Jury selection in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who stands accused of bombing the 2013 Boston marathon, is due to begin Monday unless last-ditch defense maneuvering succeeds, reports the New York Times. The trial will revive memories of how bombs killed three people, blew the legs off 16 others and wounded 260 more. Not since Sept. 11, 2001 has an act of terrorism wreaked such havoc on a U.S. city. The devastation, both physical and psychic, was pervasive. In arguing that no jury here could be impartial, Tsarnaev’s attorney, Judy Clarke, says virtually everyone in the region is, “in effect, an actual victim.
Clarke is famous for cutting deals that keep her clients off death row. Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber; Eric Rudolph, the Olympic Park bomber; and Jared Loughner, who killed six people in an assassination attempt on former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of life in prison, with no chance of parole. With Tsarnaev, she faces one of her toughest challenges: trying to spare the life of a reviled defendant in a case that traumatized and enraged the nation. Prosecutors appear determined to put Tsarnaev to death. U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz in Boston says the death penalty was justified for Tsarnaev for several reasons, including that he used a weapon of mass destruction and has shown no remorse. Tsarnaev sits in near solitary confinement at the prison hospital at Fort Devens, an Army base 40 miles northwest of Boston.