling Stone devotes more space to music and culture. And it's certainly true that Rolling Stone's cover is prime celebrity real estate; many forget that the late Michael Hastings' explosive piece on General Stanley McChrystal was tucked in an issue featuring Lady Gaga on the cover.
But Rolling Stone has published several other terrific works of journalism, and its editors have stood by their cover. And they are right to do so. They are not "glorifying" anyone. Whatever "glory" this cover brings is more in line with infamy than celebrity; after all, the text of the cover describes him as "the bomber" and "a monster." Yes, the editors were surely aware that Tsarnaev has attracted a bizarre fan base of young women professing their crushes and asserting his innocence. But it's ridiculous to assume that the magazine was playing off his strange cult following—an assumption we would never make for Time or the New York Times.
We may want the media to reconfirm for us that psychopaths are crazed, nutty, creepy recluses whom we can easily identify and thus avoid. But, as this cover reminds us, that simply isn't the case. Some psychopaths point guns at cameras; others snap selfies in T-shirts. As Tsarnaev's many friends could attest, we aren't as good as we'd like to believe at spotting the evil beneath the surface.
Fucking Hippies.
Quote from: Malthus on July 10, 2013, 02:54:09 PM
I'm not in favour of the death penalty, so I voted life without parole.
Same.
QuoteSweet-looking?
He's a good looking guy.
I think that's an awful cover :bleeding:
Quote from: Sheilbh on July 17, 2013, 07:18:59 PM
QuoteSweet-looking?
He's a good looking guy.
Some people's taste in men...
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 17, 2013, 07:06:30 PM
Pretty good, sure. I don't know about brilliant though. :hmm:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/17/boston_bomber_rolling_stone_cover_with_dzokhar_tsarnaev_is_good_journalism.html
Quote
Rolling Stone's Boston Bomber Cover Is Brilliant
By Mark Joseph Stern
Posted Wednesday, July 17, 2013, at 4:16
As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple points out, the image is exploitative—but it isn't just exploitative: It's also smart, unnerving journalism. By depicting a terrorist as sweet and handsome rather than ugly and terrifying, Rolling Stone has subverted our expectations and hinted at a larger truth. The cover presents a stark contrast with our usual image of terrorists. It asks, "What did we expect to see in Tsarnaev? What did we hope to see?" The answer, most likely, is a monster, a brutish dolt with outward manifestations of evil. What we get instead, however, is the most alarming sight of all: a boy who looks like someone we might know.
Give me a break. That paragraph is the very definition of pseudo-intellectual relativism (or perhaps just cynical marketing hucksterism) masquerading as profundity.
This Rolling Stones story is being jumped on by everyone, stores refusing to sell the mag, people dropping their mag subscription. I hate the cover pic, makes the guy look too innocent but I guess that's the point of the story that tells of his slide into what he became. I don't think the story glorifies the guy, and it talks about how he became what he was. If so that's good to look into why he, or any person, becomes a radical type to the point of wanting to kill and carrying it out. But if the story is a fluff piece, putting a lot of blame on everyone and everything and less on the bomber and the radical ideology that creates such people, then screw RS.
Yeah, when even a leftie fruitfly like Lawrence O'Donnell totally trashes your ass, you've gone a bit off the cliff.
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on July 17, 2013, 10:33:12 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 17, 2013, 07:06:30 PM
Pretty good, sure. I don't know about brilliant though. :hmm:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/17/boston_bomber_rolling_stone_cover_with_dzokhar_tsarnaev_is_good_journalism.html
Quote
Rolling Stone's Boston Bomber Cover Is Brilliant
By Mark Joseph Stern
Posted Wednesday, July 17, 2013, at 4:16
As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple points out, the image is exploitative—but it isn't just exploitative: It's also smart, unnerving journalism. By depicting a terrorist as sweet and handsome rather than ugly and terrifying, Rolling Stone has subverted our expectations and hinted at a larger truth. The cover presents a stark contrast with our usual image of terrorists. It asks, "What did we expect to see in Tsarnaev? What did we hope to see?" The answer, most likely, is a monster, a brutish dolt with outward manifestations of evil. What we get instead, however, is the most alarming sight of all: a boy who looks like someone we might know.
Give me a break. That paragraph is the very definition of pseudo-intellectual relativism (or perhaps just cynical marketing hucksterism) masquerading as profundity.
Then it's an ideal story for Rolling Stone.
If I wrote the piece I'd make it into a Jihadist "Catcher in the Rye" and I'd call Dzhokhar "This Generation's Holden Caufield."
Quote from: Savonarola on July 18, 2013, 03:26:49 PM
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on July 17, 2013, 10:33:12 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 17, 2013, 07:06:30 PM
Pretty good, sure. I don't know about brilliant though. :hmm:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/17/boston_bomber_rolling_stone_cover_with_dzokhar_tsarnaev_is_good_journalism.html
Quote
Rolling Stone's Boston Bomber Cover Is Brilliant
By Mark Joseph Stern
Posted Wednesday, July 17, 2013, at 4:16
As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple points out, the image is exploitative—but it isn't just exploitative: It's also smart, unnerving journalism. By depicting a terrorist as sweet and handsome rather than ugly and terrifying, Rolling Stone has subverted our expectations and hinted at a larger truth. The cover presents a stark contrast with our usual image of terrorists. It asks, "What did we expect to see in Tsarnaev? What did we hope to see?" The answer, most likely, is a monster, a brutish dolt with outward manifestations of evil. What we get instead, however, is the most alarming sight of all: a boy who looks like someone we might know.
Give me a break. That paragraph is the very definition of pseudo-intellectual relativism (or perhaps just cynical marketing hucksterism) masquerading as profundity.
Then it's an ideal story for Rolling Stone.
If I wrote the piece I'd make it into a Jihadist "Catcher in the Rye" and I'd call Dzhokhar "This Generation's Holden Caufield."
But that's because you're the kind of person who writes Anne Franke furry slash fiction. :mad:
You say it like it's a bad thing?
Quote from: Barrister on July 18, 2013, 03:40:31 PM
But that's because you're the kind of person who writes Anne Franke furry slash fiction. :mad:
Creative?
But the cover was probably a good idea from Rolling Stone's perspective - it has people talking about Rolling Stone for the first time in a couple of decades...
I wonder how they got their hands on the pic.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 18, 2013, 03:58:23 PM
I wonder how they got their hands on the pic.
Sarcasm?
Quote from: Barrister on July 18, 2013, 04:09:09 PM
Sarcasm?
:unsure: No.
Is it CGI? If not, how did they get their hands on a pick of Bomber Boy looking all dreamy and Jim Morrison-like?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 18, 2013, 04:14:56 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 18, 2013, 04:09:09 PM
Sarcasm?
:unsure: No.
Is it CGI? If not, how did they get their hands on a pick of Bomber Boy looking all dreamy and Jim Morrison-like?
You don't have such pics of yourself?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 18, 2013, 04:14:56 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 18, 2013, 04:09:09 PM
Sarcasm?
:unsure: No.
Is it CGI? If not, how did they get their hands on a pick of Bomber Boy looking all dreamy and Jim Morrison-like?
Probably facebook or something. That pic was floating around before they put it on the cover.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/04/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-social-media-accounts/64400/
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-partied-gym-days-bombing-article-1.1322828
Actually that ny daily news cites it as coming from his twitter account.
Quote from: garbon on July 18, 2013, 04:20:58 PM
Actually that ny daily news cites it as coming from his twitter account.
Can I change my vote to death penalty?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on July 18, 2013, 04:14:56 PM
Quote from: Barrister on July 18, 2013, 04:09:09 PM
Sarcasm?
:unsure: No.
Is it CGI? If not, how did they get their hands on a pick of Bomber Boy looking all dreamy and Jim Morrison-like?
That picture has been used numerous times in coverage about Tsarnev. Here it is on the front cover of the NYT:
http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/05/06/a-bombers-page-one-selfie/
I think it was picked up off a 'social networking' site early on. There are few pictures out there at all of Tsarnev, and I know I've seen this one before.
RS did crop the pic to focus in on his face though.
