Lazy Saturday Reads: Boston Bomber Gets Death Penalty, A Baltimore Cold Case, and Other News
Posted: May 16, 2015 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Archbishop Keough High School, Baltimore police department, Boston Marathon bombing, capital punishment, Catholic Church, death penalty, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Father Joseph Maskell, Jean Hargadon Wehner, sexual abuse by priests, Sister Cathy Cesnick, Terre Haute supermax prison, terrorism |
Good Morning!!
Yesterday the jury in the Boston Marathon bombing case sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for his role in the 2013 terrorist attack that killed three people and severely injured hundreds more.
From the Washington Post:
BOSTON — Two years after the horrific bombing of this city’s famed marathon, a federal jury on Friday sentenced to death one of the young men responsible for the attack, turning away appeals for mercy from his attorneys and even some victims.
The jury of seven women and five men rendered its decision after deliberating for more than 14 hours. As the verdict was read, the bomber, 21-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, displayed no sign of emotion.
The outcome was a victory for prosecutors, who said the former college student worked in tandem with his older brother and carried out the attack in a “heinous, cruel and depraved manner.” Jurors rejected arguments that Tsarnaev had fallen under the sway of his brother, Tamerlan, and was remorseful over the suffering he caused.
Tsarnaev will be transferred to a federal prison, where he will remain until he is put to death by lethal injection. His attorneys did not comment after the verdict, but they are expected to appeal the sentence.
I was very disappointed in this decision. I strongly resent the Feds coming into Massachusetts, where we don’t have the death penalty and only 18% of citizens supported it for Tsarnaev, and forcing us to accept this barbaric practice against the public will. It also makes me feel sick at heart that the victims will now have to deal with years–probably decades–of appeals of the sentence. Tsarnaev should have been put away for life and left to fade into obscurity.
Tsarnaev showed no emotion as his death sentence was read.
ABC News reports: The Eerie Quiet in Court as Boston Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Sentenced to Die.
An eerie quiet settled over the federal courthouse in Boston today as victims and relatives of those killed in the Boston Marathon bombing heard a jury ordered Dzhkohar Tsarnaev to be put to death.
Liz Norden, who wanted Tsarnaev to get the death penalty for detonating the bomb that left two of her sons amputees and their bodies forever burned and scarred, cried quietly when the jury decided that the 21-year-old should die for his crimes.
Bill and Denise Richard, who strongly advocated against capital punishment for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, sat stone faced as the verdict was read, even though it was their 8-year-old son Martin who was the youngest victim killed in the horrific attack….
Boston bombing victim Martin Richard.
Inside Courtroom 9 the jurors, seven women and five men, stood as the verdict slip was read, as did Tsarnaev. One male juror removed his eyeglasses and wiped his eyes with a tissue and leaned his body into the rail of the jury box as if to prop himself up. Two female jurors, their cheeks flushed red, sipped from water bottles. Another woman had her arms crossed in front of her.
Tsarnaev never looked toward the jury box, not even when it became clear that those men and women decided he should be put to death. One of his defense attorneys, Miriam Conrad, covered her mouth with her hand. Once the verdict was read, police in court including Watertown Police Chief Ed Deveau and Boston Police Commissioner Bill Evans, who is personal friends with the Richard family, exchanged glances.
Throughout it all, the mood in the courtroom was heavy and subdued. The judge’s clerk Paul Lyness admonished those assembled inside before it began that “any outbursts” would be treated as contempt of court. There were none.
Tsarnaev will most like await his appeals at a Federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Guantanamo North
The Indy Star reports: If Boston Bomber is executed, it’ll likely be done in Indiana.
According to an official at the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Terre Haute is the only prison that has the special confinement unit that houses federal death row inmates. While the BOP could not go as far as to say that Terre Haute is the only prison where a federal inmate could be put to death, every federal execution has taken place at the facility since 2001.
Timothy McVeigh, Juan Raul Garza and Louis Jones Jr. were the last three inmates to be strapped to the table in the western Indiana prison and have a lethal drug cocktail run through their veins.
Tsarnaev may now face that same fate.
