Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admits to setting bombs with brother, source says

boston globe ^ | 4/23 | cullen

[RummyChick]

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted to authorities Sunday that he and his brother were behind the Marathon bombings, according to a senior law enforcement official.

Tsarnaev made his admissions to FBI agents who interviewed him at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he is being treated for multiple gunshot wounds. He had not yet been given a Miranda warning.

Tsarnaev’s attorneys are certain to challenge the legal admissibility of those admissions, and other information he gave them, such as claiming that he and his brothers acted alone, and that his brother was radicalized in an extreme form of Islam in part because he opposed US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[RummyChick]

BERFORE THE MIRANDA WARNINGS.

I SAID THAT WAS A IDIOTIC MOVE BY THE FEDS...or maybe dumb on purpose

[a fool in paradise]

Bill “guilty as sin yet free as a bird” Ayers could give him pointers on how to get the government to sink its own case.

[Sacajaweau]

They don't need his admission of guilt. He's nailed 1000 ways.

And they can ask him the same questions again with an attorney.

[American Quilter]

I think the witness who was kidnapped by the terrorists during the carjacking is in great danger. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he doesn’t live to testify. I assume it will be months, if not years, before this case comes to trial, and in that time this witness could have an unfortunate “accident.” Which of course wouldn’t have anything to do with radical Islamists.

[Irenic]

My opinion, the latter...

[Uncle Chip]

YEP —

[Hoffer Rand]

If he does, we’ll never hear about it. The media will bury it so deep, it’ll look like the Dead Sea scrolls.

[RummyChick]

You have a confused, drugged, shot in the throat, scared kid whose brother gave him a backpack and he had no idea what was in it and was terrorized into admitting guilt - which can’t be admitted anyway...

Yeah, it could play that way

[AppyPappy]

Somebody should have snuck in and Mirandized him just to mess with the Feds.

[Alberta's Child]

Nothing dumb about it at all. They weren't asking these questions to help prosecute him. They asked these questions to identify other potential conspirators.

They don't need any of the information they've gotten from him to prosecute him.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

If he is an aspiring rapper it will be O.K. anyway.

[kingu]

These statements are (possibly) inadmissible in court, and any related evidence gathered from the statements may be inadmissible. However, any evidence gathered independently of these statements is certainly admissible, including photographs of him present at the bombing, evidence collected at his apartment, eye witness testimony from witnesses at the bombing, at the carjacking, at the shootout, etc, etc, etc.

Let’s be perfectly honest here - the only issue in court is if he’s executed or spends the rest of his life in prison. Pick your poison: shooting a cop while on the run, shooting at cops, using explosive devices to try to get away, carjacking and kidnapping, armed robbery - oh, and the bombing of the Boston Marathon. By any sane measure, it should be the shortest trial in history.

Of course, courts are our finest insane asylums in the country.

[Mr Fuji]

Don’t get too excited! Many posters here at FR were immediately calling for him not to be read his Miranda Rights and to go directly to the water-boarding room!

[Revolting cat!]

When did he stop being “alleged”?

[RummyChick]

Notice that none of the reports are that the LIVE brother admitted guilt to the carjacker..it is the dead brother.

There is a case to be built in the defense of the live one...depending on what they have on video.

Do they have a video of him setting off a detonator for that backpack?

IF NOT, then they start building the defense layer upon layer.
It was idiotic to not mirandize this guy..and you are going to see what falls through the cracks because of it.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Waterboarding isn’t always effective. I prefer to use ‘surfboards’ and “ironing boards” preferably with a hot iron attached to it. Works all the time. /sarc

I could Drone on about this topic but I don’t want the ACLU to come after me.

[RummyChick]

Why not just use sodium pentathol

[plain talk]

I was thinking same thing. The question is why did they not read him his rights anyway and get it out of the way?

[Alberta's Child]

From what I read in the days after the Boston Marathon bombing, it was surviving victims at the scene who identified one or both culprits to the police. It was the eyewitness accounts from these people that led police to release the original photos of the suspects that following Thursday evening.

The trial -- if there even is one -- is going to be a simple matter of having the prosecutor trot out all of these victims (potentially including children) to point the finger at him and testify that he left the backpack right there at the scene.

The irony is that it may not be possible for an attorney to mount a credible defense in this case. He/she would probably recognize that even the simple act of cross-examining such sympathetic victims would turn the jury against his client in a heartbeat.

[dfwgator]

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admits to setting bombs with brother

Gee, thanks for clearing that up.