Damn - too slow.
Quote from: Savonarola on July 18, 2013, 03:26:49 PM
Quote from: Pitiful Pathos on July 17, 2013, 10:33:12 PM
Quote from: jimmy olsen on July 17, 2013, 07:06:30 PM
Pretty good, sure. I don't know about brilliant though. :hmm:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/17/boston_bomber_rolling_stone_cover_with_dzokhar_tsarnaev_is_good_journalism.html
Quote
Rolling Stone's Boston Bomber Cover Is Brilliant
By Mark Joseph Stern
Posted Wednesday, July 17, 2013, at 4:16
As the Washington Post's Erik Wemple points out, the image is exploitative—but it isn't just exploitative: It's also smart, unnerving journalism. By depicting a terrorist as sweet and handsome rather than ugly and terrifying, Rolling Stone has subverted our expectations and hinted at a larger truth. The cover presents a stark contrast with our usual image of terrorists. It asks, "What did we expect to see in Tsarnaev? What did we hope to see?" The answer, most likely, is a monster, a brutish dolt with outward manifestations of evil. What we get instead, however, is the most alarming sight of all: a boy who looks like someone we might know.
Give me a break. That paragraph is the very definition of pseudo-intellectual relativism (or perhaps just cynical marketing hucksterism) masquerading as profundity.
Then it's an ideal story for Rolling Stone.
If I wrote the piece I'd make it into a Jihadist "Catcher in the Rye" and I'd call Dzhokhar "This Generation's Holden Caufield."
Yes. It's just sad (though not surprising) that WP dude and others buy into it though.
Quote from: Barrister on July 18, 2013, 03:40:31 PM
Quote from: Savonarola on July 18, 2013, 03:26:49 PM
If I wrote the piece I'd make it into a Jihadist "Catcher in the Rye" and I'd call Dzhokhar "This Generation's Holden Caufield."
But that's because you're the kind of person who writes Anne Franke furry slash fiction. :mad:
Well, yes, there is that. I see there is a Catcher in the Rye page on Fanfiction.net...
Before I go out I like to get cranked up on Monster. There's a shit load of energy drinks out there, but they don't do jack. I mean do you think that little bottle of red bull is going to give you wings like on TV? You couldn't fit a feather in that can. Well I got to the fridge and saw that my roommate drank my last Monster. He'd blame it on his girlfriend later if I said anything. He could be right; she's seems like the type who's going to be a crack whore someday. I mean she's nice and all, but she does a lot of drugs; a whole lot. I'll bet she chased her breakfast pint of vodka with my Monster. Tamerlan would have probably waited around and let him have it when he got back; but I was late anyway it didn't matter anymore.
Tamerlan's my brother; he's the one with the secret plan and all. He's a good guy, he doesn't smoke or drink and goes to the Mosque and all, but he gets angry sometimes. They even arrested him once after he slapped around his girlfriend. She was a total bitch and he said she had it coming for a long time. She told the cops that he only slapped her lightly so they let him go; lucky for her. I thought Tamerlan would have knocked her teeth right down her throat for some of the things she said.
I don't go to the mosque. Tamerlan goes to this really cool one where they talk about how screwed up the America is all the time but it's way across town. The one at the university is lame, it's filled with the sort of phony Muslim who pretends he's white and pretends he cares about peace. When I was young we used to go with my uncles to one where all the Iman's would talk about was giving alms and crap like that. They were all a bunch of phonies, driving big cars and stuff; like they really gave a crap about the poor. One of them told us boys that our Jihad should be against masturbation. That still cracks me up; I was going to start a web page about called Jihad against Jacking Off, but I never got around to it.
Anyhow I got down the steps and I realized I didn't have my gloves. Boston is cold as fuck this time of year, so I shoved them in my pocket and shivered a little as I went on my way. I turned back for a second and looked at the dorm; good old Pine Dale Hall. I wondered if I was going to see her again; not that it made any difference. I was about to flunk out anyway; classes just weren't going my way, plus I owed the university a butt load of money. That's the one unforgiveable sin at UMass. You can be dumb as fuck and still graduate but if you have a traffic ticket they're going to withhold your diploma.
Quote from: Savonarola on July 18, 2013, 03:26:49 PM
If I wrote the piece I'd make it into a Jihadist "Catcher in the Rye" and I'd call Dzhokhar "This Generation's Holden Caufield."
Holden A. Bomb.
QuoteU.S. prosecutors seek death for Boston Marathon bombing suspect
BOSTON — Federal prosecutors announced today that they will seek the death penalty against 20-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the Boston Marathon bombing, instantly raising the stakes in what could be one of the most wrenching trials the city has seen.
Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to press for Tsarnaev's execution was expected. The twin blasts killed three people and wounded more than 260 others, and 17 of the 30 federal charges against him — including using a weapon of mass destruction to kill — carry the possibility of the death penalty.
"The nature of the conduct at issue and the resultant harm compel this decision," Holder said in a statement.
Tsarnaev has pleaded not guilty. A trial date has not been set.
Prosecutors allege that Tsarnaev, then 19, and his 26-year-old brother — ethnic Chechens from Russia who had lived in the Boston area for about a decade — built and planted two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the marathon in April to retaliate against the U.S. for its military action in Muslim countries. The brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died in a shootout with police during a getaway attempt days after the bombing.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was wounded but escaped on foot. He was found hiding in a boat in a Boston suburb. Authorities have said he wrote about his motivation for the bombing on the inside of the boat.
"The US Government is killing our innocent civilians," "I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished," and "We Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all," he allegedly wrote.
The bombings stunned the nation, coming as runners crossed the finish line and friends, families and spectators cheered them on.
Killed were Martin Richard, 8; Krystle Campbell, 29, and Lu Lingzi, 23. At least 16 others lost limbs.
Tsarnaev also is charged in the slaying of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer and the carjacking of a motorist during the getaway attempt.
Tsarnaev's case has attracted a high-profile defense team, including Judy Clarke, a San Diego attorney who has negotiated plea agreements to spare her clients — Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph among them — the death penalty.
The Tsarnaev brothers had roots in the turbulent Russian regions of Dagestan and Chechnya, areas that have become recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists. The indictment alleges the brothers downloaded bomb-making instructions from an al-Qaida magazine and gathered material online about Islamic jihad and martyrdom.
Massachusetts abolished its state death penalty in 1984, and repeated efforts to reinstate it have failed. Tsarnaev is the third person in the state to be charged under the federal death penalty.
Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, 70 death penalty sentences have been imposed, but only three people have been executed, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 2001. Eight people have been taken off death row by a judicial or executive action, while 59 people remain on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
The last federal execution was in 2003, when Louis Jones Jr. was put to death for the kidnapping and murder of 19-year-old Army Pvt. Tracie McBride.
So will he get a plea deal, or will it be lethal injection for dear, deranged, Dzhokhar?
The prosecutor and the Governor will be torn apart if they accept a plea bargain. At least if it goes to trial they can blame him getting a lesser sentence on Cambridgeon liberals.
Quote from: Ed Anger on July 10, 2013, 03:28:38 PM
Torn apart by the Boston mob.
I changed my mind. Him and Tom Brady strapped together and then dropped from 200000 feet. With one of those parachutes filled with silverware.
Juice him.
The only sensible solution is that he be hanged by the neck until dead.
Guilty on all 30 counts
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/04/08/dzhokhar_tsarnaev_guilty_death_penalty_phase_next.html
QuoteDzhokhar Tsarnaev Guilty on All Counts; Jury Will Now Consider Death Penalty
By Ben Mathis-Lilley
After 11 hours of deliberations, a Massachusetts jury has found Dzhokhar Tsarnaev guilty on all 30 of the 30 federal charges against him relating to the bombing of the 2013 Boston Marathon, including all 17 counts that carry the death penalty. The same jury will now decide whether Tsarnaev should be executed after hearing testimony in a new trial phase that is likely to begin next week.