Larry A. Mackey, the attorney who tried both of the Oklahoma City bombing cases and delivered the prosecution’s closing argument in McVeigh’s, told The Indianapolis Star it’s “highly, highly unlikely” Tsarnaev will win his appeals.
“The judge has been very careful in protecting the defendant’s rights,” said Mackey, who has been following the case closely since it went to trial in March.
Sometime in the next 60 days, Mackey said a formal sentencing hearing will be held, and Tsarnaev will return to court with his council for the judge to impose the jury’s decision to put him to death.
Following the hearing, Tsarnaev will be transported to Terre Haute’s special confinement unit where he’ll wait out the exhaustion of his appeals, said Mackey.
Death chamber at Terre Haute supermax prison
More on the Terre Haute prison from the Boston Herald:
The 1,400-inmate, all-male U.S. Penitentiary at Terre Haute, Ind., is the likely landing spot for the 21-year-old Tsarnaev, who would be housed at the prison’s “special confinement unit” with the other 50-plus inmates on federal death row.
Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, 74 federal convicts have been sentenced to die for their crimes, but just three have actually been executed and another 10 have been taken off death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Sampson, who has since had his death sentenced overturned, first went to Terre Haute following his 2003 conviction.
All three who have been put to death — Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, and Texans Juan Raul Garza and Louis Jones Jr. — were executed at Terre Haute’s in-house chamber.
Robert Nigh, who represented McVeigh, described the Indiana lock-up as a place where inmates “certainly had access to other inmates, commissary, reasonable opportunity for recreation, hygiene.”
The sight — and smells — of the prison’s “death house” still stick with him. “That was surreal,” he said. “When you walked into it, my recollection is (seeing) stark white walls, and it smelled and felt like a hospital or a clinic. It felt like a place where you go to get medical care. It had that feel to it. And it’s designed for the exact opposite.”
An article at Business Insider makes the prison sound a lot worse than the above description: What it’s like inside the terrifying super-max prison where the Boston Bomber is expected to be executed.
Though US Penitentiary Terre Haute has been open since 1940, Tsarnaev would likely be held in the Communications Management Units, a special unit opened in 2006 for terrorism-related offenses.
Because of the prison’s reputation for housing some of the country’s biggest security threats, some have called it “Guantanamo North.”
According to NPR, the units have 50 cells and house many men convicted in notable post-9/11 cases, as well as those involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the 1999 “Millennium” plot to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport, and multiple hijacking cases.
The Communication Management Units in the prison severely restrict communications between inmates and the outside world. Inmates are limited to two two-hour nonphysical visits per month, plus one 15-minute phone call per week.
Mail must be screened, copied, and evaluated before being delivered to inmates. All conversations must be in English.
Sister Rita Clare Gerardot
According to Sister Rita Clare Gerardot, “a spiritual adviser to death-row inmates at Terre Haute,”
“They are in a small cell by themselves. All their meals are pushed through a slot. There is no recreation, but they can go out of their cells three times a week into cages,” Gerardot told The Tribune-Star, a newspaper in Terre Haute.
Inmates can speak to one another from the front of their cells, according to Gerardot, and have limited time to use a phone, e-mail, or a library.
“Truthfully, I don’t know how they keep their sanity. They have to be persons of great strength of will to get up every day, and know they have no choices,” Gerardot said.
Tsarnaev will likely wish he had died in the Watertown shootout like his older brother Tamerlan. And as the Boston Globe notes this morning “everything could have been different” for this young man.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev could have been graduating from UMass Dartmouth this weekend. Martin Richard, Lingzi Lu, Krystle Campbell, and Sean Collier could still be alive.
But everything changed when Tsarnaev, along with his older brother, detonated a pair of bombs near the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon.
A 19-year-old sophomore at UMass Dartmouth at the time of the bombing, Tsarnaev was sentenced to death on Friday—while a commencement ceremony for the Class of 2015 was underway. He convicted in April on 17 capital charges and sentenced to death for six of them.
According to a UMass Dartmouth transcript introduced in court during the trial, Tsarnaev was an Engineering undergraduate with a mechanical engineering major during the Fall 2011 semester, his first in college. In the Spring 2013 semester, he was classified as a Arts & Sciences undergraduate with no declared major. The commencement ceremony for undergraduates in the College of Engineering was held Friday at the university’s Vietnam Veterans Peace Memorial Amphitheater. The ceremony for undergraduates in the College of Arts and Sciences is scheduled for Saturday.
