Keller @ Large: Jury Fully Understands Boston Marathon Bomber
BOSTON (CBS) - So now it's time for the defense's turn to explain Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to a jury that has already convicted him of mass murder.
They face an uphill climb, to say the least, especially if they're relying on the testimony of those relatives they've flown in.
We don't know exactly which relatives are here, so we can't tell if any of them can discuss any meaningful interaction they've had with the murderer since he came to America at age eight.
But we can speculate that they will be coached by the publicly-funded defense team to parrot the spin we saw in the infamous Rolling Stone article about the killers a few months after their rampage.
Remember?
The one about how cute and cuddly they were as kids, about how their father suffered from headaches, and mom was impatient to get rich.
None of this seems especially relevant now, except to the likes of former federal judge Nancy Gertner, quoted over the weekend saying Tsarnaev has so far been "a cardboard figure for the jury" who will now be humanized.
"A cardboard figure?"
Really?
On the contrary, this jury has had a thorough look at a vicious, premeditated murderer who hasn't shown a flicker of remorse during his trial. I find it unlikely they will easily swallow a sob story about his allegedly-difficult childhood as mitigation of his crimes without reflecting on their own difficulties and those of others they know, which somehow have managed not to trigger a homicidal frenzy.
Which is not to say they won't persuade at least one juror to choose life in prison instead.
But if they do give him death, it won't be because they don't fully understand who he is.
Listen to Jon's commentary:
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