Tsarnaev's attorneys admitted immediately during the trial that he had helped carry out the marathon bombing, which killed three people. But the defense argued that Dzhokhar's brother, Tamerlan (who was killed while attempting, along with Dzhokhar, to evade capture), was more responsible for planning and carrying out their crimes, which seem to have been motivated by Islamic jihadi ideology.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will also be prosecuted in state court for the murder of MIT police officer Sean Collier three days after the bombing.
Nice, good to hear, well deserved. No surprise as the defense conceded that he was part of the attack. They were trying to avoid the death penalty by trying to say the older brother was the manipulator, but with the guilty on all 30 charges I assume that defense didn't fly very well with the jury. So maybe it also gives more impetus to the jury going with the DP.
I'm fairly confident that he will get the death penalty. He has never shown remorse or any indication that he feels he did wrong, and he did, after all, help kill a cop and, on his own, killed his brother.
I'd love for it to turn out that killing his brother was the straw that broke the camel's back and resulted in the DP.
As much as I am against the death penalty in principle, there's hardly doubt about guilt or complicity in this case.
Hang him high.
I wish you could do that with Behring Breivik too.
Lock him in a SuperMax. ADX Florence is the place for him. He can spend 23 hours a day in his cell trying get his hair all poofy.
Quote from: Ed Anger on April 09, 2015, 08:26:59 AM
Lock him in a SuperMax. ADX Florence is the place for him. He can spend 23 hours a day in his cell trying get his hair all poofy.
English, motherfucker, do you speak it?
Quote from: Martinus on April 09, 2015, 08:28:35 AM
Quote from: Ed Anger on April 09, 2015, 08:26:59 AM
Lock him in a SuperMax. ADX Florence is the place for him. He can spend 23 hours a day in his cell trying get his hair all poofy.
English, motherfucker, do you speak it?
Take the toejam out of your eyes.
Ok, explain to me what you said in the post I originally quoted. I didn't understand a word of it. :P
I'll be nice.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence
Good to hear from Mama Tsarnaev again. Was beginning to wonder what happened to her.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031354/America-real-terrorist-boys-best-Boston-Marathon-bombers-defiant-mother-rails-against-Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-s-guilty-verdict-bizarre-rant.html
Is America the real shoplifter too?
See, and this is the difference. Muslims are not the only ones who get insane mass murderers - but Breivik's father did not go on a rant defending his son and attacking the victims.
Quote from: Ed Anger on April 09, 2015, 08:26:59 AM
Lock him in a SuperMax. ADX Florence is the place for him. He can spend 23 hours a day in his cell trying get his hair all poofy.
Agree. That's a fate worse than death.
Quote from: derspiess on April 09, 2015, 08:48:06 AM
Good to hear from Mama Tsarnaev again. Was beginning to wonder what happened to her.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031354/America-real-terrorist-boys-best-Boston-Marathon-bombers-defiant-mother-rails-against-Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-s-guilty-verdict-bizarre-rant.html
Please tell me she doesn't have any other children. That bloodline needs to go extinct.
I already knew she was mentally ill. That was obvious when they first started interviewing her around the time of the bombings. Shocking she'd have crazy terrorist kids... :hmm:
Quote from: Ed Anger on April 09, 2015, 08:44:51 AM
I'll be nice.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence
:thumbsup:
Quote from: derspiess on April 09, 2015, 08:48:06 AM
Good to hear from Mama Tsarnaev again. Was beginning to wonder what happened to her.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031354/America-real-terrorist-boys-best-Boston-Marathon-bombers-defiant-mother-rails-against-Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-s-guilty-verdict-bizarre-rant.html
:huh: Spicey linking the Daily Fail? Fail journalism makes Fox journalism look respectable by comparison.
Quote from: Martinus on April 09, 2015, 08:56:01 AM
See, and this is the difference. Muslims are not the only ones who get insane mass murderers - but Breivik's father did not go on a rant defending his son and attacking the victims.
The Gates of Vienna did. Pamela Geller too.
Breivik's father was an absentee father. Breivik's mother was reported to child services for negligence. They lived in a posh neighbourhood, so those things "don't happen".
Breivik was a frustrated white male who could not hack it. And went full retard.
Quote from: grumbler on April 09, 2015, 09:23:14 AM
:huh: Spicey linking the Daily Fail? Fail journalism makes Fox journalism look respectable by comparison.
:nerd:
Quote from: Valmy on April 09, 2015, 09:08:06 AM
Please tell me she doesn't have any other children. That bloodline needs to go extinct.
Two daughters, both living in the US.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 09, 2015, 10:07:02 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 09, 2015, 09:08:06 AM
Please tell me she doesn't have any other children. That bloodline needs to go extinct.
Two daughters, both living in the US.
Damn.
Quote from: Valmy on April 09, 2015, 10:14:12 AM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 09, 2015, 10:07:02 AM
Quote from: Valmy on April 09, 2015, 09:08:06 AM
Please tell me she doesn't have any other children. That bloodline needs to go extinct.
Two daughters, both living in the US.
Damn.
You were supposed to ask if they are HOTT.
Crazy Russian Muslim chicks? Survey says: yes.
They were all headragged up when I saw them on the news, so hard to tell, but I don't think you should be filing for divorce quite yet.
One of the Tsarnaeva chicks looked cute. Then again Mama Tsnaraeva looked okay before she got older and started resembling Gru from Despicable Me.
Hey! Gru is a handsome dude.
Quote from: Valmy on April 09, 2015, 09:08:06 AM
Quote from: derspiess on April 09, 2015, 08:48:06 AM
Good to hear from Mama Tsarnaev again. Was beginning to wonder what happened to her.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031354/America-real-terrorist-boys-best-Boston-Marathon-bombers-defiant-mother-rails-against-Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-s-guilty-verdict-bizarre-rant.html
Please tell me she doesn't have any other children. That bloodline needs to go extinct.
The mother is wanted on some charges, larceny I think. She's apparently the one who really helped radicalize her sons. Such a nice family.
They were living here, came as refugees and getting all kinds of govt. assistance, being well treated and given a chance to have a life. The younger brother Joker, aka Flash Bang, just found guilty, was going to school courtesy of taxpayers. His older brother Speed Bump (run over by Flash hence the nick) was married with a kid (the wife, such a lucky gal). They traveled back to the country they were refugees from a few times, probably to train and get more radicalized. Russians and Saudis gave warnings about them.
It's also thought that Speed Bump was responsible for some other unsolved murders prior to the Marathon attack.
At the trial it was apparently pretty gruesome when photos and descriptions were given about the victims, some just kids.
I hope the court goes with the DP. I don't always favor the DP but in cases like this it's well deserved. Then also, I don't want to see this guy be some kind of prison celebrity, with his female followers, prison bride and all that BS.
Quote from: derspiess on April 09, 2015, 10:37:33 AM
One of the Tsarnaeva chicks looked cute. Then again Mama Tsnaraeva looked okay before she got older and started resembling Gru from Despicable Me.
https://www.google.com/search?q=tsarnaev+sisters&sa=X&biw=1429&bih=923&tbm=isch&imgil=ToN7tV70m2nxqM%253A%253BloqksEVGAfN3jM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.nationalreview.com%25252Farticle%25252F386925%25252Fdeport-tsarnaev-sisters-michelle-malkin&source=iu&pf=m&fir=ToN7tV70m2nxqM%253A%252CloqksEVGAfN3jM%252C_&usg=__ngOKrsAwEELlKJj1aHtK7d9QUzA%3D&dpr=0.9&ved=0CCkQyjc&ei=KKEmVczxIYreoASA84GADA#imgrc=ToN7tV70m2nxqM%253A%3BloqksEVGAfN3jM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fc10.nrostatic.com%252Fsites%252Fdefault%252Ffiles%252Fuploaded%252Fpic_related2_090314_Tsarnaev-Sisters.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.nationalreview.com%252Farticle%252F386925%252Fdeport-tsarnaev-sisters-michelle-malkin%3B600%3B600
Yea, one is definitely hott, the other looks like a duck.