Tsarnaev may never have graduated, even had he and his brother not chosen to perpetrate one of the worst terrorsist acts on U.S. soil. At the time of his arrest, he had a cumulative GPA of 1.094.
But perhaps he could have been among those students celebrating a new a beginning this weekend instead of facing a death sentence.
And everything could have been different.
Sister Catherine Ann Cesnik in 1970
We’ve been hearing a lot about corruption at the Baltimore Police Department lately. Yesterday I read a fascinating story about a cold case that shows the corruption there has a long history. If you’re interested in true crime stories and corruption in the Catholic Church, I highly recommend this piece by Laura Bassett at The Huffington Post,
Buried In Baltimore: The Mysterious Murder Of A Nun Who Knew Too Much.
It’s the story of the murder of a nun who had tried to help girls who were being sexually abused by at least one priest at a Baltimore Catholic school in the late 1960s. Here’s the introduction. I hope it grabs you and you decide to read the entire long article.
On a frigid day in November 1969, Father Joseph Maskell, the chaplain of Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, called a student into his office and suggested they go for a drive. When the final bell rang at 2:40 p.m., Jean Hargadon Wehner, a 16-year-old junior at the all-girls Catholic school, followed the priest to the parking lot and climbed into the passenger seat of his light blue Buick Roadmaster.
It was not unusual for Maskell to give students rides home or take them to doctor’s appointments during the school day. The burly, charismatic priest, then 30 years old, had been the chief spiritual and psychological counselor at Keough for two years and was well-known in the community. Annual tuition at Keough was just $200, which attracted working-class families in deeply Catholic southwest Baltimore who couldn’t afford to send their daughters to fancier private schools. Many Keough parents had attended Maskell’s Sunday masses. He’d baptized their babies, and they trusted him implicitly.
This time, though, Maskell didn’t bring Wehner home. He navigated his car past the Catholic hospital and industrial buildings that surrounded Keough’s campus and drove toward the outskirts of the city. Eventually, he stopped at a garbage dump, far from any homes or businesses. Maskell stepped out of the car, and the blonde, freckled teenager followed him across a vast expanse of dirt toward a dark green dumpster.
It was then that she saw the body crumpled on the ground.
Father A. Joseph Maskell
The week prior, Sister Cathy Cesnik, a popular young nun who taught English and drama at Keough, had vanished while on a Friday-night shopping trip. Students, parents and the local media buzzed about the 26-year-old’s disappearance. People from all over Baltimore County helped the police comb local parks and wooded areas for any sign of her.
Wehner immediately recognized the lifeless body as her teacher. “I knew it was her,” she recalled recently. “She wasn’t that far gone that you couldn’t tell it was her.”
Cesnik was still clad in her aqua-colored coat, and maggots were crawling on her face. Wehner tried to brush them off with her bare hands. “Help me get these off of her!” she cried, turning to Maskell in a panic. Instead, she says, the priest leaned down behind her and whispered in her ear: “You see what happens when you say bad things about people?”
Maskell, Wehner understood, was threatening her. She decided not to tell anyone. “He terrified me to the point that I would never open my mouth,” she recalled.
Now, decades later, a group of women who attended Keogh back in those days are working together with a journalist and a former Baltimore police office to find out who killed Sister Cathy.
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Great post. I look forward to reading the entire piece about the cold case. If you don’t want to watch Judy Miller on video, wonkette has a hilarious takedown of the thing. Thought I’d post this because if brings back a lot of memories for me.
Texas Tribune: A Look at Hillary and Bill Clinton’s Favorite Texas Haunts in 1972
Thanks. I’ll go read the Austin story. Sounds interesting.
I don’t think I can handle watching the Judy Miller thing.
That cold case story was absolutely infuriating but completely believable now.
That story makes me sick to the bone.
Seriously. I thought the same thing, Judith Miller on ethics in journalism. Is that a joke?
I thought the Judith Miller piece must be from The Onion!
