Marathon Bomber Sues Over Prison Conditions

Dzhokbar Tsarnaev, one of two radical Islamic terrorists who set off pressure-cooker bombs at the 2013 Boston Marathon killing three and injuring 264, and then murdered an MIT police officer during his attempted escape, is suing the federal Bureau of Prisons.  CBS News reports that Tsarnaev is claiming that his treatment at the federal supermax prison in Colorado violates his First, Fifth and Eighth Amendment rights.  Last year a panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his death sentence ruling that the jurors were not properly screened.  SCOTUS is currently pondering whether to review the government’s appeal of that ruling.

Tsarnaev’s claims include the prison’s denial of his First Amendment right to send hobby crafts through the mail to his government-paid legal counsel, arguing that the crafts constitute mitigating evidence weighing against his death sentence.  He also claims an Eighth Amendment violation because he has been prevented from sending pictures to his family, or call and write to his nieces and nephews causing him emotional stress amounting to cruel and unusual punishment.  His Fifth Amendment right to due process was violated when the prison gave him a Covid-19 mask without a metal nosepiece, and confiscated a bandana and baseball cap he had purchased from the prison commissary.   It should be noted that Tsarnaev has been allowed to have visits from his nieces and nephews, and talks with his parents and sisters over the phone twice a month.

If Tsarnaev had been an American caught after setting off a bomb in Baghdad which killed members of Isis, a livestream of his beheading would have been transmitted worldwide within a few hours.