Quote from: grumbler on April 09, 2015, 09:23:14 AM
Quote from: derspiess on April 09, 2015, 08:48:06 AM
Good to hear from Mama Tsarnaev again. Was beginning to wonder what happened to her.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031354/America-real-terrorist-boys-best-Boston-Marathon-bombers-defiant-mother-rails-against-Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-s-guilty-verdict-bizarre-rant.html
:huh: Spicey linking the Daily Fail? Fail journalism makes Fox journalism look respectable by comparison.
Daily Mail makes decent sports journalism. But that's it.
And the extent towards "decent" they have.
Yi demonstrates once again that his taste in women is bent.
The widow of the older brother is okay-looking. The sisters are NOTT
Quote from: Norgy on April 09, 2015, 11:00:54 AM
Daily Mail makes decent sports journalism. But that's it.
And the extent towards "decent" they have.
I can see how their style may fit with sports journalism. It's always so breathless, and everything is always of the utmost importance (except honesty). For sports, that enthusiasm could easily work.
Speed Bump :lol:
Since I follow soccer in England, I read a lot of British news websites. Surprisingly, the best one at soccer is The Guardian, because it's proper journalism. Of course, this is my opinion and nothing else. I'd rank them 1) Guardian 2) The beeb 3) The Mirror 4) Daily Wail 5) The Sun
Some are just rumour merchants and on the wind up.
There's a lot of money to be made for agents when it comes to transfers, so I suspect some papers just print what an agent would want.
The Guardian also has The Fiver. Which makes for hilarity once a week.
Quote from: grumbler on April 09, 2015, 11:02:03 AM
Yi demonstrates once again that his taste in women is bent.
The widow of the older brother is okay-looking. The sisters are NOTT
He likes unibrows
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oddee.com%2F_media%2Fimgs%2Farticles2%2Fa98293_rsz_man_unibrow.jpg&hash=5027e7dc1e8006cef7705c8ad8c171250921fd54)
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.sodahead.com%2Fpolls%2F004044149%2F4420225797_unibrow_answer_1_xlarge.jpeg&hash=e73b6f16a6c06bd0d679b96d7b9ad9384dd91085)
Quote from: 11B4V on April 09, 2015, 08:39:27 PM
Quote from: grumbler on April 09, 2015, 11:02:03 AM
Yi demonstrates once again that his taste in women is bent.
The widow of the older brother is okay-looking. The sisters are NOTT
He likes unibrows
Squeelus had a unibrow phrase here on Languish a while back.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fc10.nrostatic.com%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fuploaded%2Fpic_related2_090314_Tsarnaev-Sisters.jpg&hash=f198b53244361605df3a5da6865229ade25ec1e2)
No unibrow here.
That's a better-looking picture of Bella than i had seen. I withdraw my accusations against Yi. Still not hawt, but not ugly, either.
Had to judge her without seeing her hair. I for one am very interested in that feature when it comes to chicks.
Hair is optional.
Shocking to hear that coming from you.
Quote from: Caliga on April 10, 2015, 06:53:34 AM
Had to judge her without seeing her hair. I for one am very interested in that feature when it comes to chicks.
it's long and black.
Bella is pretty hot, not matter what old man grumble says.
Five years ago I wouldn't have given this any credence, but I've seen way too much police malfeasance for me to just dismiss it. Not that I believe her, just saying if it turned out to be true I wouldn't be surprised.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2015/04/death_of_ibragim_todashev_why_did_the_fbi_kill_tamerlan_tsarnaev_s_friend.single.html
Quote
Excerpted from The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, by Masha Gessen, published on Tuesday by Riverhead.
Elena Teyer thought it was only slightly odd when her daughter, Reni, converted to Islam. That is, covering herself was a strange choice for a beautiful young woman with long thin legs. Riding her motorcycle in that getup could not have been comfortable, either. Other than the dress, though, converting seemed to have been easy for Reni, perhaps because her decision was driven primarily by love. She had fallen for a Chechen mixed martial artist, Ibragim Todashev, who moved from Boston to Atlanta to live with her; they married in July of 2010, after knowing each other a few months.
The union was not an easy one—Ibragim had trouble finding a job and Reni tired of supporting him while he did nothing but what she called the "brainless sports" in which he competed. They moved to Orlando, thinking that the Chechen community there would make it easier for him to find work, only to split up instead. Reni moved back to Atlanta, and subsequently they made up and split up and made up again, eventually settling into a comfortable pattern of talking on the phone every day and spending every other weekend or so together.
Advertisement
Despite the couple's difficulties, the marriage and Reni's conversion had seemed logical to Elena: Ever since they moved to the United States from Russia, Reni had been in search of an identity, and if she had now found one through the love of a good man, so much the better.
Elena's own story contained perhaps too little love, too few good men, and too much change. She was one of those Russian women who rely on no one but themselves. The Soviet Union collapsed while she was still in college, making her one of the millions who had to make their way without their parents' help or guidance. Elena became a restaurant manager. She did well, raising two kids on her own. In 2004, she started corresponding with an American man. Within two years, 35-year-old Elena and her children moved to Atlanta to live with him, but the marriage lasted less than six months. She wanted to go back to Russia with her children, but three tickets would have cost nearly $3,000 and she could not imagine getting that kind of money. A local Orthodox church helped her rent a tiny basement apartment. Elena found a job as an on-call waitress for a catering business, then worked her way up to maître d' at a fancy hotel restaurant. Two years after arriving in the U.S., she was making enough to pay rent on a good apartment and cover expenses. But she had no health insurance, and her permanent-resident status could be revoked now that she was no longer married to an American citizen. Elena was no stranger to hardship, but the uncertainty was starting to feel like too great a burden.
Someone mentioned that the U.S. Army was hiring. Elena failed the test administered at the recruitment office; her English was not up to par. But the recruitment officer gave useful advice on how to study for the test and—even better—told her that an English-language course for prospective recruits would be opening up soon.
Elena left the kids in Atlanta—by this time her daughter had graduated from high school and could be trusted to look after her teenage brother—and went to a base in Texas for the course. It was like English-as-a-second-language basic training. The students had to rise at 4 a.m., dress in uniforms, and stand in formation in the quad before spending the day studying English. Elena loved it. Giving up your personal freedom at the age of 38 is hard, as is getting up at 4 every day—but things had been difficult her whole life. What they had not been was fair. The Army offered a clear, transparent, and fair deal: Elena gave over her mind and body in exchange for training, job security, medical insurance, and American citizenship for her and her kids. Both partners paid up front. Then she would be set; there would be retirement benefits, too. Honesty and openness are inherently seductive qualities, especially for people who have rarely encountered them. Elena became a patriot of the United States.
She completed the English course, then eight weeks of basic training in San Antonio. She served in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for 2½ years, then transferred to Germany; only her son, Alex, then 15, went with her. Her daughter was 20 by then, too old to be dragged around by her mother. Elena wished she had commenced the dragging around a bit earlier, in fact: Alex, who was 11 when they came to America, was doing very well. He was growing up American, while his sister, formerly called Nyusha, seemed to be struggling. While Elena was away for her initial military training in Texas, Nyusha legally changed her name to Reniya Manukyan, taking the last name of a family friend of Armenian descent who she believed was her biological father, despite Elena's denials. Reni began referring to herself as not Russian but Armenian, and even taught herself the language. She had the ability and perseverance for these kinds of feats.
Although Elena continued to call her daughter Nyusha, she got it: The girl was looking for somebody to be. The conversion to Islam a couple of years later was the product of the same need. Reni took things a bit far when she tried reprimanding her mother for her insufficiently modest dress; Elena was not one to be told what to wear, except when she was at work in the Army. But Elena liked Ibragim. He was gentle, and he had been through a lot: fleeing the war in Chechnya with his family as a child; growing up in Saratov, a Russian city on the Volga, as an ethnic Other; returning to Chechnya when it was still in shambles. Ibragim returned to Saratov to attend college—he had studied to be a translator from English—and had come to the U.S. on a work-study program before what would have been his last year of college. He had stayed, getting political asylum. His family back in Chechnya was doing well—his father had a high-level job with the new administration—but most of the prospering had come after Ibragim left. Elena saw him as a boy alone in a strange country, and she had a pretty good idea of what that felt like. She was happy to accept him fully into her family, as long as he finally got a job and stopped relying on her daughter, who worked two.