Thanks BB, I am in agreement with on this case, knowing that many people were not going for the death penalty in your state.
Well the good news for Tsarnaev is he’ll likely never be executed, or is that good news? I don’t know that putting a person in what is basically solitary confinement, for a lifetime, is more humane than execution. I would prefer to be executed. And Tsarnaev would have appealed a life sentence, so it’s six of one, half of dozen of the other. Regardless, unless his conviction is overturned on appeal, he’ll never come out of their alive, and that’s what everyone wanted.
He probably wouldn’t win an appeal on a life sentence. He admitted his guilt. But when it comes to the death penalty, many appeals will be granted.
I think life in one of those supermax prisons would be worse than death, frankly.
So do I.
And, I. The death penalty has no redeeming values for anybody, including an unrepentant mass murderer and the families of his victims. Appeals could last decades and, since the federal government has only put 3 people to death in the last 27 years, what are the chances execution will ever even occur?
A life sentence at the other federal prison mentioned in Colorado, the supermax ADX Florence (designed to house prisoners who committed particularly egregious crimes and likely to never be released) would have made more sense all the way around, including satisfaction of revenge – as if such a thing is even possible.
If anybody can offer any credible, objective reason the death penalty accomplishes anything (other than killing somebody), I’d love to hear it. In this case, there is a distinct probability Tsarnaev believes his execution will take him directly to paradise and that he will be an eternally honored martyr among those sharing his beliefs. So, application of the death penalty in this case was even stupider than usual.
Very articulate post, Stephen. I agree with all the points you make.
Wow. The story about the horrors at Keough High School in Baltimore is shocking. And yet I feel that it’s typical of what victims of abuse and their abusers experience. Here are men so determined to protect themselves that they would murder someone in cold blood in order to keep their secret. Those men were monsters and not just the priests, but the police and the other rapists who participated. Who knows how many, but there were a lot of them.
Thank you for linking to this, bb. At times it was really difficult to force myself to read it, but this story must be told.
It was difficult to read, but I found it inspiring that the survivors have so empowered themselves and inspired a journalist and policeman to help them get justice for Sister Cathy. One of the women said she became a teacher because of Cesnik.
Considering the degree of PTSD the women experienced, it is a testament of their strengthen that they were able to function. You do not ‘cure’ yourself of PTSD. What a horrific situation – the clergy and police involved. They protected their families by not telling. Who could they trust?
I don’t think PTSD can ever be “cured”. Things happen to trigger it again and again.
I can’t read the story but I hope the women have found at least a bit of solace.
I meant to say I hope the women have found a bit of solace in working toward finding and bringing to justice the killer(s) of Sister Cathy. Regaining a sense of personal power can be helpful in dealing with PTSD ( at least in my experience ) and that is what these women are doing.
Of course when I read this I went right back to my childhood days. It didn’t take but a second to see they have relived it time and time again in their adulthood. It’s boiled over, and bubbled up, and now rather than falling apart, they are together about the truth, which means young girls/women need to pay attention, and learn how to react if this were to happen to them.
We know the lost, we hope it goes on the record in the courts, at the church, and in the schools and the community. Their voices will be heard, and we will be better society for it.
The only justice or solace these women will find is when/if those who covered up this sexual abuse and facilitated the murder of this young woman in the process are exposed for the criminals they are. This priest/s were criminals, the members of the PD were criminals and both the Diocese and the PD are responsible for the environment that allowed this behavior to be swept under the rug. I have no confidence that either the RCC or Law Enforcement are any better today than they were 50 years ago. They’re just better at covering their tracks.
I agree, Mouse. If the Church or the Baltimore PD give any real assistance to these women in finding justice, I would be amazed. You can bet they are lawyered-up and want this story to go away.
I think last week I posted a Tampa Bay story about Marco Rubio and the billionaire who has bankrolled him from the beginning of his career. This nugget is from the bottom of a profile of his wife. Somehow I doubt it will ever make it inside the DC media bubble.
Tampa Bay Times: Marco Rubio’s wife long an unseen presence in his career
Very interesting. If it were Hillary, the press would be all over it, but they love Rubio for some strange reason.
