Tsarnaev attorneys ask to be replaced for appeals process
His team said the switch would provide the convicted terrorist with “high-quality, cost-effective representation.’’
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s attorneys have asked to be replaced as his “demanding’’ appeals process continues.
In a motion filed Wednesday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, his team said the switch would provide the convicted terrorist with “high-quality, cost-effective representation.’’
Miriam Conrad, chief federal public defender in Massachusetts, and David Bruck, a death penalty expert and head of Washington and Lee University’s death penalty clinic, have asked to be taken off the team after nearly three years as his legal counsel.
Replacing them would be David Patton, executive director and attorney-in-chief of the Federal Defenders of New York, and Gail Johnson, an attorney with death penalty experience based in Colorado, where Tsarnaev is incarcerated at a federal supermax prison.
Judy Clarke, the San Diego, California-based death penalty expert who led Tsarnaev’s defense, would stay on temporarily to assist with the transition.
Tsarnaev’s attorneys cited guidelines advising that new counsel should be assigned in federal death penalty appeals. Appellate lawyers will bring a fresh perspective because they have different specialties than trial lawyers, they wrote.
All of Tsarnaev’s attorneys — and Tsarnaev himself — agreed to the switch, they wrote.
Tsarnaev was sentenced to death last year after a jury convicted him on all counts against him stemming from the bombings at the Boston Marathon in 2013.
On Tuesday, they filed their notice of appeal of Tsarnaev’s convictions and death sentence with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. His attorneys have argued that Tsarnaev could not get a fair trial in Massachusetts.
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