Elena herself felt like she was finally settling into a good life. After two years in Germany, she requested a transfer to Georgia: She had spent only a few years in Atlanta, but she felt like the city was home, and Reni was there. She and 17-year-old Alex returned to Georgia in March 2013. She was now based at Fort Stewart, 230 miles southeast of Atlanta, and immediately set about house-hunting in Savannah, the beautiful historic town about 40 minutes away, toward the coast. A month later, she was closing on her first house. The date was April 15, 2013, the day of the Boston Marathon bombing.
* * *
At 2:49 p.m. that afternoon, two homemade bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 264 others. The bombs were planted by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, 19. A manhunt for the brothers ensued; it would span more than 36 hours and stretch across the city. By the time it was over, Tamerlan was dead and Dzhokhar had been captured.
Elena did not begin to grasp the impact of the Boston bombings until two weeks after they happened, when her daughter was detained at the airport on the way home from a visit to Russia for a cousin's wedding. Reni told her mother that Ibragim had been questioned and said that the FBI was following him everywhere he went.
Like Ibragim, the Tsarnaevs were Chechen immigrants. They had been living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for a decade. The Chechen community in the Boston area was small, and Tamerlan and Ibragim had grown friendly when Ibragim lived there. Now, Ibragim told Reni, all the Chechens in Boston and Orlando were getting dragged in for questioning.
On May 10, when Ibragim came to see Elena in Savannah, he struck Elena as depressed. She was also surprised to see he was still limping, ostensibly a consequence of a knee operation back in March. It might in fact have been the result of a fight he'd had in an Orlando parking lot a few days earlier.
Around 7:30 p.m. on May 21, two FBI agents knocked on Elena's door. "What's our fools' psychology?" she ranted to me a year later. "If we haven't done anything wrong, we fear nothing. I even kept telling them they were doing good for the country." Obviously, she let them into her house.
"They spent two hours asking me the same questions over and over again: Did they sleep together? Did they sleep on the couch together when they spent the night at my place? How religious was he? Did he abuse her? I told them that if anyone had so much as touched my baby in a bad way, I would have killed them. That's exactly what I said." That is easy to believe. Elena is a large, shapely woman with long blond hair—the very image of an all-powerful Russian matriarch, as well as of the ideal Russian mail-order bride, and the very opposite of her own daughter, who is slight, dark-haired, and soft-spoken.
After a couple of hours of circular questioning, Elena asked the agents to leave. She called her daughter.
"I just had a visit from them," said Elena.
"So did I."
Elena tried calling Ibragim, but he did not pick up.
* * *
Elena had a training session the next morning. She could not pick up when her daughter called or when an unknown number began showing up on her phone every few minutes. She finally picked up when the training ended, around 7:30 a.m.
"Hello. We were at your house last night."
This was when she lost her cool. "You are going to start calling me at work now? I told you everything yesterday. I have nothing else to say to you."
"We have something to tell you. Ibragim Todashev died of gunshot wounds this morning."
Elena hung up and called her daughter. Reni was screaming into the phone: "Mama, they've killed him!"
"Then I knew that they weren't kidding," Elena told me. She rushed to do the paperwork for an emergency leave; her commanding officer was understanding, but bolting from work at an Army base still requires a lengthy bureaucratic procedure. Meanwhile, the two FBI agents from the evening before came by.
"You don't have to worry about your children," said the one who usually did the talking. "Your family is safe."
"Why? Why?" Elena remembers screaming, meaning, Why was Ibragim killed?
"He became aggressive," the agent told her.
"What are you telling me that my children are safe for when you just killed one of them? Look at me—I'm being aggressive now, too. Are you going to kill me?"
What Elena remembers the FBI agent doing next is this: "He placed his foot up on the chair right next to where I was sitting, and he hiked his pant leg up. He had a gun strapped to his shin. He said, 'If you touch my gun now, my partner can kill you. He has that right.' The gun was just about level with my face. It's a good thing I didn't reach for it then. Or I wouldn't be talking to you today."
* * *
What exactly Ibragim Todashev did to get himself killed was not clear then and is not clear now. By the day of his death, he had been what the FBI called "interviewed" three times. The first time, on April 20, began with Ibragim on the ground on his Orlando condo complex's bucolic lawn, with armed men crowded around him: This was the manner in which the FBI first ID'd him, though he was never arrested and all his conversations with the FBI were, technically, voluntary. From that point on, he was under constant overt surveillance. In addition, the FBI took all of his electronics, returning them a day later. At least at some points, the FBI appears to have had a drone follow him. And on May 16, his girlfriend, Tatiana Gruzdeva, was arrested.
The other women in Ibragim's life seem to have had varying levels of awareness of Tatiana's existence: Elena thought Tatiana was Ibragim's roommate, and Reni thought she was the girlfriend of Ibragim's best friend, Khusein Taramov. In any case, Tatiana was arrested for alleged visa violations, leaving Ibragim living in the apartment alone.
On May 21, Ibragim got a call from the FBI agent he had seen a few times over the preceding month. He said that a group of agents from Boston had come to Orlando and wanted to talk to Ibragim—and that this would be the last interview. Ibragim still did not want to make the trek downtown to the FBI offices, so the agents agreed to come to him. He wanted to meet at a hookah bar; they eventually settled on talking in his apartment. Ibragim was apparently scared of the FBI at this point: He asked Khusein, who was also from Chechnya, to come to his place and stay there during the interview.
The team from Boston consisted of one FBI agent and two state troopers. A Justice Department report later described them as a homicide team. They were in Orlando to investigate a triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts, in September 2011, in which Tamerlan Tsarnaev's best friend from high school, Brendan Mess, and two other men were killed.
Ibragim had been in Boston the summer of 2011, working as a van driver for an adult day care center after Reni demanded he find a way to make money. According to the law enforcement narrative that eventually emerged, Ibragim helped Tamerlan carry out the murders, then fled the city.
Reni told me Ibragim had actually left Boston earlier and was not there on Sept. 11, the day the three men were murdered. She said she could see that from the records of their joint checking account: The charges Ibragim was making using his debit card showed he was elsewhere. Reni has the kind of memory and attention to detail that make her quite certain of things like this. But the bank, she said, had already deleted records for 2011 by the time she tried to get proof of Ibragim's alibi.
* * *
Ibragim's friend Khusein was not allowed to be in the apartment during the interview; a Florida FBI agent kept him in the parking lot, talking. Ibragim lived in one of those Orlando planned communities that look like they have been airlifted from a place that never existed. The condos are small vertical affairs, but each has its own entrance and two levels. The facades are a combination of cheap texture paint and equally cheap siding, but the backs feature double- height windows and sliding doors that open onto a lake with bridges and a fountain. Khusein and the Florida FBI agent stayed in the working-class front; Ibragim spent his last hours sitting by the sliding door, looking out onto the aspirational back. At 7:30 p.m., the homicide team from Massachusetts began questioning Ibragim, just as the FBI agents in Atlanta and Savannah began questioning Reni and Elena. After the interviews in Georgia ended, the one in Florida went on—and on.
According to the report, around 10:30 Ibragim slowly began confessing to having been Tamerlan's accomplice in the triple murder. In another hour, he agreed to write a statement about it. Around midnight, one of the state troopers went out to the parking lot to get Ibragim's phone from Khusein. While he was out of the building, something happened. Early reports had the remaining two officers saying, variously, that Ibragim had grabbed a broomstick and charged the officers with it, and that he had run to the kitchen area to grab a knife. The final official report said that Ibragim jumped up from the mattress on which he had been sitting composing his confession, threw a coffee table up in the air, knocked the FBI agent out of his chair, ran into the kitchen area, grabbed a metal utility pole, raised it over his head with both hands, and charged the trooper, who raised his hands to his face to protect it. The FBI agent fired seven shots at Ibragim, killing him.