Isn’t it something how the rich can make somebody rich? Sounds like the charity is a money laundering scheme to pay off the Rubios. I’d love it if someone gave me 54k for part time “charity” work. Where do I sign up?
A “charity” with assets exceeding $9 million contributed only $250 in 2013? Wow. Amazing what the rich and powerful get away with in this country.
Thanks for the link to the story, Ralph; otherwise, I doubt we would ever know about it.
Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation is excoriated, and they have given millions to needy people around the world.
Yes, a double standard is always applied to the Clintons. It’s infuriating.
That IS the problem with the Clinton’s. They are true believers. They are really trying to help people while ALL the rest are corrupt to the core and on the take. This is why they have the target on their backs at all times. They just don’t play the game the way the others do.
Ditto that, because I have been advocating learning more about the spouses of the candidates, since it seemed like Hillary was the only one they focused on.
Thanks Ralph, you done good.
Thanks BB, the Baltimore article is deeply upsetting. Those omen are to be commended and supported in thier quest.
I commend BB for writing about the Sister Cathy story. It needs to be told. But if you are a woman who has PTSD, think twice about reading it. It’s okay if you don’t read it. It doesn’t mean you are weak or don’t care. You are a strong person but sometimes you need to protect yourself from triggering the bad memories. Take care of yourself first.
BB, I hope you understand what I am saying. It is not meant to be a criticism of your post in any way.
Beata I had mine triggered all my life. I suppose the one time was here, when that religious nut that was given money from both federal/state, and developed a reformatory for girls, and raped them, and shamed them, and scared them. Until the one woman was dying from cancer, and she got a car load of girls (who like her, lived there 35 years ago), and they went to see, to walk the grounds, and confront the aging religious rapist, who would do it all over again if he could get away with it. I melted down when I saw that photo of the rapist on his tractor, and how he responded. In some many ways, this story is like that, because these ladies are aging and getting closer and closer to the end of their lives, and they survived, and their is triumph in their voices. They are investing, giving to the future, and building on hope that others can help, and do something to stop it.
I appreciate what you are saying, so many of us have had to be our own counselors to get us through the ugliness. Some have done good, others, have slipped into darkness.
Fannie, I believe there is something called “exposure therapy” which exposes victims of PTSD to triggers and supposedly that helps them to get better. I don’t know how successful it is ( maybe BB knows ) but it needs to be done in a therapeutic setting with trained counselors to support the victim.
Otherwise, we’re on our own as you said, trying to get though life as best we can. We deal with it in different ways. You are an example of someone who has been able to help so many other people. You’ve done good. xoxo.
Hard to believe but the NYT actually documenting some of the Republican ratfucking being done against Hillary already. Now if only I thought the “progressives” would care they were being led like sheep by wingnuts.
NYT: The Right Baits the Left to Turn Against Hillary Clinton
Haven’t we seen this time and time again! They need to keep a list going, because they have used most all the tricks in the books when it comes to Hillary.
RalphB, I have been saying that all along. All of this extreme left bullshit is being pushed by Republicans. It’s another astro turf movement gobbled up by sexist liberals like Jon Stewart who like to claim “she’s not liberal enough”, but they don’t realize that she’s very liberal in the tradition of FDR because they are blinded by their sexism.
I know, it drives me nuts!
I’m just waiting for the ratfuckers to start posting online that they are voting for Rand Paul because he is actually “more liberal” than Hillary Clinton. They are going to be making their insane arguments over and over again. Get ready.
Well, many of them ended the last election cycle by praising Ron Paul, so they’re tuning up for 2016. My question is, will they keep the same screen names or will they reinvent themselves? I bet they reinvent.
Well, Mouse, if they mention being formerly homeless people who got jobs right off-the-street at Goldman Sachs or having family-owned islands in Nova Scotia, we will figure out who they are in spite of their screen names!
You’ve got that right, girl!!! I’m going to be scrutinizing every comment, just looking for a clue. I think I’d recognize his disco ball no matter how hard he tried to camouflage it. 🙂 I’m also going to be watching out for the former NYC Social Worker who hates the social programs and can’t disguise her loathing of the poor, even though the poor were how she made her living?
I love you, Mouse!!!
I love you too, girl!