When she was at last able to leave the base, Elena drove to Savannah to change into civilian clothing. Then she drove the 250 miles to Atlanta, straight to the Holiday Inn where Reni worked as an assistant housekeeper. Reni was in one of the hotel rooms with the FBI agents and her manager; she was afraid to be alone with the agents. That afternoon Elena drove her daughter the 400-plus miles down to Orlando. Reni's phone kept ringing, and she kept trying to tell people what she knew but finding herself unable to speak. She'd cried and screamed so much that morning that she still had not regained her voice. She phoned Ibragim's mother, whom she called Mama. "Mama, they have killed him." In Orlando, they met up with Khusein, who told them what he knew. They drove to the medical examiner's office. "When I asked them how many bullets," Reni told me, "I sure didn't expect to hear that kind of number. I fell facedown on a table and I wailed. I said, 'I want to see the body.'—'Are you sure?'—'I'm sure.' They wheeled him in on a gurney, he had a sheet covering him up to his neck. They had us standing on the side where you couldn't really see the wounds. His eyes were still open, and they were this murky gray color. His upper jaw looked clenched but the mouth was slightly open. And I started saying, 'Mama, why isn't he getting up? When has this ever happened that we are all standing around him and he is not getting up?' It was like I knew everything but I couldn't believe anything."
* * *
On March 25, 2014 —10 months after Ibragim Todashev's death—the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and a Florida state attorney, Jeffrey Ashton, released separate reports, both of which concluded that the FBI agent who shot Ibragim had acted in self-defense and in defense of the state trooper, and that his actions had been justified.
The 161-page Florida report included detailed interviews with the FBI agents and the Massachusetts policemen as well as neighbors who had noticed something going on in Todashev's apartment during the wee hours of the interview. The image of Ibragim that emerges from the report is radically different from the image that Elena paints of a gentle, innocent man; in the document he is frightening. More to the point, the officers were frightened of him. Before traveling to Florida they had viewed five videos of Ibragim's fights, studied the physical traces the fights had left on his body— his broken nose and the "cauliflower ears" deformed from being repeatedly boxed. The fights they watched are indeed scary: Filmed in poor lighting, from below, they show lithe, extremely muscular men attacking each other in a cage-like ring. The men wear shorts, boxing gloves, and nothing else, and what they do to each other looks as fierce as a street brawl. In one of the videos, Ibragim is knocked to the ground at the very beginning, then pounded by his opponent, but around minute three gets up as though possessed of some superhuman power—and the fight goes on for a couple of minutes more, until he loses.
The officers also viewed a video of the May 4 fight in the Orlando parking lot that had led to Ibragim's arrest, his second. Ibragim had already been under surveillance for two weeks. The Florida FBI agents filmed him beating up two men until the police arrived. Ibragim, for his part, knew he was being watched, if not filmed. The agents who showed their Massachusetts colleagues the video also explained that they had interviewed people at the gym where Ibragim trained and had been told "they thought he might be retarded, ah, because of the level of force and, ah, injuries that he was taking and he wouldn't submit."
The officers were scared going in, but the interview went better than they could have expected. The report included text messages sent and received by one of the state troopers.
"He signed Miranda. About to tell is [sic] his involvement," he wrote at 10:28.
"Amazing," someone responded a minute later. An hour and 20 minutes later—4½ hours into the interview—the trooper grew positively giddy.
"Okay he's writing a statement now in his apt," he wrote at 11:53.
And two minutes later: "Whos your daddy." And immediately after: "Whos your daddy." And: "???"
And half a minute later: "Getting confession as we speak."
In seven minutes, his mood shifted drastically. He texted the FBI agent and the other trooper: "Be on guard. He is in vulnerable position to do something bad. Be on guard now. I see him looking around at times."
In another minute, whatever it was that happened that night began happening. Ibragim had stopped writing the confession and had gotten up. The trooper, who had gone from giddy to worried, was now apparently so terrified that he fumbled with his holster. The FBI agent shot Ibragim three times, and he went down. Then the trooper saw exactly what he had seen in one of those fight videos: Ibragim, wounded and bleeding, rose again, like some sort of deathless monster. The FBI agent fired four more shots, one of them hitting Ibragim in the top of the head and three of them hitting him in the back.
The Florida report included a screenshot of the trooper's phone with the text messages, but the messages following his warning one—"Be on guard"—were redacted, covered with rectangular bars applied to the graphic. A blogger then used simple decryption techniques to remove the bars and reveal the messages. (Several journalists successfully repeated the trick.) The next message the trooper sent to his fellow officers—the other trooper and the Massachusetts FBI agent—went out the evening of May 22, 19 hours after Ibragim died:
"Well done this week man well done joy some time at home and in will talk soon."
A minute later: "That was supposed to say well done men we all got through it and are now heading home. Great work."
he un-redacting of the report also revealed the name of the FBI agent who shot Ibragim—and the Boston Globe then meticulously verified his identity. He was Aaron McFarlane, he was 41 years old, and he had been with the FBI since 2008. Before that, he had been a police officer in Oakland, California. While there, he was accused of falsifying a police report, and the Oakland Police Department was sued twice by former suspects who claimed he had physically assaulted them. The Oakland police settled each of the lawsuits for $32,500, and McFarlane left in 2004, with a lifetime annual pension of $52,000.
Of course they sent a killer to interview Ibragim, thought Elena. And look at those text messages in which they congratulate each other for killing him! Her view of America had changed radically in the months that passed between Ibragim's death and the publication of the text messages and information about FBI Agent McFarlane.
Elena returned to Fort Stewart in late June 2013, after Reni finally left for Chechnya with Ibragim's body. There had been a month of paperwork delays, and then an airline had to be found that would allow Ibragim's body on board. Eventually, the Russian carrier Aeroflot agreed to fly the casket. Elena's emergency leave had lasted a month. On June 26, she told me, she was at a doctor's appointment on base when two sergeants from her unit came to fetch her. "They took me somewhere. A woman came out and, without introducing herself, started to search me and told me to hand over my phone and keys. She said, 'You can't take anything with you if you are going inside.' I said, 'I'm not planning to go anywhere, at least not alone.' One of the escorts, a female sergeant, said she'd go in with me, so she was also frisked. When we went in, I saw one of the agents who came to my house before. He said, 'We have received information that you are planning to buy a gun and shoot FBI agents.' I said, 'Tell me, is it illegal to have a gun in the house?'—'No.'—'OK, that's the only question I have for you, and I have no answers for you anyway.' " The agent did not try to keep her in the room.
Elena told me she had never owned a gun and had no desire to have one.
Three weeks later, the agent called again. Elena hung up as soon as he introduced himself, then recorded his number in her phone as "Terrorist." But he did not call again.
In another month, Elena's commanding officer summoned her to inform her, apologetically, that the FBI had flagged her as being under investigation. She would be placed on indefinite paid leave: She could neither carry out her work duties in the military nor be reassigned or promoted as long as she was so "flagged." The next day, Elena accepted a medical discharge from the Army. She was now 44, retired, and, she felt, a lot wiser than she had been a few months earlier.
America's promise of fairness, openness, and honesty had turned out to be a ruse, she concluded. It was not a better country than Russia; it was just a better liar. Elena had grown up and begun raising her own children in a country that was capable of anything: bombing its own cities out of existence, as it did with Grozny in 1995 and 1999; blowing up more than three hundred people in order to secure an election, as it did in 1999; killing its own citizens abroad and endangering dozens of lives in the process, as it did with a former secret agent in London in 2006. America had said it would be different—its laws were firm, its courts were fair, and its respect for human life was absolute. Nothing in Elena's lived experience had taught her that a country could really be like that, but as both an immigrant and a new Army recruit, she had accepted the premise enthusiastically.
But the minute she heard her daughter screaming into the phone—"Mama, they killed him!"—she knew she had been fooled. The same rules applied in this country as in the old one. The secret police killed people when they wanted to; a reason could always be found later. The secret police could and would engineer tragedies to their own ends, or to the government's; someone to blame could always be found later.
Elena became part of the online community of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's defenders. The many online groups, with a combined membership in the thousands, were an odd conglomeration of left-wing doubters, right-wing conspiracy theorists, young women with crushes on Dzhokhar, and, increasingly, middle-aged women aghast at the too-apparent barbarity of keeping a young man alive in order to kill him after a trial with a preordained outcome. Elena fit in well among them, and the story of the killing of Ibragim naturally became the centerpiece of the movement's narrative of the obstruction of truth and the lack of justice.
In December 2014, Elena flew to Boston, barely scraping together enough money for the ticket and one night in a hotel, to attend Dzhokhar's final pretrial hearing—the first time he would be brought to court since pleading not guilty in July 2013. As the brief proceedings were wrapping up, she shouted out in Russian: "Dzhokhar, there are people here who love you! We pray for you and support you! We know you are innocent!" She told me later she had decided ahead of time she would scream in Russian "so he would know it wasn't someone mocking him." As the U.S. marshals moved in to usher Elena out of the courtroom, she screamed at them, too: "I am an American citizen and I have the right to say what I think!"
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 10, 2015, 07:15:34 AM
Bella is pretty hot, not matter what old man grumble says.
Okay, grandpa, feel free to insist that you are right. I'll let people judge based on pictures.
No, his hair was brown.
(https://lh6.ggpht.com/OFS7p-pRLkcxGSC8zb_KazMG24TKsbPALL42myzK74U4N0BqVZHjmUM2INmcaLLp2SE=w300)
Never realized before how alike Jesus and Rick Grimes look. :hmm:
You mean Conchita Wurst?
Him too.
Quote from: grumbler on April 10, 2015, 08:46:49 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 10, 2015, 07:15:34 AM
Bella is pretty hot, not matter what old man grumble says.
Okay, grandpa, feel free to insist that you are right. I'll let people judge based on pictures.
I will join the anti-grumbler coalition on this issue. :P
However, in the long term, it won't matter, as they will probably end up resembling their mother.
He gets the death penalty.
Talk about a kangaroo court.
That is what he wanted wasn't it?
Maybe he just wants to talk about Australian Justice.
Sorry I thought I would make an obvious troll. :P
Quote from: Martinus on May 15, 2015, 03:18:45 PM
Sorry I thought I would make an obvious troll. :P
Well you have taken some rather extreme positions in the past, so I thought I'd tease more of a response out of you before jumping down your throat...
-_-
So how long before he actually fries? Or could we blow him up with a bomb?
Quote from: derspiess on May 15, 2015, 03:32:21 PM
So how long before he actually fries? Or could we blow him up with a bomb?
There's always a couple years of appeals.
I was going to suggest Cristie sits on him, then I realised I confused Massachusetts with New Jersey. :Embarrass:
Quote from: Martinus on May 15, 2015, 03:36:18 PM
I was going to suggest Cristie sits on him, then I realised I confused Massachusetts with New Jersey. :Embarrass:
I think Joker will be executed by the Federales. They could always federalize Christie for day to carry out the sentence.
Christie is big enough to sit on both NJ and MA.
Quote from: derspiess on May 15, 2015, 04:13:40 PM
Quote from: Martinus on May 15, 2015, 03:36:18 PM
I was going to suggest Cristie sits on him, then I realised I confused Massachusetts with New Jersey. :Embarrass:
I think Joker will be executed by the Federales. They could always federalize Christie for day to carry out the sentence.
Yup. Apparently the first one they've sentenced to death since McVeigh.
Some of the more dubious prosecutions in the US always seem to be done at the state level. As far as I can tell the Federal prosecutions are well respected.
Quote from: Barrister on May 15, 2015, 04:19:15 PM
Some of the more dubious prosecutions in the US always seem to be done at the state level. As far as I can tell the Federal prosecutions are well respected.
Even lower. County or city I would say.
Sentencing him to death is a mistake. Oh well.
Quote from: Caliga on May 15, 2015, 07:22:48 PM
Sentencing him to death is a mistake. Oh well.
I disagree. It was the only rational move.
I suggest extraditing him to North Korea for death with anti air rocket.
Quote from: Barrister on May 15, 2015, 10:07:05 PM
Quote from: Caliga on May 15, 2015, 07:22:48 PM
Sentencing him to death is a mistake. Oh well.
I disagree. It was the only rational move.
I disagree. It's less of a punishment, it will make him a martyr to other crazies like him and his dead bro, and last but not least, it's fundamentally wrong for the state to put people to death.
Quote from: Caliga on May 16, 2015, 04:34:00 AM
Quote from: Barrister on May 15, 2015, 10:07:05 PM
Quote from: Caliga on May 15, 2015, 07:22:48 PM
Sentencing him to death is a mistake. Oh well.
I disagree. It was the only rational move.
I disagree. It's less of a punishment, it will make him a martyr to other crazies like him and his dead bro, and last but not least, it's fundamentally wrong for the state to put people to death.
Two rational reasons and only one emotional one. Not bad.
Which one is emotional?
Quote from: Martinus on May 16, 2015, 07:58:03 AM
Which one is emotional?
Sorry, don't have time to hand-hold the slower students while class is still in session. See me after class for help working out which argument is based on emotion.
Quote from: Martinus on May 16, 2015, 07:58:03 AM
Which one is emotional?
grumbler hasn't felt an emotion since seeing Alaric and the goths sack Rome. That killed his ability to feel emotions, though to be honest he had been emotionally stunted while surviving the destruction of the Roman fleet in a storm during the First Punic War. So many good men lost.
Since then he is like data in Star Trek, only able to guess what an emotion truly is.
Quote from: grumbler on May 16, 2015, 10:25:03 AM
Quote from: Martinus on May 16, 2015, 07:58:03 AM
Which one is emotional?
Sorry, don't have time to hand-hold the slower students while class is still in session. See me after class for help working out which argument is based on emotion.
I watched a short film recently that started like that. The student, a young male is struggling with class. The teacher, a middle age female offers to help him after class. He does some work for extra credit. It was in a up and coming artist short film website, pornhub.
Isn't that old 'Killing them will just make them martyrs' thing the sort of thing that villains say in movies and TV as an excuse not to kill the heroes so that they can escape, regroup and then win?
If your argument is being used by Cobra Commander, you might want to take a second look at it.
I'm against the DP on principle, and that's why I'd rather this man not be killed, but I don't get the "martyr" objection. It's not like muslim terrorists seem to have much trouble finding something to get riled about and try to kill us.
Quote from: grumbler on May 16, 2015, 10:25:03 AM
Quote from: Martinus on May 16, 2015, 07:58:03 AM
Which one is emotional?
Sorry, don't have time to hand-hold the slower students while class is still in session. See me after class for help working out which argument is based on emotion.
None of his posts seems to be based on emotion, so I am going to conclude that, as usual, you are talking out of your ass.
Cal's only emotions are hungry and sated.
Quote from: celedhring on May 16, 2015, 12:15:44 PM
I'm against the DP on principle, and that's why I'd rather this man not be killed, but I don't get the "martyr" objection. It's not like muslim terrorists seem to have much trouble finding something to get riled about and try to kill us.
Being against the DP on principal is fine. Saying that it is "fundamentally wrong for the state to put people to death" is emo. Personally, I oppose the DP because I don't trust bureaucrats to properly implement it (yes, that argument could be used for imprisonment as well, but at least the latter is a recoverable error).
The martyr objection is a valid one, I think. I don't think that it is strong enough to overcome the benefits to the survivors and relatives of the victim of having justice served, but it certainly is a consideration. Existing Muslim terrorists don't need martyrs, perhaps, but having martyrs helps recruiting. It also helps motivate potential terrorists to go down fighting rather than surrender. As I say, that's not strong enough IMO to counter the benefits of executing the guy, but it should be considered.
Quote from: Martinus on May 16, 2015, 02:24:19 PM
Quote from: grumbler on May 16, 2015, 10:25:03 AM
Quote from: Martinus on May 16, 2015, 07:58:03 AM
Which one is emotional?
Sorry, don't have time to hand-hold the slower students while class is still in session. See me after class for help working out which argument is based on emotion.
None of his posts seems to be based on emotion, so I am going to conclude that, as usual, you are talking out of your ass.
That's okay by me. I don't give a rat's ass what you conclude.
I say, the more terrorists we turn into martyrs, the better.
I think Grumbler is mistaking principle for emotion. Whether or not he will be executed doesn't really matter much. It'll just cost more.
Quote from: Razgovory on May 16, 2015, 09:03:29 PM
I think Grumbler is mistaking principle for emotion.
Yeah, pretty much. Then again, he is devoid of both.
Quote from: Martinus on May 17, 2015, 01:14:33 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on May 16, 2015, 09:03:29 PM
I think Grumbler is mistaking principle for emotion.
Yeah, pretty much. Then again, he is devoid of both.
Ooh! A dogpile! When Grallon joins, we will have the hat trick!
I don't know if the "only making them martyrs" matches our experience 14+ years into the War on Terror.
As far as I can tell the dead terrorists aren't causing us any trouble. No one seems to be venerating OBL these days. It's the living ones that are causing problems - The Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds, the Omar Khadrs. By being alive they continue to generate attention and to be a cause celebre.
Look, if one is morally opposed to the death penalty then I get that. That's a moral discussion one can have.
But if you're going to accept that the state does have the ability to put someone to death, if you don't use that penalty on Tsarnaev I'm not sure when you ever would use that power.
I found it strange that they could just decide to try him under federal laws, apparently mainly so they can even go for the death penalty in Massachusetts and then pick a jury that is obviously not representative of the state as they excluded all those that are opposed to the death penalty, which is probably a sizeable proportion. I guess all of that is perfectly legal under American law, but it feels a bit like deliberately picking a jury to get a certain result instead of using what I would assume is the standard procedure for murder trials in Massachusetts.
Based on my extensive legal training gleaned from Law & Order reruns, it's SOP to ask prospective jurors if they have any problem awarding the death penalty. I.e. opposing it on philosophical grounds disqualifies you.
Quote from: Zanza on May 17, 2015, 12:18:13 PM
I found it strange that they could just decide to try him under federal laws, apparently mainly so they can even go for the death penalty in Massachusetts and then pick a jury that is obviously not representative of the state as they excluded all those that are opposed to the death penalty, which is probably a sizeable proportion. I guess all of that is perfectly legal under American law, but it feels a bit like deliberately picking a jury to get a certain result instead of using what I would assume is the standard procedure for murder trials in Massachusetts.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to pick jury on the basis of whether they're willing to engage in jury nullification, especially in jury systems where you need a 12-0 result to reach a decision. Juries are supposed to decide on the basis of facts, not philosophical stances.
I thought it was a federal trial because they crossed state lines?
I think the terrorism angle makes it a federal case.
It's interstate commerce.
Quote from: Zanza on May 17, 2015, 12:18:13 PM
I found it strange that they could just decide to try him under federal laws, apparently mainly so they can even go for the death penalty in Massachusetts and then pick a jury that is obviously not representative of the state as they excluded all those that are opposed to the death penalty, which is probably a sizeable proportion. I guess all of that is perfectly legal under American law, but it feels a bit like deliberately picking a jury to get a certain result instead of using what I would assume is the standard procedure for murder trials in Massachusetts.
I agree.
The figleaf justification is what Guller says below.
But the reality is that it biases the jury pool.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 18, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
I agree.
The figleaf justification is what Guller says below.
But the reality is that it biases the jury pool.
Would you be in favor of including jurors who believer no crime merits punishment?
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 18, 2015, 03:36:04 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 18, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
I agree.
The figleaf justification is what Guller says below.
But the reality is that it biases the jury pool.
Would you be in favor of including jurors who believer no crime merits punishment?
Isn't the idea behind a jury that it somehow is representative of the society? If so if you are skewing this by excluding certain (statistically representative) groups of people (such as death penalty opponents) you end up perverting that idea.
Quote from: Martinus on May 18, 2015, 03:39:44 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 18, 2015, 03:36:04 PM
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 18, 2015, 03:29:21 PM
I agree.
The figleaf justification is what Guller says below.
But the reality is that it biases the jury pool.
Would you be in favor of including jurors who believer no crime merits punishment?
Isn't the idea behind a jury that it somehow is representative of the society? If so if you are skewing this by excluding certain (statistically representative) groups of people (such as death penalty opponents) you end up perverting that idea.
The requirement for unanimity makes a "representative" jury impossible. All you can try to do is assemble a "reasonable" jury. A person unwilling, for personal reasons, to vote for all of the various verdicts and penalties the jury is tasked to chose among isn't being "reasonable" for the purposes of jury service.
Quote from: Martinus on May 18, 2015, 03:39:44 PM
Isn't the idea behind a jury that it somehow is representative of the society? If so if you are skewing this by excluding certain (statistically representative) groups of people (such as death penalty opponents) you end up perverting that idea.
I get that. I'm pointing out a natural result of enforcing that logic.
(BTW, no definite article before society. Just "society.")
Mart's desire to have "burn the fags" type people on every jury is noted.
If I wanted to nullify a jury, I'd lie about my opinions so they'd let me in, and then vote NG every time.
If I wanted to just get out of jury duty, I'd lie and say I have the exact opinions they don't want on the jury and they'd let me go.
Quote from: MadImmortalMan on May 18, 2015, 03:54:01 PM
If I wanted to nullify a jury, I'd lie about my opinions so they'd let me in, and then vote NG every time.
Not if the principle is more important to you than the verdict.
I never get picked for jury duty.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 18, 2015, 03:36:04 PM
Would you be in favor of including jurors who believer no crime merits punishment?
That doesn't present anywhere near the same problem. There is a very substantial percentage of people who are anti-DP on same kind of principle, and thus systematically excluding those people from capital juries is likely to create a material bias.
Perhaps you should just follow the Canadian answer - guilt is up to the jury, sentence is up to the judge. :cool:
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 18, 2015, 05:18:49 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 18, 2015, 03:36:04 PM
Would you be in favor of including jurors who believer no crime merits punishment?
That doesn't present anywhere near the same problem. There is a very substantial percentage of people who are anti-DP on same kind of principle, and thus systematically excluding those people from capital juries is likely to create a material bias.
What's the alternative? Once the share of population coming into the jury room with preconceived notions is above a certain threshold, you essentially grant that share of population the veto power over the law?
Quote from: DGuller on May 18, 2015, 10:45:18 PM
What's the alternative? Once the share of population coming into the jury room with preconceived notions is above a certain threshold, you essentially grant that share of population the veto power over the law?
The logic of the jury system is the result reflects the mores and values of the general community. If you think that is a problem, be honest and advocate scrapping juries in particular cases. But what is not acceptable is to say a huge swath of people with certain values is excluded categorically from some of the most important cases, and while still claiming to be true to the notion of a jury pool that is unbiased and reflects generally prevailing community values.
Is the job of a juror in the sentencing portion to do whatever he or she feels like? I would have thought there was supposed to be reference to laws or guidelines or whatever.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 19, 2015, 05:36:06 PM
Is the job of a juror in the sentencing portion to do whatever he or she feels like? I would have thought there was supposed to be reference to laws or guidelines or whatever.
Yes.
And the reason for screening people for anti-DP views is that you exclude people who admit that they may not be able to follow the law with respect to imposition of the DP.
There is a logic to that - but if one assumes that in a state like MA there are quite a lot of people who if they answered honestly would be in the category it gives rise to a different problem - you end up fatally biasing the jury pool and making it highly unrepresentative. You've fixed one form of bias by introducing another.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on May 19, 2015, 05:43:22 PM
Quote from: Admiral Yi on May 19, 2015, 05:36:06 PM
Is the job of a juror in the sentencing portion to do whatever he or she feels like? I would have thought there was supposed to be reference to laws or guidelines or whatever.
Yes.
And the reason for screening people for anti-DP views is that you exclude people who admit that they may not be able to follow the law with respect to imposition of the DP.
There is a logic to that - but if one assumes that in a state like MA there are quite a lot of people who if they answered honestly would be in the category it gives rise to a different problem - you end up fatally biasing the jury pool and making it highly unrepresentative. You've fixed one form of bias by introducing another.
The bias is introduced by requiring unanimity in the verdict and sentence. I don't think any group that was actually representative could achieve unanimity.